Prof. Fishkin is keeping busy

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Yoram Gat

A deliberative poll for California’s future:

What’s Next California is an unprecedented attempt to bring the people into the process in a new way—one that is representative and thoughtful. A scientific random sample of the entire state will be transported to a single place for a weekend of face-to-face discussions, in small groups and in dialogue with competing experts. In California’s first statewide “Deliberative Poll,” the people will be supported by factual information and will consider the critical arguments on both sides of issues, then will articulate their priorities for fixing the state. A number of Deliberative Polls have been conducted at the national and local levels in sixteen countries around the world, including Britain, Australia, Denmark, and the United States. The deliberations will take place in Torrance on the weekend of June 25th. More than 300 citizens representing every region of the state will spend the weekend working in small groups and posing questions to public officials and policy experts. These in-depth discussions will likely range over legislative representation, taxation, whether local governments should have more autonomy and control over public services, and the initiative process.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Opinion polling, Sortition | 5 Comments »

36% of Americans think they could do a better job than current government

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Yoram Gat

A poll previously mentioned on this blog found that in January 2010 45% of the U.S. public said that a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress. Some doubt that such a finding indicates that many Americans would view a proposal to allot Congress favorably. Instead, they suggest that the positive responses are merely equivalent to exclaiming that “a monkey could do better than that lot”.

A February 2010 poll by CNN put the matter a little closer to home, asking: “Do you think you personally could do a better job running the country than our government officials are presently doing?”. 36% of respondents answered positively.

The obvious conclusion is that 9% of the public think that a monkey would do a better job than they would.

Other interesting findings from the same poll: over 80% of the public think each of the following describes “officials in Washington”: “Heavily influenced by special interests”, “Mainly concerned about getting reelected”, and “Out of touch with the average person”. Only 22% think the officials are “Honest”.

Filed under: Opinion polling, Sortition | 22 Comments »

Expecting More Say

Posted on March 26, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Expecting More Say is a 1999 report of the Center on Policy Attitudes analyzing the U.S. public’s dissatisfaction with its government. The report includes findings from a public opinion survey. One of the questions in the survey was as follows:

Imagine that a group of 500 American citizens was selected from all over the country to be representative of the entire US population. This group then met and were informed on all sides of the policy debate on a number of public policy issues and had a chance to discuss these issues. They were then asked to make decisions on what they thought was the best approach to these issues.

Do you think the decisions of such a group would probably be better or worse than the decisions that Congress makes?

66% of respondents thought the decisions by the representative group would be better, 15% thought they would be worse.

Filed under: Opinion polling, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Big shot, Nobel prize-winning, New York Times-op-ed-writing, Princeton-teaching economist vs. person-on-the-street

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Paul Krugman, on the way to a rather funny punchline, takes an off-handed swipe at the irrational person-on-the-street. Apparently, Americans can’t decide how they want to make ends meet. They don’t want to cut spending and they don’t want to increase taxes. Krugman himself knows better. He is not worried about current deficits, but in the long run he thinks a VAT (a version of a sales tax, which he admits would be regressive but is not particularly concerned about this) would be the way to go.

This position is a classic noblesse oblige maneuver. While ostensibly attacking those other elite members – those who have no sense of social duty – Krugman is effectively asserting that policy should not be set by the irrational masses. And, sometime in the not too distant future, regressive taxes would be the solution.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Opinion polling | 10 Comments »

Do people like lotteries for allocation?

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Conall Boyle

David Teira of Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Madrid) asks

Sorry if my question is too simple, but I’d be grateful if anyone pointed out the references of empirical studies on our taste for lotteries in the allocation of scarce goods. Are there people who do not like lotteries as allocation mechanisms, independently of whether they are fair or not?

Filed under: Distribution by lot, Experiments, Opinion polling | 3 Comments »

Deliberative Democracy failure?

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Conall Boyle

Help! The following headline appeared in the (UK) Guardian newspaper. It’s about Germany, and seems to be saying that DD was used, but failed.

Was DD used here? OR are they trying to say it should have been?

 

Stuttgart 21 is a failure of deliberative democracy

The lack of dialogue on plans to redevelop Stuttgart’s train station has led to a loss of faith in the political system

  Continue reading →

Filed under: Initiatives, Opinion polling | 3 Comments »

2010 midterm elections: a call to action

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Yoram Gat

The U.S. mid-terms elections are drawing near, and with them a valuable opportunity for promoting an alternative mechanism for appointing officials, as voters are made to choose between two candidates, neither of which they find very appealing. Disappointment with Obama, the man who was perceived as the alternative to a widely unpopular president, is palpable, and while approval for Republicans in Congress has recovered slightly as approval for Democrats has sunk, both parties now suffer from similarly low ratings.

I suggest taking advantage of the opportunity by creating a half-page ‘sortition manifesto’ and foisting it upon the unsuspecting members of the public as they approach the voting booths. An alternative or additional way to disseminate the manifesto – requiring some monetary expenditure but less effort – would be through a web ad placed on a search engine.

The manifesto could be written as a collaborative effort of all those who are interested in participating. The comments section here could serve as a place to express interest in taking part, and for some initial brainstorming. Work on a specific document could follow.

Filed under: Elections, Opinion polling, Sortition | 24 Comments »

Another deliberative polling experiment

Posted on July 6, 2010 by Yoram Gat

Roger Hickey writes in the Huffington Post about a recent deliberative polling experiment:

In Deficit “Town Meetings,” People Reject America Speaks’ Stacked Deck

On Saturday, the group known as America Speaks (funded by Wall Street mogul Peter G. Peterson and two other foundations) brought together several thousand people in meetings in 18 cities. They gave participants misleading background information about the federal deficit and economic options to achieve fiscal “balance” and future prosperity.

Peterson cannot be pleased with the participants’ mainly progressive policy choices, which will be presented on June 30 to the Deficit Commission that Peterson encouraged President Obama to create.

According to America Speaks’ own press release, when a scientifically selected group of participants picked up their electronic voting devices, they overwhelmingly supported proposals to

* Raise tax rates on corporate income and those earning more than $1 million.
* Reduce military spending by 10 to 15 percent,
* Create a carbon tax and a securities-transaction tax.

This pretty progressive set of solutions emerged from the process many feared would be skewed to the solutions of conservative deficit hawks.

America Speaks was certainly not pushing the discussion in a progressive direction. The background materials — and policy options — provided to participants were anything but fair and balanced, as analysis by economist Dean Baker demonstrated.

[…]

On the face of it, this would seem like a case of democracy in action: the people were given a chance to study an issue and they spoke their minds. They did so despite attempts by the organizers to manipulate them by disseminating misleading information and by attempting to limit the set of policy options being discussed.

But in a complex system, the elites have many opportunities to exert power. Peter Hart of the media watchdog group FAIR comments:

Given the media’s general enthusiasm for Peterson’s propaganda on austerity and Social Security, it’s striking how little coverage these town halls have received. But it’s hard not to conclude that the public rejection of the media’s conventional wisdom is the explanation.

Using deliberative polling on a haphazard basis, rather than as a systematic way to form binding public policy, allows the elites to utilize the polls as a way to legitimize their choice of policy, by highlighting a finely selected subset of the poll results, and ignoring the rest.

Filed under: Experiments, Opinion polling, Sortition | 3 Comments »

A government composed of fledgling lawmakers

Posted on May 3, 2010 by Yoram Gat

Gordon S. Wood, a professor emeritus of history at Brown, writes at the New York Times to warn the displeased U.S. voters about the dangers of booting out the incumbents.

The article is quite interesting for the elitist conception of “democracy” it presents. The couching of this conception in democratic terms produces unintended irony at several points in the article, such as:

[T]he men who led the revolution against the British crown and created our political institutions were very used to governing themselves.

The author sums his message in the last sentence of the article:

[P]recisely because we are such a rambunctious and democratic people, as the framers of 1787 appreciated, we have learned that a government made up of rotating amateurs cannot maintain the steadiness and continuity that our expansive Republic requires.

Filed under: Elections, History, Opinion polling | 2 Comments »

45% Say Random Group From Phone Book Better Than Current Congress

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Yoram Gat

It turns out that in my recent post about Rasmussen’s “Mainstream voters” I missed the most juicy part. The irreverence of the “childlike” majority may come as a surprise to those who expect that such ideas would gather “zero” percent support. It turns out that a whole lot of people are not only incapable of running a whelk stall – they are also completely unappreciative of the good services rendered to them by the capable few.

Filed under: Opinion polling, Sortition | 2 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »