{"id":211,"date":"2003-03-08T10:16:50","date_gmt":"2003-03-08T10:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/?p=211"},"modified":"2003-03-08T10:16:50","modified_gmt":"2003-03-08T10:16:50","slug":"deliberative-polling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/2003\/03\/08\/deliberative-polling\/","title":{"rendered":"Deliberative Polling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joi Ito talks about deliberative polling<\/a>, which tries to overcome the drawbacks of the type of polling currently practiced (whereby uninformed citizens are asked to give “shoot-from-the-hip” opinions, upon which government policy is then often based).<\/p>\n

Larry [Lessig] pointed out some interesting work called deliberative polling being done by Professor James S. Fishkin. Since polling forces people to vote on something they don’t really know too much [about], the data may be statistically accurate, but is not necessarily the best way to promote a democratic system. Deliberative polling takes a diverse group of people, forces them to discuss the issues in small group, in large groups, small groups, over and over again for a fairly lengthy process until everyone has a pretty good idea of the issues and a balanced and educated position. Polls are conducted through the process to track how people’s opinions change. Afterwards, many of the people who have participated become much more active citizens.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This brings up interesting questions, among them whether democracy includes a citizen’s option to be lazy and uninformed. In America (and many other countries), it certainly does. But is this the best form of democracy? A strong and healthy democracy should at least provide options and structures that encourage a more active and involved population.
\nI’m reminded of an old Bloom County cartoon about polling that, if I had my collection here in Japan, I’d track down, scan and post along with these comments.
\nMore on deliberative polling<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joi Ito talks about deliberative polling, which tries to overcome the drawbacks of the type of polling currently practiced (whereby uninformed citizens are asked to give “shoot-from-the-hip” opinions, upon which government policy is then often based). Larry [Lessig] pointed out some interesting work called deliberative polling being done by Professor James S. Fishkin. Since polling… Continue reading Deliberative Polling<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-policy-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5heLP-3p","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}