Anonymous Reader: A Different Approach


Recent events have produced a flood of old comments.  The recent discussion by The Economic Diversion Commission about selecting a new slogan for our community has reawakened a host of old perceptions about our community.  The suggestion that our county might call itself “The Leading Edge of the Research Triangle” has called forth the old complaints that there is a very small minority of people who run things in this community.  This small nucleus of business people are only interested in their own success and pay no attention to the realities of this community. 

So there have been behind the scene discussions by members of that Commission to make proposals that would address those concerns.  There is talk about putting every decision of the Economic Diversion Commission to a vote of the citizens of our county.

The idea sounds impossible at first to many, but the due to recent discussion the proposal has been revised and is beginning to sound possible.  Rather than attempt to get the vote of every citizen, the idea has now proposed that each decision be put to a randomly selected 1 (one) percent of the population.  The EDC would contract with randomly selected polling firms for every issue.  The polling firm would contact the randomly selected one percent of the people and get their opinion on every issue.  Each issue would get a different polling firm and a different randomly selected one percent.  This would reduce the influence of any particular group of people and prevent anybody from being able to know who to persuade before the vote.

The idea is to make sure that the decisions that are made by the Economic Diversion Commission are not influenced by the State Department of Economic Development and thus not affected by some political agenda. The decisions made by the randomly selected one percent would not be hampered by any information about zoning or environmental concerns.  The opinions of the randomly selected one percent would just be the pure and straight forward emotional reaction to an idea. This would enable the average citizen to participate in the decisions of the community.  

The polling of the randomly selected one percent would ask the selected person to answer simply “Yes or No.”  It would make it a whole lot easier for the Economic Diversion Commission .  Do you want a High Speed Rail through our town?  Do you favor bring a biolab to our county?  Do you want a gun range on your? Do you want a Federal Grant to build a larger airport for our community?  Do you want Toxic Waste incinerator in our area?  The random one percent would give their opinion and that would be the answer for the EDC. Think how much progress we could make that way.