Another safeguard for informed democracy occura in building nested networks of stake-holder groups with cross-membership liaison among owners and managers of administration between related groups including adjoining levels of responsibility [as in Quakers' meetings, sociocracy, the Mondragón co-op. corporation etc. –Doug Everingham ==== On 27/12/2009, at 10:50 PM, Jim Powell wrote: Hi Bill, I have read through your questionnaire. Are the blanks in each table to allow for extra questions? I would like to modify it in Excel and send it back to you for comment and send it out to my community in Buccleuch, Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa (550 emails). This process is fairly labour intensive and a properly designed web site would get results far easier and with less errors Regards Jim Powell From: William McConochie [tstmastr(at)rio.com] Sent: 26 December 2009 03:20 PM To: wddm@world-wide-democracy.net 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
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