Thursday, January 22, 2009

We The People: A National Referendum Mechanism

President Obama has encouraged all of us to 'get involved', and to express our ideas, opinions and priorities directly to him and his staff; he intends to employ new internet technologies to make this feasible. However, in the most recent interactive effort at "citizensbriefingbook.change.gov" site, it was very clear to information professionals that the implementation was seriously flawed; we posted our suggestions and do hope that he can employ some skilled technologists now (computer software designers, statisticians, and human-factors/polling experts).

Such a properly re-designed website would be a great informal mechanism for government to be more aware of and responsive to 'we the people'. Regular statistical summaries of results (and responses by officials) should be quickly posted for us to see.

Beyond that, I want to propose that a more formal mechanism be instituted, somewhat along the lines of 'popular referendums' at the State level. It would be administered by a cooperative legislative-executive 'Popular Referendum Agency' setup in a manner to assure reasonable independence from political pressure and resistance to fraud. Voters would be US citizens who choose to qualify and be registered. Presentation of issues and voting could then be implemented at a secure internet site.

Of course, for some initial development period, the results would be limited in force (advisory); but after the mechanism design and implementation are tested and confirmed, there should be some levels of 'legally-binding', depending on the type of issue addressed. The process would be something like this:

1) with some input from the informal mechanism (website, pollsters, senior executive officials and legislators), a 'votable-referendum-issue' statement would be formulated. This statement would be composed of something like:
(a) definition: a brief description of the problem issue
(b) motivation: why this issue is considered important
(c) facts: a balanced, moderately-detailed analysis of the known facts of the issue
(d) acts: a list of proposed solutions, with brief expert pro & con commentary
(e) 'The Proposed Ballot' composed of:
(1) Importance Measure ('vote' of 0..10, where 0 is least important).
(2) for each item in (d) solution-list ('vote' of 'confidence in' = 0..10).
(3) Objections: free-form text whereby voter can briefly express objections/suggestions, especially if he feels the entire formulation of the issue is misleading.

(x) Legal-Binding-Level-Category: {Advisory-Only; Mandate Executive-Branch Action; Mandate Legislative-Branch Consideration; Legally-Binding-subject-to-Presidential-veto; ... }

I'd like to illustrate with some referendum-worthy examples (obviously biased to my personal priorities):

[[1]] The Iraq war. Solutions: [1] Immediate termination by unilateral withdrawal of US forces. [2] Unconditional gradual withdrawal during max 1 year [3] Conditional withdrawal measured by level of enemy attacks vs.proven ability of current government. [4] Long-term occupation with consent of current government. ...

[[2]] The Afghan war. Solutions: [1] Immediate termination by unilateral withdrawal of US forces. [2] escalate by increasing military to a max of 3x current level ...

[[3]] Banking Financial Crisis. Solutions: [1] provide 'bail-out' funding to selected large banks identifed as 'too big to fail', to a max of $X trillion [2] temporarily nationalize all banks identified as insolvent [3] create an alternate banking system dominated by a non-private (US Treasury) National Central Bank, which will assume the assets and duties of the current Federal Reserve and all identified insolvent private banks.

[[4]] Federal Funding Crisis. Solutions: [1] continue using traditional methods. [2] Employ only 'money-creation' by a National Central Bank, which will eliminate the need for federal taxes of any kind, nor interest-bearing Treasury Debt.

[[[[[ and all the other issues listed in my blogs... ]]]]]]

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