Briefing
by Dr Keith Nilsen - 25th July 2006
I chaired and wrote the report on a conference on
international electoral standards held in February at the
UN in New York under the auspices of the Nigeria Permanent
Mission and supported by the Campaign to Defend the Right
to a Secret Ballot (CDRSB) and the Society for Democracy
including Random Selection (SDRS). The conference discussed
the electoral practice of using postal ballots without
conditions such as illness or absence from home as a means
to address problems of falling voter turnout. Both former
US Presidents Ford and Carter consider such practices,
which are also associated with increased levels of
electoral fraud, 'threaten the hard won right to a secret
ballot.' The meeting agreed to form an International Forum
on Electoral Standards (IFES). Conference participants took
the view that problems of democratic progress derive in
large part from a failure to fully recognise and develop
the American revolutionary achievement in its relation to
common sense. Protection of the right to a secret ballot in
accordance with the standards implied by Article 21 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is connected
to problems of conflict resolution on a world historical
scale. Much of these difficulties originate in failure to
properly complete the transition from premodern government
based on superstition and force to government based on
reason and consent, due in the main to problems of
conservative intransigence and lack of strategic clarity on
the part of democrats.
The chief benchmarks of social progress in establishing
universal standards of modern common sense understanding
were set by the work and revolutionary achievements of the
British people, and given concise expression in the
American Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.
The ideas embodied in these documents are based on the self
evident truths of common sense which underlay and were
clarified in their relation to those truths which can be
derived from them by the development of modern scientific
method and its application to the organisation of human
affairs. Impediments to progress since the American
Revolution may be attributed in large part to insufficient
account being taken of these distinctions in their relation
to political reform concerned with popular scrutiny of and
experimentation with distinct forms of macroeconomic
organisation. Jefferson's vision of a flexible,
participatory democratic order able to facilitate radical
constitutional review upon a regular, long term cycle was
first deferred and later forsaken altogether for pragmatic
considerations made more pressing given the slower and more
problematic pace of reform in Europe in achieving stable
and supportive advance. The construction of government
based on consent has involved ongoing conflict between
evolving conservative and radical perspectives, and in this
context a consequence of failure to improve upon or address
shortcomings in the American constitutional settlement has
been the strengthening of tendencies towards chronic,
factional polarisation within the relatively narrow,
representative parameters of democratic power bestowed by
the founding fathers.
In the USA conservative extremism on the question of
slavery had to be overcome by force. In Europe this
polarisation led to extremism, deepening social conflict
and rupture of the tenuous relation between science, common
sense understanding and political philosophy not only on
the part of conservative forces but also of radicalism
itself in an era of accelerating technological and economic
development. The genesis of both left and right
totalitarianism, and with this the main problems of
democratic struggle throughout the last century may be
attributed in large part to these difficulties. For these
reasons modern democracy has not yet been developed in
accordance with the basic truths of common sense. Although
the United States remains the most advanced republic best
able to serve as an example of leadership in global
political progress it also remains the case that its
constitution is too strongly oriented to the principle of
aristocracy in political organisation and the distribution
of inherited wealth. Sortition is the essence of democracy
and it can be argued there is too little regard paid to it
in US political process. Largely for pragmatic reasons
arising from 18th century conditions the American
constitutional convention upheld an exaggerated estimate of
the requirement for specialised skills in all branches of
Government, with the notable, and of course, fundamental
exception of the judicial process.
Against this background democratic participation can
therefore best be improved not by lowering electoral
standards in regard to the use of absentee ballots, but by
incorporating greater use of sortition and increasing,
accordingly, the number of ordinary citizens paid for
political work. This has a relation to the concept of
'equivalent voting procedures' in the UDHR definition of
elections by secret ballot. Various pilot projects could be
undertaken to test out such procedures, with a view to
amending, if necessary, the US constitution in conformity
with the aims indicated by Franklin, Jefferson, Paine and
others in regard to the following concerns.
First, the principle that the earth belongs to the living -
an appropriate constitutional measure developing the 16th
Amendment on income tax could be adopted which strikes an
intelligent balance between the merits of philanthropy, the
dangers of state control and the relation between national
and international tax regimes and cultural values.
Second, development of sortition beyond the judicial
process to the legislature in regard to electoral practice,
and, where possible, the executive in regard to recruitment
practices. In this way greater numbers of ordinary citizens
could take part in the decision making process. A policy of
payment for citizens selected through sortition to take
part in the legislative process, as was the practice in
Athenian democracy, and was suggested, so far as I know,
for the first time in the modern period by me to the CDRSB
in 2003, should accordingly be implemented. There are also
other areas in which the use of random selection in
recruitment and election practices for both ordinary
citizens and specialists can be employed: civil service,
defence, media, academic institutions, security and social
services, and industrial relations could all benefit from
such a policy. In this way a flexible, participatory
democratic republic can be developed which would provide an
example to the world of how tendencies towards chronic,
factional polarisation within the relatively narrow,
representative parameters of democratic power may be
ameliorated and developed to serve the general interest
upon a still adversarial but nevertheless non-antagonistic
foundation of political cooperation, common purpose and
equality in the search for optimal solutions to problems
associated with the correlation of social justice, economic
efficiency, and human rights.
This in turn would provide the most secure foundation upon
which related questions of conflict, poverty and oppression
throughout the world can best be addressed. It is a self
evident truth that sortition can serve to contain the
deleterious influences of secret factions and chronic
factional polarisation: constitutional reforms of this kind
would therefore better facilitate struggle against and
defeat of totalitarian enemies both by serving to promote
broad unity among democratic forces and by helping to
prevent infiltration and subversion of political, military,
social and economic institutions by fifth column forces.
Conflict management could be pursued on an international
scale first by informal, then by formal agreement in regard
to these objectives of constitutional reform and to help
deal with issues of ethnic and religious strife in the
developing world. Constitutional reform could thereafter
proceed both in the United States and in other countries in
emulation of these changes, where suitable adaptations to
local and national conditions could be developed. This
could include the communist states, taking account of
practical considerations concerning the need to maintain
stability, chief among which are the existing ratios of
private to public sector spending. The international aspect
of such a process of constitutional development could
accordingly be coordinated and appropriate changes in
policy made, including within the United Nations and the
Community of Democratic Nations.
These policy suggestions in the field of constitutional
reform and conflict resolution are very wide ranging and
fundamental, and will take time for the international
community to examine and deliberate upon. There are
nevertheless some practical suggestions for initial steps
in facilitating these purposes which can at the same time
serve as confidence building measures.
First, as recommended by the February conference, a report
on global electoral practices with regard to the use of
postal ballots and sortition can be prepared with a view to
organising a further conference on international electoral
standards.
Second, an enterprise specialising in the use of random
selection for recruitment can be supported. I have begun
such an enterprise and my business methods can be viewed on
www.sortition.com. They include the use of automated,
transparently predictive and retrospectively verifiable
methods of random selection. This recruitment company can
meet needs for such services in several areas, including
security, defence, childcare, and banking, where problems
of organised infiltration by antidemocratic forces have
become apparent. I propose such recruitment activities
could begin in the USA and Britain, where public records
are longstanding and well ordered, which is a prerequisite
for such business methods to operate more easily.
Thereafter they could be used in other states and also with
regard to international institutions. The chief merit of
this approach is that it enables the use of sortition with
particular regard for its purpose in preventing factional
infiltration to be employed in its most objectively
transparent form, as independently as possible of
subjective influences. This is a specific, 'pure'
application of random selection which has not yet been
adopted in the modern period.
Although there have been a number of initiatives in the
recent period in which sortition has been employed in the
political realm, none of these have sought to employ random
selection with an especial concern to make use of its
specific merit in serving to prevent infiltration. For
example, randomly selected groups of citizens have been
asked to deliberate on various issues in a number of
countries, including on voting systems - in particular, on
proportional representation - without reference to the
infiltration preventive aspect of sortition. One
consequence of this has been that though such delegates
have been chosen with reference to the use of random
selection methods, further selective criteria such as age,
ethnic origin, sex and occupation have been added to arrive
at what the convenors deem to be a 'representative sample.'
Coupled with the fact that citizens participating in these
assemblies have, until this Summer in Athens, received no
pay, resulting in a less than 10% attendance rate, the
impartiality of their findings has been open to some doubt,
most especially when consideration is given to the
possibility that political factions may seek to influence
them both by methods of infiltration and by the artificial
weighting of further selection criteria. Nevertheless such
exercises in what has been termed 'deliberative polling'
claiming to incorporate random selection methods have,
according to the British Financial Times (9th July 2006),
attracted the interest of Tony Blair and George Papandreou,
the present head of the Socialist International. Whether
such methods alone will serve to address the democratic
deficit of the European Union, as Papandreou apparently
hopes, is open to question, given that, unlike the US
constitution, the European Constitution has failed to
uphold the right to trial by jury, which, irrespective of
the intentions of those leaders and experts in deliberative
democracy who must bear responsibility for drafting it, was
the starting point of democratic development both in
ancient Greece and in the modern period. A broader view is
that 'deliberative polling' exercises are only first steps
by Left leaders aimed to address longstanding problems of
socialist strategy which in reality will require honest
democratic debate among the politically advanced workers of
the world and other democrats to fully resolve.
Finally, in regard to matters of conflict resolution in the
Middle East, I would like to draw your attention to the
proposals for the use of sortition in both electoral and
recruitment practices which I submitted to the 1st July
2003 USAID conference on Iraq. These can be viewed on
www.sortition.org.uk and were aimed at ameliorating
problems of factional polarisation, and providing an
impartial recruitment service in regard to the newly
established Iraq security forces. These proposals were not
funded at the time, but as is now clear, one of the chief
impediments to democratic progress in Iraq is that the
security forces have been thoroughly infiltrated by
extremist elements. The Community of Democratic Nations is
uniquely placed to support these proposals, even at this
late hour.
I would therefore like to submit to this meeting these
three practical sets of proposals for consideration and
possible support by the Convening Group of the Community of
Democratic Nations.