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Elections clearly do not give the results they ought to. The wrong candidates get elected, the wrong governments get formed and the wrong policies are implemented. This is obviously the case in Australia, since John Howard has won three elections and may well win a fourth, despite the fact that no right-thinking person really believes that his Government ought to be in power. Contributors to the letters pages frequently put versions of this position. How come, then, that Howard wins elections?
It must be that the electorate is ignorant and ill-educated, unlike the political class which believes that only it is fit to run the country. One solution of this might be to abandon compulsory voting in favour of voluntary voting, so that those who didn't care wouldn't vote. However, this would not necessarily produce the right result - after all, there are plenty of lazy and indifferent electors on both sides, and in any case some people might cast their vote on issues other than those on which the political class thinks they ought to vote.
This is worrying many people in the run-up to the elections this week for the European Parliament. It appears that many voters will cast their votes for the candidates according to their attitudes to their own national governments rather than on some other grounds, and on issues which are purely a matter of domestic policy rather than on pan-European issues. Why this should be a problem is not at all clear - after all, the European Parliament has little actual power over the governing body of the European Union, which is the European Commission. The commission is subject to the national governments, not to the parliament. This is known as the "democratic deficit". Moreover, the commission interferes more and more in domestic matters, and the new draft European constitution would increase its powers, and that of the major national members, greatly.
The Blair Government in Britain has reluctantly agreed that there should be a referendum on this document before it is signed. This seems a good idea to most Australians, who would object to a change in our constitution without such a vote. The political class, there as here, thinks otherwise. People do not vote at referendums as they should - even in 1999 we defied all good sense and decided to keep our monarchical system for the time being. In Britain it is feared that the people might vote against the new Europe, not knowing what is good for them. What is to be done?
The answer is to rig the vote, by "educating" the voters. This is the thrust of a new fashion among the political class, called "deliberative polling". One such proposal is spelled out in the May issue of the British progressive monthly, Prospect, in the context of the European referendum. The essential idea is to get together groups of voters before a vote and get them to discuss the issues with expert assistance, thus ensuring that they are properly informed about the issues when they come to vote. Unfortunately, such exercises are usually rigged to produce the outcomes which their organisers want. A good example is the distorted process of massive consultation on genetically modified foods which the British Government undertook last year, called "GM Nation?". This was a totally misleading and dishonest exercise, dominated by those opposed to GM foods.
Rather similar exercises were carried out in Australia on a smaller scale in relation to the republic referendum and the reconciliation issue. They were not deliberately dishonest, but were designed in such a way that the "right" decision would be gently urged on the participants, in such a way that they would feel pressured to subscribe to what seemed to be the consensus or majority position. They were conducted by "facilitators" whose own opinions were never stated in advance.
Such exercises, like the concept of "people power" (noisy groups of middle-class people demonstrating), do not in fact reflect anything like the actual opinions of the electorate. Rather, they are designed to influence enough undecided voters to believe that they should take their information from the organisers rather than from the multitude of informal sources which most people use in forming their views. To adapt Brecht's famous aphorism, if the people cannot be trusted to vote the right way, it is necessary to dismiss the people and appoint another.
Which is why we have the 2nd Amendment in this country.
Good post! Belated welcome aboard.
bump for later reading
Good article, thanks for posting it.
It appears that leftist elitists and their tactics are the same all over the world. Nowadays, at least, we have the Internet as a base from which to fight them.
Give every leftist intellectual a party card, and let them only appoint commissars to staff politburos, which then issue dictats to the rest of us. Enforce them with a police state. Simple, direct, to the point, only the intelligent and informed are consulted. Guareenteed to produce "progressive" decisions.
Whoops, tried that, didn't they?