CDRSB Research Policy Statement 2013
The Campaign to Defend the Right to a Secret Ballot (CDRSB)
was formed in 2002 to oppose the unlimited use of postal
ballots begun by the Blair government in 2000. The 1872 UK
Ballot Act protected this right by requiring that voters be
witnessed to cast their vote in secret at polling stations.
Postal ballots could only be used 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. It is the Left who are the chief advocates of
reforms supposedly aimed to encourage voter participation
by lowering standards of integrity in regard to the
electoral process. The CDRSB held a conference on this
matter at the UN in New York in 2006. Preparations for the
second conference include research on what the first
conference recognized to be the main underlying cause of
electoral fraud and malpractice: the conflict between
conservatism and radicalism.
It may be reasonably stated that 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 most especially in regard
to their role in facilitating ongoing systemic change. 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. The
reasons for these shortcomings are rooted in the
comparatively more backward level of French and European
social and political development. 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 treaties which exclude virtually all
provisions of the US Bill of Rights.
This
is the background against which the conflict between
conservatism and radicalism is now escalating. If however
general agreement can be reached in regard to the above
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 impartial foundation
of democratic participation. These principles of approach
can divided into two parts.
Part A: These are constitutional requirements which are
clearly necessary as ultimate goals for minimum
international standards in relation to democratic
development upon an increasingly integrated global scale.
These requirements rest upon self evident truths of common
sense and accordingly do not necessarily require testing in
practice: first, all government and administrative
decisions affecting individual liberty should be subject to
appeal to and review by a jury; second, taxation policy
should include recognition that inheritance tax is the most
socially just class of taxation.
Part
B: These are constitutional innovations which should be
examined through pilot projects but which we are not
promoting as necessary without testing in practice. We
propose that long term policy and ongoing systemic change
in regard to environmental, economic and other matters of a
systemic nature may be better facilitated by instituting in
parallel to and complementary to existing electoral
arrangements a longer term cycle of elections to assemblies
of randomly selected citizens. Their chief purpose would be
to decide upon long term policy changes. Details of how
best these decisions can be coordinated with existing
democratic decision making procedures can be arrived at
through experience over time.