Polling in the TDG

Asking better questions in a better system to make better decisions

My hometown, Brooks, Alberta, puts out an annual survey for citizens to give their opinions to City Hall. Somehow the decision makers use this information to make better decisions.

From my perspective, these surveys have two basic questionnaire styles. The first style asks relevant questions. It takes me 30 to 60 minutes to answer. I happily fill it out, for I believe my insights will be useful. I do not consider this time as an excessive sacrifice to let city councillors know my thoughts and concerns.

But I am well educated. English is my first language. And I have an above average understanding in civic affairs.

Brooks is more blue-collar than white-collar. Oilfields and agriculture have been its economic engines. A beef packing plant employs 2,500 people in this city of 15,000. Many of its employees are immigrants, with (generally speaking) lower English abilities and lower education. Many are struggling just to survive in Canada. And much of Brooks Caucasian population have other life priorities than local governance.

These two blue collar demographics are likely not to show much interest in the surveys I like to fill out. So turnout is low. So survey results are not representative of Brooks citizens. Such survey results would not provide useful information.

So to get more response in the next year, the city offers its second style of survey: simplified — a lot. The last survey had only three questions. One question listed the 15 or so departments (like policing, street repair, community center, etc.). The question asked was: “What department should have its budget cut?”

I had no idea on how to answer that question. I kind of doubt the two blue-collar demographics would either. But it was quick to fill out, and I gave my best guess.

I have no idea how City Council would respond if 40% of survey takers said to cut the snow removal budget. If City Council followed that “advice,” it would be berated in the next big snowstorm.

Such a pointless survey — even if more people are filling it out.

But Polling Should be Useful

I have struggled with pollsters ever since I became “politically interested” about 40 years ago. I have written about my frustration.

https://medium.com/tiered-democratic-governance/are-polls-believable-423e12092d74?sk=5fb248800db70e57de50c150f7193e3d

In case you don’t read this article, the main arc is my aunt who had strong opinions on most things. She was a TV addict; she was not a community-minded citizen; she was not a social person; she never voted in her life. For several years, pollsters interviewed her because she was so easy to talk to.

In a sub-arc, I also talk about my refusal to spend time with phone pollsters and answer their silly questions. Many political junkies would be aghast that I so easily dismiss polls and surveys. How could I reject an opportunity to be a sample of our population that can shape society? And I might be passing my opportunity to someone who is not in my demographic — which then distorts the findings of the poll and survey.

In theory, polls and surveys should provide useful information for politicians and decision makers. And maybe that is why we still conduct polls and surveys. In practice, I have my doubts the pollsters can find a reliable sample that represents the population.

I have a way to make polls and surveys more reliable, credible, informative, and efficient.

But first we need to build a new democracy.

Polling in Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG)

The TDG is my main reason for being on Medium and other internet forums. The main features of the TDG are 1) No political parties, 2) voting based on good character and capacity for governance, 3) decisions are made by consultative process, 4) the elected bodies are guided by an advisory board.

Let’s assume the TDG is built. This is how I envision polling will work in this system.

I will use my hypothetical TDG city as my example.

https://medium.com/tiered-democratic-governance/a-glimpse-of-our-future-democracy-513aae0f20fd?sk=9e199757e4151345bf4ed9d1b55afe2b

This city has 100,000 citizens. It has 500 neighborhoods, and each neighbor elects its own first-tier representative.

I say: “Let these 500 representatives fill out the survey!”

Here are the advantages:

The neighborhood representatives have been selected by their neighbors. Many will take that responsibility seriously and give voice to their neighborhood.

Most of the 500 representatives will be community-minded citizens. They will have the pulse of their neighborhood. They will not be avid TV watchers or pollster pets, like my aunt.

The surveys can be designed to get the opinions of the neighborhood representatives or to get the representative’s take on the opinions in his/her community. Maybe the neighborhood representative can do a little polling in his/her neighborhood. We will learn better survey techniques using neighborhood representatives.

Giving the survey only to neighborhood representatives saves the expense and frustration of trying to promote the survey to the general public.

The 500 representatives come from all parts of the city. The 500 neighborhood representatives will represent all sorts of demographics.

Five hundred voices should be enough to tell the Council what the citizens are thinking.

Surveys can be conducted once a month.

The same question(s) can be asked a few months later. Trends will be observed.

Professional sociologists will design the surveys to obtain and collate the information the Council is looking for.

The survey writers can also assume a higher ability to fill out a more complex survey.

With continual practice, the neighborhood representatives will get better at filling out these surveys.

The results of the surveys will be frequently cited in district and Council meetings.

When necessary, the TDG advisory board will be reminding the elected bodies of the survey results.

The Council may or may not take recommendations of the survey. But it will gain more perspectives which lead to better decisions.

Conclusion

The 500 neighborhood representatives earned their legitimacy from their neighbors. They will be a trustworthy, efficient, and credible source to fill out these surveys.

The representatives at the District and Council tiers will find the survey results useful to guide their deliberations, especially if the surveys are monthly.

My Grandparents had a Grade 4 Education
Life in the Peasant Lane

My paternal grandfather, Ján Volek, was born in Slovakia in 1901. He attended elementary school in his Slovak village; all instruction was in the Hungarian language. He acquired some basic reading and math skills. When he was about 11 years old, he went to work. He gained skills with horses, other livestock, and growing grain. At a young age, he was the family provider when his father went to war.

My great-grandfather, František Volek, was conscripted into the Austrian Army in World War 1 and sent to the Eastern Front. He was captured and spent one year in a Russian POW camp. With the fall of the Habsburg Empire, lands owned by the Hungarian aristocracy were confiscated and given to the Slovak people. František got title to 60 hectares of farmland, which eventually passed to my grandfather.

Ján married Maria Baranik from a nearby village. They had three children. While Ján worked his land, it was too small to make a good living. He had visions of moving to Canada, making some money, then returning to Slovakia. They left in 1936. Their return to the old country was nixed by World War 2 and communism.

Ján and Maria were gifted a quarter section of failed farmland in Tilley, Alberta. Previous settlers could not make a living with flood irrigation — and left. Somehow my grandfather figured out how to make this land work, but the first three years were hard on the family.

My maternal grandfather, Alexander Boyda, was born in 1895, in Bukovina, a region now in western Ukraine. In the past two centuries, this part of Europe was owned by various colonial powers: Poland, Romania, Austria, and Russia. These powers had little interest in elevating rural Ukrainians.

Like my Slovak grandfather, Alexander only had a Grade 4 education before he was put to work on the farms.

After the revolution in 1922, he saw one group of elites replacing another group of elites. When he saw a poster calling for immigrants to come to Canada, he took up the opportunity. He had no intention of ever returning to Ukraine.

In Canada, he tried the farming route and did not like it. He went to work for the Canadian Pacific Railway, repairing rails. This job required a strong back — and English-speaking Canadians did not want to do this work. He stayed with the railroad for 30 years, earning a somewhat comfortable pension.

In Canada, he connected with Alexandria Boyda, a girl from his former village of Oshliev. They married and had five girls. He built a 500-square-foot house on the outskirts of Lethbridge, Alberta.

I am a Peasant

My heritage is East European peasantry. We peasants had little education because the powers believed peasants were not worthy of education. Peasants could never utilize the benefits of an education, so why invest any education into them?

What little education the peasants did get was a result of the 1848 revolutions, when the aristocracies yielded some of their political power to the masses. The aristocrats had little interest in elevating their peasants, but educating peasant children bought some social peace.

My four grandparents brought eight children to this world. Seven finished their Grade 12. Only my father quit school at Grade 10. He spent one year working as a lumberjack, then returned to run his father’s farm, his occupation for the next 35 years. He was a good farmer. My mother was the only one to move beyond high school: she graduated from nursing school in Calgary in 1957. She was a good nurse. All my grandparent’s progeny had a much better education than what they would have had in the “old country” with the old ways.

My four grandparents had 20 grandchildren. One passed away before adulthood. Only one did not finish high school. There are seven with university degrees; there are seven tradespeople. Only five of us (myself included) would be called “working poor.” The rest have a nice middle-class or higher lifestyle. We have benefited from a society that values education for all.

Had the world not changed, my peasant destiny was to follow the occupations of my grandfathers — and their grandfathers. I was to be a farm worker, or hard-rock miner, or a lumberjack, working for overlords who lived far away in opulent houses. There was no expectation that I could have risen above these natural occupations.

Here is the natural outcome of my heritage:

1. I should have been working fulltime at 12 years of age, bringing income into my destitute household.

2. I should not have earned a Grade 12 education.

3. I should not have earned a university degree.

4. I should not have started a business.

5. I should not have participated in party politics.

6. I should not have had the economic, social, and political freedom to develop my new democracy.

Rather I should have been kept destitute, compliant, and hungry for work. That was my destiny.

Conclusion

Although I am an unrecognized theorist in political science, my grandparents “produced” me with their Grade 4 education. That is such an amazing jump in three generations. Had we kept the old thinking that peasants were not worthy of an education, this article would never have been written. My website of about one million words would not exist.

And maybe, someday, that website will change the world.

If so, give thanks to my grandparents and their honest work ethic — and a Canadian society that valued education for all, including the children of poor immigrants who did the work English-speaking Canadians did not want to do.

We never know what the future will hold for educating any child. But for most children, their future will be better with that education than without. And when they become new adults, they will better serve society — which then serves the people.

The recognized thinkers and powers of 1900 thought the education of poor children was a pointless investment. They were wrong.

This is similar to today’s recognized thinkers and powers believing our 19th century democracies are suitable for the 21st century. Like the thinkers of not educating peasant children, these thinkers need to let go of our primitive democracy as well. Hopefully sooner than later. Hopefully before another 1848-like revolution.

What is the effect with too many psychopaths in politics?

https://medium.com/the-political-prism/three-progressives-vs-one-psychopath-aa30711d4322?sk=8a31e60f98590842c2042dd6caf65012

My first post here.

I am Dave Volek, from Brooks, Alberta, Canada.

Eric Redelgeld invited me to this forum.

I have invented a new democracy. This democracy has no political parties--and our elected representatives work with a consultative decision making.

I have been working on this project since 1997. It seems the world in not interested, so we are stuck with western democracy for a while.

I need a few more places to park my TDG work. I'll be putting up some TDG articles later--after I figure out how this social media works.

BTW, TDG stands for "Tiered Democratic Governance." A search of that term should find my website.

Dave Volek