How Much Democracy?

Claude Desmoulins · Post by **Claude Desmoulins** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 11:27 am

I would then ask, "Is personality politics inevitable, or are there structural decisions we might make which will at least reduce it significantly?"

michelmanen · Post by **michelmanen** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 1:58 pm

Of course, under the present, supposedly "democratic" electoral system, if a person resigns from the RA, the SC Dean/Leader of the RA has the power to contact that person's faction and ask another faction member to sit in the RA, for all intents and purposes negating the reason why the RA member resigned in the first place- thus manipulating our political process in order to make it continue working as if nothing happened, with no by-election, and no real questioning of why someone chose to resign (a feature you even now insist in preserving in your [i:1dy8t919]Electoral Reform Act[/i:1dy8t919]).

I resigned on a fundamental disagreement on a vital point of principle - the horrific citizenship law you drafted and intended to steamroll on all of us with no public debate or discussion whatsoever. That was not only a piece of legislation directed at me specifically ( supposedly to avoid my packing my land with new citizens and "take over" the CDS) but also continuing to restrict admission of new citizens to the CDS and keeping our community as closed and isolated as possible from "outsiders" in order to preserve your power base.

I stand by my resignation -a perfectly legitimate public protest act, which resulted in the RA setting up a [i:1dy8t919]Citizenship Commission[/i:1dy8t919], which you adopted in a watered-down version, the indefinite tabling of your draft citizenship bill which forced my resignation, and a total revision of the CSDF position on citizenship - now supporting the CARE position that citizenship and land should be de-linked and exclusionary admission policies abolished.

Gxeremio Dimsum · Post by **Gxeremio Dimsum** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 2:20 pm

[quote="michelmanen":3v6i6j7x]Of course, under the present, supposedly "democratic" electoral system, if a person resigns from the RA, the SC Dean/Leader of the RA has the power to contact that person's faction and ask another faction member to sit in the RA, for all intents and purposes negating the reason why the RA member resigned in the first place- thus manipulating our political process in order to make it continue working as if nothing happened, with no by-election, and no real questioning of why someone chose to resign (a feature you even now insist in preserving in your [i:3v6i6j7x]Electoral Reform Act[/i:3v6i6j7x]). [/quote:3v6i6j7x]

So...who was trying to be manipulative?

Whatever we do, we need to be careful not to let clever people try to singlehandedly control and/or obstruct the will of the community.

Patroklus Murakami · Post by **Patroklus Murakami** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 2:33 pm

Michel

You presented your resignation as a point of principle but the facts don't bear that interpretation. The horrific proposal you refer to was that couples should be allowed to join the CDS together instead of having to join separately as at present, purchase land, form a group, merge holdings and hold land in common. So, you resigned over a proposal to open up citizenship. Bizarre, but there you go.

It's a strange version of democracy you subscribe to where you think a representative can resign their seat and then forbid anyone else in their own faction, with no consultation whatsoever, from taking the seat. All the more bizarre when you [url=http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... n:c033jtfj]attacked Publius for resigning his RA seat and leaving his voters high and dry four days earlier![/url:c033jtfj]Oh, and then you hold the RA to ransom demanding no less than four commissions before you'll deign to come back. The fact that we agreed to hold a citizenship commission is testament to the fact that most people in the CDS are prepared to assess an idea on its merits rather than the individual proposing it with a gun held to our heads!

[quote="Michel Manen":c033jtfj]You ran in an election as your party's candidate and asked for voters to entrust you with their votes. You were elected for a period of 6 months, to which you solemnly commited by oath.

I think you owe to your unwitting succcessor, to your colleagues and voters, and to the CDS as a whole, a more detailed explanation as to the reasons of your departure than a simple "RL has intruded upon my abilities" to be an effective RA member.[/quote:c033jtfj]

michelmanen · Post by **michelmanen** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 3:23 pm

Publius missed RA meetings then resigned because he could not devote as much time as he would have wished to the job, without providing an explanation as to why. I provided a full and principled explanation for my actions.

In any case, I am not prepared to fight these battles again. I have better things to do with my time than waste them on your spurious accusations.

Bromo Ivory · Post by **Bromo Ivory** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 4:05 pm

Oh my!

A break to go to the Finger Lakes Wine country and look what happens - everyone draws out their swords and attacks.

Well - looks like evryon is proving the point that our electoral "gadget" of faction voting certainly did not prevent personality politics before during and after the elections.

And even on the forums! [i:1qjv9uvv]LOL![/i:1qjv9uvv]

So ... given that this point is amply proved(en?) - that our method doesn't really dampen personality politics - and in some ways INSULATES the politicians form the consequecnes of those politics - I am ready to re-conclude:

We traded off a fair bit of democratic process to "shield ourselves" from personality politics - and we seem to have failed (and I think by being human and demand accountability). So now that our system has failed to prevent "it" form happening, are we still going to maintain this method - and merely be less democratic with no benefit? Or do we want to try something else?

Claude Desmoulins · Post by **Claude Desmoulins** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 5:50 pm

Bromo,

Please see my reply [url=http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... 1:gb930o3y]here[/url:gb930o3y]

Also, I believe having citizens vote directly for avatars would penalize "younger candidates". When I first stood for election to the RA, I had been a citizen for 53 days when the polls opened. I thus have a hard time believing that people were ranking the DPU based on their personal impressions of me.

Also standing in that election were :

Then LRA Pendari Lorentz
City Co-founder Kendra Bancroft
Then SC member and now Dean Gwyneth Llewelyn
Eugene Pomeray (who would have been the PIO had we had the position at the time)
Then SC member and later Chancellor Aliasi Stonebender

I doubt very much that had it been my name next to these on a ballot rather than faction names I would have ended up LRA, or perhaps even on RA. As it was it was the closest election in CDS history.

If we go to voting for people, will we, in so doing, permanently tilt the field in favor of long time citizens with good name recognition?

[i:gb930o3y]Edited 1 time[/i:gb930o3y]

Patroklus Murakami · Post by **Patroklus Murakami** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 12:25 am

[quote="Bromo Ivory":3rjnkcph]Oh my!

A break to go to the Finger Lakes Wine country and look what happens - everyone draws out their swords and attacks. [/quote:3rjnkcph]I think it had something to do with this post:[quote="Bromo Ivory":3rjnkcph]Arguable to avoid personality politics - though there was plenty of it in the last election that I saw - so this system doesn't remove much of it (a lot of CARE's opponents canvassed against Michel rather than against CARE - and even said that CARE's policies were great, but they didn't like/trust Michel - and if that isn't personality based, i don't know what is!). [/quote:3rjnkcph]/me clutches pearls in mock horror!

Claude Desmoulins · Post by **Claude Desmoulins** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 6:08 am

Pat's mock horror aside , CARE made a number of detailed legislative proposals after the election. Had those proposals been made during the campaign, I think it's likely that debate/criticism of CARE would have been more policy based.

michelmanen · Post by **michelmanen** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 7:40 am

We put forward a clear vision and a comprehensive plan of action during the campaign, including information about the 6 commissions we intended to set up and the 25 Bills we planned to introduce over the coming year. I do not quite understand why anyone should expect that any party or candidate should spell out each such bill in minute detail. What we proposed was a new way of approaching governance, innovative ways to get citizens more involved in our political project, and above all a plan to revitalise the cultural, artistic, recreational and educational life of our community- not a laundry list of specific items one could check off to decide whether one should vote for us or not.

The danger with such a laundry list approach to elections in a system without a responsible majority government where politicians can truly be held accountable for their actions is that parties will develop, during elections, detailed bills aimed at attracting the votes of various sub-groups of our community - then being unable to pass them because of lack of support in the RA. At the next elections, the party in question could just say "Well, it's really not our fault - we put forward our bill, but it didn't pass because the other parties voted it down or amended it beyond recognition".

I really don't think that such an approach to elections is any better than pure individual politics - one focuses purely on individual promises, the other on detailed plans which, for the most part, will never be enacted as described during the campaign.

CARE chose a route different from both these inadequate alternatives: spelling out a strong vision of where we want our community to head into the future, a novel approach to the process of self-governance and a clear focus on our team's members -in short, substance, process, and agents. We simply do not believe in "policy wonkerism" during elections, when we have no real means to hold politicians accountable and most such bills will end up being either amended beyond recognition or voted down by other parties.