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Two Understandings of Democracy
There are two understandings of democracy. In one, democracy and majority rule are synonymous. In it, with respect to votes, all that matters are the numbers. It doesn’t matter how voters came to produce such numbers – specifically, it doesn’t matter whether they were knowledgeable of the issues of the election or not. Implicit in this understanding is that knowledge of the issues is not really important anyway; that voting is simply a matter of asserting one’s own self-interest, or the self-interest of an ethnic or economic bloc, and that everyone knows what their own interests are.
Under the other understanding, numbers also count, but it also matters how voters came to produce those numbers. Under this view, voting is not about asserting one’s own self-interest, but about promoting the public good. As the public good involves the welfare, not just of the person voting, but of other people as well — knowledge of what it is not so easily assumed to be self-evident. Instead, it is seen to require knowledge and often dialogue with other citizens.
Under these two different understandings of democracy, different laws and institutions will arise. And vice versa — under differing laws and institutions, different understandings of democracy will be fostered. It is on that premise that this site strives to propose laws that will implicitly foster the understanding of democracy as a system of government to be based on voting directed no to the voter’s own self-interest, but the public good.
Toward that purpose, this writer proposes an electoral system for various states in which a state would create a singular forum in which political parties and/or candidates could engage in email debates — and in which voters would be required to attest to having examined, to the best of their understanding, the content of such debates.
For an example of a summary draft of state legislation authorizing such a system, see “Draft of a State Law…”
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