[Prev] [Next] [Index]
[Thread Index]
02521: Re: [WDDM] Weighted voting
From: |
William McConochie <tstmastr(at)rio.com> |
Date: |
Sat, 26 Dec 2009 08:19:41 -0500 |
Subject: |
Re: [WDDM] Weighted voting |
10/14/09
Dear Jim, Antonio and others:
Questions about who should be allowed to vote in a government can be explored by
research. Especially if one supports democratic forms of government, one should
let
citizens participate in voting on such issues as to who should vote. For
example, I have
done research asking citizens if persons with more education should have their
votes on
policy issues count more than votes of persons with less education. The
majority of
citizens were of the opinion that all citizens' votes should count equally.
A way to address the ignorance concern of some citizens is to follow Jefferson's
recommendation to educate them. This is a reasonable long-term ideal, but not a
practical short term one, except perhaps in a questionnaire itself. E.g. one
could
present an issue and pros and cons and then solicit the citizen's vote on that
issue.
Then present another issue, etc. In Oregon before issue elections we get voter
pamphlets
that provide this sort of information weeks before the actual vote, to help
inform
citizens on the issues they are asked to vote on.
Another approach is to do research to find out what citizens want from
government on a
range of general and specific issues, not as an actual legal vote that
determines policy
but as a way of reliably measuring public opinion to inform both governments and
the
media, and via the media the citizenry, on what the community consider to be the
"common
good", programs and policies that represent the best interests of the
community at that
point in time. These sorts of surveys could and should be repeated regularly,
in my
opinion, and should ask more questions than a typical Pew, Gallup or other
national poll.
More questions on a topic increase reliability of the findings, rather than
taking
"sound bites" or "opinion bites".
The questionnaire I sent to you a few days ago is a draft of the sort of
questionnaire I
am referring to.
I invite your review of it and comments on it and on this general model for
assessing the
common good.
If there's enough interest, I can load the questionnaire on my web site and
citizens from
anywhere in the world can fill it out to begin informing us about
citizen-defined "common
good" from one community and nation to the next.
Best regards, Bill McConochie.
Politicalpsychologyresearch.com
[Prev] [Next] [Index]
[Thread Index]