RE: [Membership] James Fishkin proposes Internet Deliberative Council

["Scott, Thomas R." <TomRScott@On-SiteComputer.com>]

An anonymous voting body can just as easily be replaced with a star chamber.
Given anonymity, who is to know if the voting body is a select group that
never changes.  Those who control the selection process could just as easily
"augment" the star group with truly random people in order to maintain the
appearance of a representative sample group while the "star" voters make the
decisions.

Sounds paranoid, but without checks and balances...  History is replete with
examples of the usurpation of democracy.

Tom Scott
> ----------
> From: 	Mark R. Measday[SMTP:measday@ibm.net]
> Reply To: 	measday@ibm.net
> Sent: 	Friday, February 26, 1999 11:25 AM
> To: 	Wendy Seltzer; membership@icann.org
> Cc: 	Diane Cabell
> Subject: 	Re: [Membership] James Fishkin proposes Internet
> Deliberative Council
> 
> Whilst applauding  many aspects of this model, do I understand these
> random
> users undertake to remain anonymous to avoid 'capture'?
> 
> If I have read the text correctly, deliberative polling is a sampling
> technique
> for one time questioning, not continuous representation.
> 
> Also the problem of anonymity remains, in terms of identifying whether the
> pollee (?) is the same as last time, has been influenced by (i) outside
> forces
> i.e.captured by interest (ii) has learned too much to be representative of
> the
> sample or (iii) changed in some other way.
> 
> Why not take the model, but submit it to a new randomly selected
> deliberative
> group anonymously each time there is a decision to be made. Confers great
> power
> to the group of people assembling the results, but is otherwise complicit
> with
> vox populi and the  principles stated by professor Fishkin.
> 
	. . .