Good Afternoon, Michael
This is in response to your message to me on September 8th.
You describe what you have in mind via at least one level of abstraction
and, for me, that adds a degree of difficulty. For example, and please
forgive me obtuseness, I don't understand your closing paragraph:
"The point of my post is that we can actually do this today.
It opens up an interesting question. In your own words:
Would the voters be deciding on the 'who' and the 'what' in
the form of candidates for the ballot, and norms for action?
Or would they really (as McLuhan might suggest) be deciding
on the whole electoral system?"
I believe you are referring to the mechanism on your site, but, even so,
I don't understand the question. I have suggested that voters select
nominees by meeting in triads and selecting one of their number to
represent them. I'm unclear about how, exactly, you suggest that should
or will occur. It's possible you have described these details on other
threads and I missed them. If so, I apologize. I lack the time to
digest all the material on this site, but do try to be thorough in any
discussions I join.
re: "The elections are themselves an evaluative medium."
Can that be true?
When voting is based on media-disseminated obfuscation, deception and
hyperbole, and when public susceptibility to such distortions are so
well understood that spin doctors control the flow of information to the
public, how can the resulting elections be evaluative of aught but the
propagandists? Are the circumstances in which we find ourselves (in the
United States) not proof of the fallacy of that point of view?
re: "The same communication channels that traffic in information
about ordinary elections are also available for open
elections. So voters have access to mailing lists and chat
networks, blogs and broadcast media. They can use these
media to share information and arguments about the
candidates."
At the risk of belaboring the point, these are precisely the means that
foisted Weapons of Mass Destruction upon us and gave us our present crop
of politicians.
I'm surprised so few people recognize how the principles laid down by
Pavlov, B. F. Skinner and a host of other behavioral scientists are used
by our leaders (political and commercial) to milk us like cows. Mass
communications is their tool and they are expert in its use.
If we are to improve our electoral systems, one of our first concerns
must be to find a candidate evaluation mechanism that goes deeper than
the emotion-inspiring fluff we're fed by the media.
Fred
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