An Online "Town Hall" Forum that Allows Canadians to "Vote" and Voice their Concerns on Day–to–day Decisions…

Context: Historically, citizens elected representatives to voice their concerns on parliament hill because the cost of communication had been high (e.g. impractical to fit all Canadians in a chamber, slow to make decisions, costly to conduct surveys frequently).

Problem: Elected representatives solicit public opinion only once every 4 years during election period. To be fair to the elected representatives, in 4 years, many things could change (i.e. economy, values, competitive landscape). However, a 4–year term is also too long for anyone to remember all the deeds. How could Canadians hold the government officials accountable for their action (if not during, then in the following election)?

Solution: One idea is an online "town hall" forum that allows Canadians to "vote" on day–to–day issues and decisions. First, this initiative provides the government a cost–effective way to collect public opinion in a real–time fashion. Second, this would allow citizens to hold their elected representatives accountable by making the decision process transparent. Third, citizens could voice their concerns on various issues on a day–to–day basis while various legislations or bills are being debated.

How it works: Citizens could log in with their social insurance number and their postal code. Then, they could visit their home page with various issues or legislation being debated. However, instead of posting a "final decision" or update, each bubble allows the user to vote "for" or "against" the motion. This allows both the government and the general public to hold each other accountable. The goal here is to capture the expertly knowledge in the public domain for government officials, and for government officials to better explain their decisions to the public. Understandably, there are tough decisions, but I am targeting bad decisions based on incompetence.

Example: Each year, the Ontario Ministry of Finance discloses the Public Sector Salary. Instead of telling the public after the fact what these public servants were paid, shouldn't the general public have a say in the matter? Since these public servants serve the public, isn't the public the de facto "board members"? If these public servants did not serve the public in the previous year, why are they still be entitled to their salary by tax payer money while the rest of society are compensated based on performance?

Summary: The Internet has lowered the cost of communication to nearly zero. A real–time, collected conversation between elected representatives and citizen is not only possible, but morally justified. The public demand more transparency and a stop to wasteful spending. The public also want to hold elected representatives accountable.

Comments

dsanden — 2010–05–11 17:38:45 EDT wrote

See also the books "The Wisdom of Crowds" and "Wikinomics" and this Idea Forum is a type of "crowd–sourcing".

Nscafe — 2010–05–13 18:08:11 EDT wrote

This also means training politicians to be savvy when it comes to online communications or they hire people to put a wall between us or them. I am a fan transparency in government but more in terms of putting all documents online.

aarondyck — 2010–05–14 12:35:41 EDT wrote

This whole concept, of course, is predecated on the understanding that the Government would act according to the input received. I believe that we do need a stronger say in how our Government comes to its decisions. Online voting would be an excellent method to use for this purpose. I would further propose that all decisions that are to be put to a public vote be listed on a static web site (i.e. www.canada–votes.ca or some such) that we can vote on, or not, as we desire. The results of the votes should be public and should be applied transparently to votes in the house. That being said, these public votes should not be confidence votes.

jparker — 2010–05–20 09:55:09 EDT wrote

Add in proper authentication and you have an excellent idea. A government–issued private key, stored on a USB key or similar, with a password. This would mean a user would be able to use a public kiosk to vote.

I think politicians would find it very difficult to act in defiance of a majority public vote on a matter.

INDUSTRIALARTS — 2010–06–01 03:24:34 EDT wrote

While I would love to see further government interactions with the voluntary input of Canadians online (such as this site), I have various concerns with how "votes" would be solicited, accumulated as data, and how the resultant data would be used.

These "votes" would exclude signifigant portions of the Canadian citizenry. Access to the internet is not equal across all provinces and territories of this country. This particular problem apllies also to the Digital Economy Consultation we are currently participating in (but we know that this consultation does not attempt to portray its findings as a democratically legitimate mandates from the public.)

"Votes" would undermine the power of elected representatives; it would cast undue doubt and scrutiny upon the judgements and abilities of elected representatives. Interested groups could use the results of particular "votes" to challenge the legitimacy of votes in Parliament — to wrongly accuse Parliamentarians of acting without public mandate.

CEnglish — 2010–07–13 16:08:32 EDT wrote

This is actually a horrible idea. The "Wisdom of Crowds" and other references in comments clearly point out that this does not work if the input is not coming from people with "relevant expertise". Good governance is not about doing the actions that people want; it is about listening to the outcomes that people want and aggregating the relevant expertise (as in "Wisdom of the Crowds") to know how to get that outcome the best way.

People are filled with simplistic ideas, most of them driven by well established cognitive biases and often ideologies. Good governance requires addressing those biases without giving into them (yours or theirs). A good example of this problem is the Dunning–Kruger effect whereby incompetent people overestimate their own competence and competent people underestimate theirs. Voting should be about hiring expertise in governance, not in selecting somebody to do your biased bidding.

A direct democracy in this manner is the metaphoric "two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner". This is a very bad idea.