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Maybe this next article serves the initiation of the strife? Systems of Voting: is there a bug, there? Systems of Voting: is there a bug, there? :{pre-liminary version}: Foreword All of our civil societies deal with collective policies to be discussed and decided, which overall function requires a voting system and, of course, a political arrangement to implement it.The civil debate is up, about the different political arrangements that are appropriate in a democracy, what is the best. Here the dialectic is developing between a Representative Democracy (RD) model, that is adopted almost everywhere in our western countries, and a Direct Democracy (DD) model, intended to avoid some democratic flaws that might be implicit within RD.We do not want to decide here what the best political arrangement is, whether RD or DD, since any decision on this matter belongs to the people with interest. This notwithstanding, let’s but declare some personal preference for DD – meant as the political arrangement where the people have the first and the last say. Also, let’s make it clear that this study is mostly addressed to people who cultivate the same DD preference, since the RD supporters do delegate their Representatives for any judgment and subsequent decision, on the voting system they adopt, therefore they do not seem likely to endorse changes in the political function of voting systems, but only in the voting technology. Background This analysis has been prompted by an intriguing debate posted in the European Constituent Process forum Let us quote from the dialectics there: S’ace’s antithesis reads: Well, let us question what is the best of these two opposite opinions about humans’ equality, either the American’s thesis or the European’s antithesis: where are the hidden bugs? Because one bug at least must be at work there, in global outside of today. Where to the American democrats the idea could be felt as good that the Iraqi humans are equal to the U.S. humans, to the Iraqi the idea that the U.S. humans are equal to the Iraqi humans is very likely to be felt as a bloody insult. The “Pretended Humans’ Equality” bug I wonder: how could a voting system based on humans' equality – in Bruce’s thesis – accomplish with the economic reality of the free market? Mostly in the world of today where political votes are bought by the rich? Is the rich equal to the poor? Especially in the U.S.? Obviously, once cast into the ballot box, votes are all equal. But voters are not, and that of the humans’ equality seems to be only a slogan concocted and claimed by the dominant class of an asymmetric society wanting to keep its privileges unchanged. If we were all equals, as they claim we are, would it be the social imperative to defend the exploited and the oppressed in a greedy economy? The “Territory” bug There is still little attention for the simple fact that Democracy is a territory-linked social arrangement. The “Territory” parameter requires Democracy policies to be applied within the boundaries of a given territory by the inhabitants of that territory. The width of the involved “given territory” does not matter: be it the Family, a company, a town, a country, or else the world, it is only the inhabitants of the territory which a policy is addressed to, who should be eligible for deciding it by voting. For example, it is not done that the Europeans go and vote for the U.S. Constitution, as well as the U.S. inhabitants come into Europe to vote and decide about the European Constitution.For the same token it would be unthinkable that a group of Worldwide Direct Democracy supporters decide by voting on what the Worldwide Democracy policies & rules have to be -- unless they were the elected Representatives of the worldwide community. But in this case, the political arrangement they set up is Representative Democracy, not just DD. Unfortunately, this RD bug seems to affect and immobilize too many so-called DD activists and supporters, up to date. The “Initiative & Referendum” option bug Some Voting Systems (VS) do allow the people’s I&R direct sharing-in to lawmaking, and some do not. Since one’s voting does implicitly support the voting system one applies, here the question arises: Shall DD supporters go and vote into a voting system that does not allow – whose political establishment does not allow – the I&R option? The “Abstention = Consent” bug Usually, when a given policy goes to be voted by the eligible inhabitants of a given territory, a discrete amount of them abstain from sharing-in and voting. The abstainers’ amount can just overcome the total amount of the voters. What is its meaning, and how should it be accounted by the voting system establishment? In any case, the so-called “Abstention = Consent” rule goes in favour of the VS establishment ruling over the people, not in favour of the people themselves. To fix this bug, a quorum in any votation should be required. Which requirement implies the reversal of the “Abstention = Consent” rule into a more democratic “Abstention = Dissent”, in the top-down arranged votations the same way as in the bottom-up arranged ones (Referenda) The “All Voters are Equals” bug Having been invited to deepen this “voters’ equality” topic, the European discussant added:“I am a bug” is the thought that first comes up to my mind when I am diving in this matter. And then the mantra or-line “i don’t wanna grow up”, which actually refers to a song which resonates in my bones, put in there by an artist-fellow or rather a fellow-artist named Tom Waits ... A song, or a tune whistling may evolve the mind from a puzzling thing to a more comfortable vision of what you really want to enliven... all alone or together with somebody else... or with a family or a group or a crowd ... Yeah, in a big crowd we want to be and can really survive... as it seems the meaning of a mass of people dancing the U2-concerts. And I, I did that too... occasionally... things, lively, fruitful things, need to happen... every now and then ... Now returning to the world of politics and economics, the world of decision makers, decision demanders and decision commanders, other people that arrange a programmatic circus around a peculiar thing. Another vaster thing, which I myself sense to be a vaster thing, is the starter-civilian at first wondering what occupation or what contribution or what art-skills or even scientific skills “I” want to develop and how to build a living ... while (re)membering community. As a starter, I may start at a level that gives me the idea to develop myself into top-voter citizen. The considerations above are integrated in the guidelines for voting over a lifespan. It realises a sense for generation binding and more as expressed in a conceptual web-dialogue on www.globalgeniusvoter.com . Focus a variety of people like ants on this stairway, or do you prefer temple, moving, meeting, communicating in all kind of directions except from right to left ... in the physical world which, remembering the Waits lyrics, refers to the price we pay & growing up. Active forces, also universal forces, are articulated that enrich lifes conviviality. This site is an invocation for you reader, fellow citizen, to contribute in reaching out for a sustainable world ... for all of us. This model comprises the natural and systemic morbidity of man. The blockade or should I say block-age may be the question ... why didn’t we organize our election events in the paradigm defined in this New Manner of Thinking & Possible Doing? Has for instance Thomas Friedman a right to say the world flattened by technology? I have a desire to grow-up in the flow of processes, fit to open up for the next step of consciousness and according practice. Getting grown-up together with my fellow humans who have an equal harmonizing desire integrated in the community effort we are striving to emerge in. So at the end it may reveal my mind there never was a real bug, we just had some new understanding in how to revive our way to communicate in a networked world, as [translating a Dutch quotation] Micah L. Sifry so aptly said: “The era of the hierarchical politics, where election campaigns, institutes and media are lost communities, where the course is preset by hardly collected amounts of capital, is over. Something more wild, more exciting and to individual partakers more satisfying is growing-up now next to the old order.” The “Pleasing” bug People has changed its practices over centuries. Often it came with pain of massive inequality and slavery, energy crises, war, pollution and also through democratization as printing of books, schools, public transport, health care and other developments. We learned to live in the changed environment. One of them is choose for voting principles that fit the rhythm of today.This rhythm varies for the diverse matters to govern, so we need variety, otherness. Since some people still think that the people in general does not understand the complexity of life, learning and openess is needed. The natural environment or biosphere is changing far beyond our human control. Policies to recognize our ways and taking other ones will become available. A serious bug in our present voting systems is pleasing. We live a culture of pleasing each other. Even in attacking a problem and taking political measures to resolve it are coming from ways of pleasing as politicians do it to the voters. Customers or clients need to be pleased in order to be and stay in the market – so is thought – no matter if all of this “pleasing” of ourselves turns into ourselves being not in, and staying not in, a sustainable world. The “No Freedom from Speech” bug Finally, let’s recall that any deciding process – be it informal like choosing one’s own private policies or formal like voting collective policies – is only the last step of a communication process, by which the deciding voter is informed about the chances to choose and makes one’s own appropriate evaluations before voting. We know, all of this “communication” process goes under the principle of “freedom of speech”. That means, in both politics and informal discussions, that any one is free to advertise one’s own propaganda, trying to convince the others to decide - vote accordingly. Yet we also know that a sizable amount of voters fall down as the defenceless victims of the opinion-makers and the political propaganda. It looks as if the People were able to perform “freedom of speech” on one side of the communication coin – that of (politicians and) advertisers – but are unable to apply “freedom from speech” on the other side of that same coin: the side of voters. To dig for this “no freedom from speech” bug, let’s search for the epistemological difference between Axiom and Dogma. Now the question becomes: why do so many people take the authority’s words as dogmas, never to be questioned like the religious-fundamentalist mandatory dictates – instead of axioms, always to be subjected to one’s own personal confirmation and responsibility? Accordingly, in today’s democracies, some voting peoples’ decisions are not the real outcome of people’s decisions any more, but the decisions made by the drivers of the people’s manufactured beliefs: illusions and dreams, indeed. As the predictable result of this “no freedom from speech” bug, today’s democracies become increasingly corrupted by the rich that can buy the best skilled opinion-makers and advertisers – they do just perform “freedom of speech", no? which the people are not free from. No wonder so many claims are heard all around for building a “true democracy”, where the Voting System may really and finally express the aware and well-informed decisions of the people. Such a “democracy building” seems but to require the people’s switching from the dogmatic-fundamentalist to the axiomatic-flexible approach to the information world. Let’s now see how this switching can be made in order to fix our “no freedom from speech” bug, for all the consequences it implies. The needed axiomatic reasoning follows: The main axiom of Democracy 1. Since "Democracy" is a product of the people's minds, it is inside the people's minds that it must be built first. Where "mind" is meant to be the creative thinking function of an active human brain or do we prefer to say: “mind is calling the human for being creative and present as a whole operational potentiality”.From this axiom, some logical deductions, or subordinated axioms, follow. That are: 1. a - The person in whose mind "Democracy" has been built first, becomes fit to produce Democracy (and so aware voting). Let's also remark that the same first Axiom is valid for all the products that qualify the human mind. The subject "democracy” can be replaced with a lot of alike "products" or conceptions as Peace, Freedom, Justice, Honesty, Sustainable World and so on.Therefore, we have further axioms correlated to Democracy, such as: 1. b - Since Peace is a product of the people's minds, it is inside the people's minds that Peace must be built first; and so on. Hence, to sum up the above, Axiom 1. becomes: 1. e To be able to output its “products” successfully, all people's minds must have been first freed and opened for personal conception accordingly. There is but another axiom to be accounted as very relevant. It is: 2. All “products” do exist through Communication. Accordingly our initial first Axiom, to encompass all the above becomes: 3. - Since “Democracy, Peace, Freedom and a Sustainable World" – all of which comes into existence through Communication – are all “products” of the people's minds, it is inside the people's minds that Communication must be conceived first… How? We could make a start here, instead let’s offer you a proposal, free at Flexible Learning ( Einstein Project author). Conclusion This writing is a support not to go on and vote in tradition. All of us know very well that voting is a fundamental right and duty of every citizen in every Democracy. Yet we also know, in any decisional process, such as Democracy, that voting is only a step in a thinking and discussing process that invokes self-awareness and criticism and intensive training to the axiomatic approach in what we call “Freedom of, and freedom from, speech”. It is in this view, that we give this writing a meaning, as a contribution to the neverending reflection that supports the steps of every democracy lover on the difficult way to build up Democracy. With these words – like a wish, in the current of this haunted Year 2006 – we think that this little contribution of ours is concluded. The authors (antonio , jan & s'ace) _________________ |
