To Metagov, (cc Election Methods) [WIK] This is a proposal to the Metagovernment community to organize, fund and equip a network of public parties. A public party is a decision body that issues decisions in the same *form* as a political party, but with the content, instead, of public opinion. Like a political party, it runs candidates for office; but because those candidates are actually chosen by the public at large, they tend always to win. I propose using this argument of inevitable success to leverage the resources needed to make it happen. [ACK]
Form ---- A public party has two formal mechanisms that it shares in common with political parties. Like all parties, it has both a primary electoral system and a primary legislative system. The primary electoral system is the mechanism that decides which candidates to place on the ballot (single winner) or on the party list (multi-winner); while the primary legislative system is the mechanism that decides which bills to floor in the assembly. * Primary electoral system * Primary legislative system With these two mechanisms, the public party is able to run candidates in the election and floor bills in the legislature. Electors are able to vote for the candidates of the public party (single winner) or the party itself (multi-winner) with the expectation that, should the party win overall, the legislative agenda of the party will become that of the government. Substance --------- Although the public party has the form of a political party in certain aspects, it has none of its substance. It exercises no control over the party nominees, candidates or elected officials. It employs no force, or threat of force. Even when it wins the overall election, it holds no power. * Never controls the nominees, candidates or elect * Never holds power Instead of engaging in politics and holding power, the public party opens itself to the public and becomes identical to the public in its essentials. Since freedom of expression is essential to the public, and since voting is a form of expression, the party imposes no restrictions on voting in its primaries. It imposes no restrictions on when, where or how people cast their ballots. It frees up the temporal restrictions (when) through techniques of continual voting and results publication. It frees up the spatial and formal (where, how) through vote translation and vote mirroring. [VM] * Voting is free of restrictions, as in free speech * Everyone is invited to participate Function -------- The public party strives to increase its primary turnout by all means. This includes mirroring the votes of would-be competitors (other public parties) such that turnout is effectively pooled among them. By focusing their efforts on this goal, while steering clear of anything that might offend a potential elector, the public parties are likely to succeed in building a primary turnout that at least *rivals* that of the political parties, encumbered as they are by inconvenient voting restrictions, disgruntled members and a disillusioned population. Long before that point, each public party is likely to benefit from the following chain of events: 1. Primary electors of the public party nominate the nominees of the political parties. Each nominee in a *political* primary is now, willee-nillee, also a contestant in a general, public primary. 2. The continually published results of the public primary now provide the most accurate available prediction of the future election. They are like futures in a public electoral market. 3. The news media report these "electoral futures". 4. Concerned for the relative standing of their nominees in the upcoming election, and eager to support them with their votes, the political party members are drawn to the public primary. 5. The turnout in the public primary overtakes and overshoots that of the political primaries. 6. The public primary runs till election day, with the assumed accuracy of the predicted results improving asymptotically. 7. The prediction becomes a fact. The primary winners are now the official winners. But they were also the candidates of the public party, each having been previously confirmed as the choice of the public in the primary. It will now be generally understood, therefore, that the public party will tend to win all elections. Significance ------------ What does this mean? It means that political parties are no longer relevant to elections. Their decisions can have little bearing on the outcome, because knowledge of the outcome now precedes their actions. It used to matter greatly who a party sponsored, for instance, but now it hardly matters at all. The party wants a candidate with a good chance of winning against rivals, but those chances are already on display in the public primary. The best the party can do is point to a suitable nominee among the leaders and say, "That's our candidate!" But this contributes no useful information to the election. The party *as such* has none to contribute. Putting it another way, the party has no vote. Only people can vote. When we say "the public party wins the election", what we really mean, therefore, is that the outcome is decided by the public. This would be a significant change from the past. Plan ---- We use the argument of inevitable success to leverage the labour, money and other resources needed to make it happen. We begin small and grow from there. I think this fits neatly with Metagov's prior goals and methods. The only real difference is in placing the effort within the party system. This is the Trojan Horse strategy, of course; but even if it had no other purpose, it would enable us to frame the argument in way that people can easily understand and identify with. Will this work, do you think? Can anyone foresee problems? [ACK] Underlying ideas for this proposal were previously mooted in a discussion with Fred Gohlke, Juho Laatu and Kristofer Munsterhjelm in the Election Methods list. See "Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process": http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-June/thread.html#30601 http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-July/thread.html#30649 Also with Ed Pastore in the Start/Metagov list: http://metagovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2012-July/004873.html [VM] Vote mirroring is the translation of a vote between two sites or forms, where the original on the first is replicated as an equivalent image on the second. http://zelea.com/w/User:ThomasvonderElbe_GmxDe/Vote_mirroring Vote mirroring is arguably a sufficient measure in itself to dampen network effects and preclude the formation of a monopoly in online voting services. http://zelea.com/w/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/Vote_mirroring_as_a_counter-monopoly_measure [WIK] A copy of this proposal is also posted in the wiki: http://metagovernment.org/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/Public_parties -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info