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Popular votes in the DreamScapeWhat follows is the author's opinion. Your mileage may vary. Comments to the author at grippen@usa.com are welcome.
Throughout all of Kymer's history, many have suggested the popular vote as a method to elect various officials, such as Acolytes. While this sounds reasonable and even democratic, it is a fundamentally flawed concept.
First of all, remember that Kymer is a place of constant change. Right now the older avatars who have spent a lot of time inworld dominate, but very soon we may see a steady stream of netbies from the Argo. This will radically alter the mindset of the average avatar from "concerned about Kymer" to "how can I get more tokens?". Giving the power of a popular vote about crucial, long term issues to avatars who are not yet a part of the community can prove devastating to Kymer and may well be a shot under the waterline.
Second, to take the example of an official; the Acolyte. Should an Acolyte be chosen for a), capability to handle problems, good judgement and common sense, fairness and objectivity in disputes or b), popularity? I know what kinds of Acolytes I want. When we start discussing other types of officials, like the recently appointed V-mart caretakers, it is even more obvious that other qualities than popularity should govern who's chosen.
Third, if an issue is important enough to warrant a vote, isn't it important enough that the avatars taking part in the vote need to know the details before making their decision? A popular vote bypasses this and lets avatars make a decision based more on what they had for breakfast than on the issues at hand. Not all avatars will do this of course, but if a portion of them do it, that may be enough to tip the scales.
Solutions
This is a problem with no easy solutions. In the waking world, several models have been used, such as representative democracy. These lead to their own problems, and in this case do not really solve the problem, as they all rely on the popular vote somewhere along the line.
One solution would be to only allow the informed avatars to vote. The reasoning behind this is; If you don't want to vote, then all is well. If you want to vote on an issue, but aren't informed, then you should get informed anyway.
So what is an informed avatar? An avatar that takes an interest in an issue, who takes part in discussions and reads related articles.
How do we know if an avatar is informed? One viable solution is to stage formal discussions, inworld or through web or email, and let those who took part in these discussions vote.
The point is: any avatar can choose to be informed on any issue. If you don't care enough about an issue to get informed, you do not care enough to vote.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Stoneburner for explaining the historical precedents to the "informed citizen" solution and for coming up with the ideas for solutions. Thanks to the Mages and the crowd under the face of Morpheus for the discussions. Credit for the ideas go to those people. All errors and mistakes are my contribution.
Last updated on 1998-06-01; 12:47:35 using Frontier 5.0.1 and Edlin.
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