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02666: Re: [WDDM] Democracy axioms

From: Joshua Petersen <joshupetersen(at)gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:09:26 -0500
Subject: Re: [WDDM] Democracy axioms

The problem, in my opinion, with doing issues by a poll or by signatures is that it raises the possibility for citizens to be swamped by many legislative actions at once, not to mention it often limits the number of people who can show support for it. I think in this, we can take a wonderful democratic notion from internet sites like youtube and diggit: the "Vote up" option. If there's a limit on the number of legislative actions that have to be voted on at any given time (of course this number is alterable by vote of the people), and there is a single location/forum/etc for government legislation, then people can go and 'vote up' what they view as important issues. Of the submitted issues, the top (however many the people have decided on) will go to be voted on. If the ability to also 'vote down' an idea is available, then the process has many of the advantages of both a poll and a survey, and few of the disadvantages, while being even more democratic in many ways.

That's my two cents.

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 10:51 AM, <Joshua N Pritikin> wrote:
On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 05:20:43PM +0200, Jiri Polak wrote:
> Concerning "practically possible", we mean that some oligarchies
> raise obstacles that make referenda possible in theory, but not in
> practice. (too many signatures required, too short periods etc.).

Right

> Qualification by public opinion is in fact included in the term
> "legally possible" We wanted to make the text as concise as  seemed
> adequate.

I attended the 2010 Global Forum in San Francisco. NI4D sent a video
team there. We did a lot of 1-on-1 interviews. I asked many people about
"qualification by public opinion poll". You would think that among this
pool of people, many would be familiar with the idea and be in favor,
especially since we spent at least a whole day discussing problems with
gathering signature petitions. I was surprised that only John Matsusaka
and Paul Jacobs were unambiguously optimistic about the idea. Everybody
else was either skeptical or confused as if they had never considered
the possibility of qualification by public opinion poll. Therefore, I
suggest adding something like "initiatives may be qualified by public
opinion poll". I understand you want to be concise, but omitting this
might tend to exclude it from consideration.


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