Home page Sharing concerns & identifying solutions In order to bring about an open and full representation of the people of a country through particpatory governance there has been talk of e-voting via the Internet. Indeed, this has featured in the propositions of many politicians and parties on both sides of the Atlantic in their campaigns but they seldom introduce the system once in power. The cynical or perhaps the realistic state that this is because governments do not want people to have such an easy means of expressing their opinions, especially when there exist laws for access to public information and governments cannot hide the results. E-voting Recently a report by CybaCity and SEEL, commissioned by E-mancipation, reviewed the impact of the Internet on aspects of governance. Originally this work had been expected to come up with an endorsement for E-mancipation's idea of running e-voting and even an e-vote on the European Treaty. However, the report entitled "e-Representation" did not support e-voting as a means for gaining an unbiased assessment of public opinion. Indeed, the report concluded that e-voting is only accessible, in practical terms, to a restricted proportion of the population and others do not have any preference for using the Internet for such purposes. Therefore in the short to medium term e-voting is not a very reliable metre of pubic opinion. E-petitions On the question of e-petitions, the report found that CybaCity's experience as well as the experience of several organizations who have used the Internet to gather petition support, the preference of most people is to use some sort of paper medium. Thus there is a preference of something like 4:1 for printing off a petition stub and sending it in to clicking a button on an Internet petition dialogue. E-petitions at least are a means of "gathering" support for a specific issue but like any petition do not reflect nor to they intend to reflect the opinion of the whole population. General accessibility to the Internet has improved markedly during the last decade but personal habits, which determine the inclination to use it, still create a signifcant bias in the distribution of response. in a speech on 27 September 1869, Charles Dickens stated, "My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in The People governed, is, on the whole, illimitable". Addressing the issue of illigitimate political party power E-mancipation has an enduring concern about the degree to which political parties hide pertinent arguments as well as avoid mentioning inconvenient facts which might weaken their policy positions. To some degree this is an outcome of their representational insignificance as reflected in the fact that most UK governments are minority governments (less than 20% electorate support) but this situation persists because the population is prevented from articulating and disseminating their concerns effectively. When they try and use the "system" to record concerns the system managed by political parties operates a heavy filterage of information and invariably the outcome is to no effect. As a result the constituency system, in the hands of political party MPs is a highly patroninsing one, indeed, it is quite cynical in the sense that MPs masquerade as "local representatives" and yet in Parliament they only vote in line with party priorities according to the party whip and not in line with constituency priorities. Indeed, on most issues, MPs do not in fact know what their constituency priorities are. The real potential power of the Internet In the light of this quandry the report concluded that the real situation of the people of the country was similar to the circumstances in the seventheenth century when political factions had taken control and the people had no effective means of expressing their concerns, let alone propose solutions. "Inspirational appeal During the seventeenth century life did not always default to people enduring the excesses of a corrupt and sometimes cruel political establishment. People did not always continue to do things as they had always been done for fear that suggesting improvements might attract attention and perhaps a punishment or two. There were many chinks of light, illegal pamphlets and exchanges between people causing many hearts to rejoice at inspirational ideas concerning the liberation of the people of England. Universal suffrage - a government by the people In particular a wonderful concept arose that people should be governed by a Parliament of their popular choice. Such a concept was justified by Colonel Thomas Rainborough, a participant in the Putney Debates organized by the Levellers at the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Putney in the County of Surrey, in October and November 1647. He stated: “...for really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, Sir, I think it's clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under...” Taken from: Chapter 4, A Propostion 1649, page 33 in "The Briton's Quest for Freedom - Our unfinished journey." HPC. The report cites a section of E-mancipation's manager's recent book (see box to the right) as a basis for calling attention to the fact that political parties and the media combined have in effect occluded free political dialogue and the raising of issues of concern. At that time use was made of illegal pamphlets to break this tyrannical log-jam sustained by politicians. The power of pamphlets was that they expressed concerns in short digestible documents which were passed between people. Most of the content of the English Bill of Rights was in "unauthorized" pamphlets passed from person to person long before it was enacted. Indeed, most of the American Bill of Rights was to be found in beer-stained pamphlets circulating in the pubs and streets of London and well known to "common people" some 150 years before the wise founding fathers of America set about their work drafting the American Constitution and to which was added the English Bill of Rights. The political potency of this process emanated from plain English expression on concerns generally shared by the people and simple propositional statements as to their solution. The result was a build up of an irresistable force for change and invarably in the direction of gaining more freedom of expression for the people. The motivation and the eventual force of this change did not come from politicians but rather the reaction of the political class to rational argument which was so broadly accepted that it had to be accommodated in law. The power of the pamphlet in the seventeenth Century is a reality in spite of their being illegal documents, there being no supportive media, television, radio or Internet. But today the problem is that the political system seeks to control information so as to limit political options to be those already selected as the priorities of political parties. Indeed, the political parties use the media to sustain this state of affairs. Even when the media are critical of political parties it is often on a platform dimensioned by the political parties. On the other hand, the people of the country have common sense and by removing the restrictions imposed by media editors and political party bosses they would be able to express their concerns more openly. To disseminate such concerns so as to gain popular support, the Internet provides the only effective option because it is convenient and above all an extremely low cost means of disseminating pamphlets. The issue is that the Internet can help disseminate relevant facts, concerns and propositions for solution to the issues facing the people of Britain. The ease with which pamphlets can be printed off and distrbuted by hand is an obvious advantage of the Internet. Hector McNeill, Manager of E-mancipation stated that, "It is odd that sometimes one can assume that digital technology has an exaggerated potential in opinion gathering but this overlooks the question, opinions on what? Today the process of the specification of concerns and propositions remains a quasi-monopoly of political parties and a weak British media. As a result the individual freedom of expression of all is marginalised. This depressing state of affairs needs to be banished from our political landscape. E-mancipation has accepted the obvious conclusions of the e-Representation report and we have are giving more emphasis to e-pamphlets. Anyone can post an e-pamphlet on our e-Bulletin Board at the E-mancipation General Assembly. This provides a direct means of national access and dissemination. This has a potentilaly enormous liberating impact because it enables anyone in the country to express their concerns and have these disseminated nationally. This can faciliate wider consideration and lead to the formulation of propositions for solutions, free from partisan bias. This can help remove the suffocating reality faced by the British population where the political parties and the media remain in control of information and, of more concern, our destiny. The strategic risk is enormous because of the lack of intellectual critical mass in our tiny political parties, who in any case place party over country, and the media who take most of their "leads" from this defecive source. Personally I have more faith in the common sense of each person in the country to make the right decision when they have access to all the relevant facts." E-mancipation web site Posted: 24th September, 2007.