Re: [WDDM] Weighted voting

[Antonio Rossin <rossin(at)tin.it>]

William McConochie ha scritto:
> 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.
(antonio)
This means, if the majority of voters were indoctrinate gullible people with
no or little education enabling them for criticism, their decisional
power as
expressed by voting is risible.

> 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.
(ant)
Nice.
But who can defend the citizens from tendentious i.e.false informations
in the pamphlets? Maybe, the citizen herself only can do it.  Jefferson's
recommendation becomes actual here.
> 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.

It seems to me, your questionnary is too much detailed and uneasy to
handle, which makes it lose interest. Anyway the idea sounds good.

Regards,
antonio
> Best regards, Bill McConochie.
> Politicalpsychologyresearch.com
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------


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Reifications (like biological entozoic infections of the gut) are
proto-socio-neurological enculturations and as useful  fictions
are not  necessarily symbiotic with,  nor necessarily benignly
adjuvant to the welfare of their unwitting and often naive hosts.
Jud Evans.

Freedom in humans consists of the ability to liberate
oneself  from the tyranny of  reificationalist imprinting.
Antonio Rossin.
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