Sortition
Newsletter
of the Society for Democracy including Random Selection
(SDRS)
Incorporating updates for the Campaign to Defend the Right
to a Secret Ballot (CDRSB)
10th
December 2010 issue no. 4
ISSN
1756-4964 (Print)
Second
Conference on International Electoral Standards
Preparatory Statement
The centennial anniversary of the 1918 UK General Election
can provide an appropriate occasion to convene the Second
Conference on International Electoral Standards.
The First, 2006 Conference focused on the unlimited use of
absentee (postal) ballots and was convened by the Campaign
to Defend the Right to a Secret Ballot (CDRSB) at the UN in
New York. The 1872 UK Ballot Act was designed to protect
this right by requiring that voters be officially witnessed
to cast their vote in secret at polling stations. Postal
ballots could only be used in the UK throughout the 20th
century by voters unable through absence from home or
illness to cast their vote in a polling station. In this
way employers and landlords were prevented from demanding
that their employees and tenants vote under their scrutiny.
Unlimited use of postal ballots undermines the right to a
secret ballot: it also leads to an increase in electoral
fraud (see the
2006 Conference Report
on www.sortition.com).
The CDRSB was formed in 2002 to oppose such practices.
Most, if not all parties in Northern Ireland also oppose
them. The unlimited use of absentee ballots was introduced
in Oregon in 1992 and since then in over 20 USA states
together with several European countries, including the UK.
It is the Left who are the chief advocates of reforms aimed
to encourage voter participation by lowering standards of
integrity in regard to the electoral process. In 1918 it
was the ‘forces of conservatism’ who sought to distort the
verdict of the electorate by their refusal to recognize a
General Election result which gave Sinn Fein 70% of the
votes cast in Ireland and correspondingly probably the most
legitimate basis in world history to form an independent
republic.
The second conference on international electoral standards
may accordingly focus on what the first conference
recognized to be the main underlying cause of electoral
fraud and malpractice: the conflict between conservatism
and radicalism. As the chief impediment to global
democratic progress this conflict must be addressed and
resolved. Its origin may be traced to the birth of modern
democracy and most especially the American and French
revolutions.
Most conflict in the last two centuries arose ultimately as
a consequence of the failure to fulfil the aspirations of
American revolutionary radicalism in the regulation of
inherited wealth and the development of non partisan forms
of political participation and decision making. This
failure may be attributed principally to two main factors:
first, the incompetence of French revolutionary radicalism;
second, the insufficient strength of American revolutionary
radicalism in overcoming single-handedly the forces of
global conservatism following the French defeat.
American radical leaders upheld consistently democratic
aims based on a competently scientific understanding of the
relation between political philosophy, consent and common
sense. French radicalism had less understanding of this
relation and instead relied largely on the prescientific
Machiavellian belief that force and will are the prime
levers of political change. The reasons for these
shortcomings are rooted in the comparatively more backward
level of French and European social and political
development. The outcome of these difficulties was that the
aspirations of American revolutionary radicalism have never
been fulfilled and democratic development has been impeded
in the following areas: first, on the relation between
taxation and inherited wealth; second, on the principle of
ongoing systemic change; third, on the development of jury
forms of political participation.
The French defeat led to the development of confused,
ultimately totalitarian modes of political theory within
radicalism, none of which has been able to provide
satisfactory leadership. At the heart of these difficulties
is a persistent failure to distinguish between those truths
which are self evident to common sense and those truths
which can be derived from the self evident by means of
empirical verification and practical experiment.
Marxism is the chief expression of such confusion. It
represents a failure to properly study and incorporate the
methods of American revolutionary radicalism based on
common sense realism. In consequence, in betrayal of the
American example, Marxist strategy has been based primarily
on the use of force, not consent, presupposed by a narrow,
monosystemic conception of democratic progress. Moreover,
the justification given by Marx against prioritization of
inheritance tax as likely to provoke a repressive backlash
from the propertied classes while at the same time
advocating dictatorship as a necessary goal of leftist
strategy remains, at best, unconvincing. Marxism is a
deeply flawed, unscientific and antidemocratic theory of
change, as is also its closely related, equally
monosystemic cousin of Fabian socialism. Both rely on force
as their chief instruments of political action either by
use of ‘revolutionary violence’ and dictatorship, or
through deception.
Democratic progress may therefore best be assured by
reaffirming the main achievements and aspirations of
American revolutionary radicalism. These are first, the
Bill of Rights as constitutional safeguard against
government tyranny; second, the principle that the earth
belongs to the living in its implications both for ongoing
systemic change and the taxation of inherited wealth;
thirdly, the further development of sortition by way of the
jury form of democracy.
The development of sortition as a complementary form of
election and appointment needs to be developed both in
regard to its merit in promoting egalitarian methods of
democratic participation and also in regard to its merit in
helping to constrain the influence of factions, most
especially secret factions, on the political process.
Suspicion regarding secret factions gripped the public
imagination in the formative years of the American republic
and led to the formation of the American Antimasonic party.
Such fears were exploited by extremism in World War Two,
and remain of continuing importance in the modern era.
Since the demise of Marxism in both its openly Leninist as
well as its dictatorial, Stalinist expression career
Leftism has increasingly favoured the secret factional
methods of Fabian strategy: stealth, spin, infiltration and
deception. Obama, Blair and even Saul Alinsky’s Tory
disciple David Cameron are leaders who have all acquired
somewhat suspect reputations in this context.
The European Union is largely a product of such tactics and
is based on an assemblage of numerous treaties,
constitutional claims and so called ‘human rights’ laws
which are remarkable only by way of the fact that despite
their voluminous complexity their authors have still
managed to exclude from them virtually all provisions of
the US Bill of Rights, the most important instrument in the
history of the world in regard to the security of a free
state. For these reasons the CDRSB placed an advert in the
Irish Times opposing the European Treaty in the 2009 Irish
referendum. Against this background greater use of
sortition can help develop a less partisan form of
deliberation and decision making complementary to present
forms of parliamentary representation but better suited to
providing more open, honest, trustworthy judgements on long
term systemic change based on practical results, not
secretively preconceived, ideologically driven wishful
thinking.
If general agreement can be reached in regard to these
goals then conflict between radicalism and conservatism may
be better contained within the parameters of peaceful
constitutional development properly protected against the
threat of factional monopolies and attempts to promote
tyranny by stealth. These parameters may facilitate
multisystemic options in which socialist and capitalist
forms of economy can be tested upon an informed but also
substantively impartial foundation of democratic
participation.
Such agreement would have positive implications both for
the developed states and the developing world. Negative
consequences of the conflict between radicalism and
conservatism have included failure to establish cooperation
between these factional tendencies upon a global scale for
purposes of disarmament and rendering assistance to
developing states. Corruption and indeed chaos reigns in
many regions of the globe largely because the left is in
principle opposed to capitalist development and will take
any opportunity to frustrate conservative gains or
stability in these regions even, and in fact quite usually,
when this involves providing support for tyranny,
terrorism, or both. Mass migration to the West to escape
the resulting conditions of political instability and
poverty in the developing world is seen as advantageous to
the left because it destabilizes the cultural integrity of
the advanced capitalist states and presents greater
opportunities for electoral malpractice.
It is against this background that the ongoing refusal of
the British government to obey the verdict of the people
given in 1918 must be viewed. The significance of the
centennial anniversary of this event lies in the
possibility which it affords for reaching general, honest
agreement between radicalism and conservatism such that
democratic progress may be pursued upon a basis of
constitutional understanding which can satisfy left
aspirations for systemic change and the redistribution of
inherited wealth while at the same time preserving choice
and strengthening safeguards against tendencies towards
factional monopoly in government and the development of
tyranny by stealth. This of course would have major
implications for the Irish question itself: in short, it
could provide the basis for general government recognition
of the 1918 election result in conditions of global
agreement in which such concessions to radicalism by
conservatism are no longer seen as the thin edge of a left
totalitarian wedge.
If you would like to be kept informed of preparations for
the Second Conference on International Electoral Standards
please contact:
CDRSB,
27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N
3XX
Website:
www.sortition.com
Tel: +44 (0)7795464677
© Dr. Keith Nilsen