Life sucks for voters. For most, the extent of their power is casting one puny ballot every four years. Some are considerably more empowered by taking the time to write their representative-critter¹, but even here, it is unlikely that they can make a dent in any kind of government policy. Corporations and other things with lots of money have a much better time: they can make campaign donations which will help a campaign buy voter’s ballots. Not only does this have considerably greater impact than any action an individual voter can take, it also further diminishes the voter’s power by attaching a (small) monetary value to their individual vote. The end result is that lobby money decides policy, because that money can buy votes.

Here’s an idea that can change that: voters unions.

You set up a non-profit organization and draft a set of principles that define the group’s ideology. At the head of the organization is a group of people who examine issues which are brought to the organization and decide which action, if any, would be ideologically appropriate. To ensure proper scrutiny, the transcripts of these discussions are made publicly available, and individuals who presented issues discussed and suggested actions considered are notified. The group then lobbies the government to enact their decisions.

Why does the government listen? When people join the organization they sign a sheet of paper making the organization the legal trustee of their ballot, giving it the power to vote on their behalf. If the government doesn’t listen, it doesn’t get the votes. This is similar to the power of lobby money—getting votes—but it bypasses the money and campaigning part, and its certainty gives it even more power.

Here are a few reasons why this is a good idea:

1. It gives voters the same power to affect immediate change that corporate lobbyists currently enjoy. There’s no reason for the union to wait for an election year and demand campaign promises: it can go straight to the government, and say “do this now and you’ll get votes next election.” The degree to which a government cooperates determines how much support they will get from the union.
2. It blunts the power of corporate lobbying. More votes secured behind a union means fewer votes that campaign dollars can buy.
3. Aggregating voter power behind an ideological organization will give more force to ideologically motivated policy, since this is what the organization would be lobbying for. These policies are also decided by discussion on a case-by-case basis, so they’re likely to be well thought-through, and the public transcripts provide documentation of the justification.
4. The organization keeps a running tally of who it likes and doesn’t like, otherwise it wouldn’t know where to deposit its votes on election day. This means that in addition to remembering who went along and who didn’t, it remembers scandals, bad bills, and everything else that should affect political careers which individual voters tend to forget. Since ballots are being cast with this knowledge, scandals are more likely to end careers and representing constituents more likely to improve them. The lack of forgetfulness also reduces the effectiveness of campaigning and therefore further defangs corporate lobbies.
5. It simplifies political participation. Joining the organization is fire-and-forget. If an issue comes up that you are concerned about, you raise it and see what happens. If you don’t like what the organization does, you can drop out by sending a notarized letter revoking their trusteeship².

Creating and running an organization like this would have been extremely difficult years ago, but these days it would be a piece of cake. Submitting issues to be discussed could be done via the web, and meeting agendas could be generated by taking the frequently submitted issues. Discussions could even happen over email or web forums, allowing easy documentation, and notification of discussions could easily be sent to everyone who submitted the issues. The software would be easy. The organization would require a staff of perhaps 20-40 to operate on a national level; probably less for provincial and civic levels. It could be done.

1) It increases the voter’s power 100-fold, putting it evenly at 0.

2) Most professionals can act as a notary public, so this isn’t as tricky as it seems it might be. Still, developing this idea further would require finding a simpler way that still carried proper legal force.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Politics, Smart-Sounding Babble. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.