Good Morning, James
I, too, am not completely clear on Michael's meaning. When a choice is
made by counting votes, your notion that each vote has an effect seems
intuitively obvious. However, the effectiveness of each vote is less
clear. One expression of the problem was written by Daniel R. Ortiz in
The Paradox of Mass Democracy:
"Democracy's three necessary conditions increasingly and
embarrassingly conflict. For perfectly understandable
reasons, the more we broaden and equalize political
participation, the more difficult we make individual
political choice. In other words, there is some tradeoff
between the quantity and quality of individual political
engagement." p. 211, Rethinking The Vote, Oxford University
Press, 2004
Thus, voting in the real world becomes - as Michael says - meaningless.
We must look deeper.
The most fundamental element of politics is that issues arise in the
body politic. Although individuals and groups can instigate issues,
they cannot prevent their inception. That is to say, issues are
independent of any individual or group; they are a matter of the people.
Current political practice allows groups to 'interpret' public issues
and offer options for their resolution. Such a process is inherently
flawed because the groups that 'interpret' the issues offer options that
favor their interest. The result is perpetual confrontation between
groups seeking advantages.
We can do better than that.
Fred Gohlke
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