Seeding co-intelligent transformation into the electoral rapids

The increasing challenges and unpredictability of electoral activities – and society in general – in the US and elsewhere generate opportunities for moving towards fundamental transformation.  Not all such transformation is desirable, but in this post I explore some that could be promoted from the worldview of co-intelligence and wise democracy.  I don’t often comment on current events, but the speed of change over the last week inspired me to offer my two cents.  I hope you find it interesting. – Tom

The vast majority of political attention and resources get focused on influencing or commenting on current events.  I try to focus my attention on long-term trends and possibilities more than current events,  But every now and then I try to combine them.

Take, for example, the current electoral season in the US and many other places. Aside from the fact that it is understandably impacting my fundraiser (hint, hint), I wonder if there are possibilities hidden in the immediate electoral disturbances. (Perhaps the wise democracy pattern Using Diversity and Disturbance Creatively is relevant here.)

I think the current upheavals in American politics are ripe for transformational acupuncture.  Here are some thoughts that come to me about that as I consider the partisan face of that possibility

*  Third parties could have a field day with the current popular disgust with both the major parties.  But instead of together focusing on transforming the electoral SYSTEM – e.g., promoting a shift to open primaries and Ranked Choice Voting or STAR voting – which would enable them all to have greater impact – most of them are determinedly pushing their separate agendas within the existing system which has proven over and over to keep them marginalized. I see two exceptions: The Green Party, with a very broad electoral reform platform (which makes it feel long-term) and The Forward Party which is actively organizing around their more tightly reasoned and focused electoral reform platform which features open primaries and ranked choice voting.  Other parties could join them in a common effort to shift their collective future prospects.

*  The Republicans have long had a transformational agenda centered in libertarian conservatism and “traditional values”. Its radical variant has emerged in more visible form recently through the influence of Donald Trump and his movement. The next even more extreme version is currently articulated in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 which could start functioning on Trump’s first day in office, if he’s elected.

*  The Democrats have long been publicly focused on traditional liberal and progressive issues, while in the background usually serving the neoliberal agenda of top-down globalism and wealth concentration. The idea that their party represents empowerment and care for all (including the environment) – and that government should serve that – has unfortunately been hollowed out to make space for neoliberalism.  

For better and worse, however, the Democrats normal operation has been seriously disrupted over the last month, which COULD create space for realignment to more fundamental ideals and for innovating much-needed – and available! – new approaches to politics and government.  But things are developing rapidly and, while the rapid convergence around Kamala Harris may or may not be strategically smart in the short-term (the trade-offs among alternative candidates are gigantic), it may well represent a lost opportunity for more profound breakthroughs.

I would have loved to see the Democrats use this uncomfortable and unpredictable situation they got themselves into to creatively demonstrate leading edge approaches to their traditional program of enabling and empowering people to care and engage. 

At this stage of my own development, I find myself most intrigued by plurality in its new meaning as increasing diversity along with increasing linkages across that diversity – using social and digital technologies to enhance both the diversity and the linkage.

From the plurality perspective, increasing DIVERSITY can and should involve increasing inclusion, freedom, choice, uniqueness, innovation… – and expanding the idea of diversity far beyond demographic isms to embrace the fullness of human uniqueness in and connection to diverse contexts and landscapes.  Democrats already lean in that direction, but are constantly restrained by the ideology of neoliberalism and its powers-that-be.  It’s time to break out of that to become something totally new and totally rooted in deep values.

Furthermore, from the plurality perspective, increasing LINKAGE calls up the old democratic values of respect, conversation, cooperation, community, consensus – in addition to emerging understandings of networks, webs, ecology, reciprocity and the intrinsic interconnectedness of all life.  Here, too, we can see the constraints of neoliberalism at work – AND the opportunity to break those constraints to become something totally new and totally rooted in deep values – a perfect counterpoint to the comparably coherent but very different Republican approach to transformation.

SO WHAT WOULD THAT LOOK LIKE NOW?

Although Democratic strategists debate possible Democratic strategies, Democratic political leaders of all kinds seem to be rapidly aligning around Kamala Harris.  Despite that surface solidarity, I sense the overall Democratic Zeitgeist is still very much in flux. I see a persistent desire for a competitive field of choices – supported by those who fear both that democracy needs choice and that a Harris candidacy may be premature, and attacked by those who promote partisan solidarity out of fear that time is too short for the resource-dispersing impact of a competitive convention.  Harris has subtly acknowledged this, saying her “intention is to EARN and win” the Democratic presidential nomination.

So I’m going to focus on the possibility space created by the deep uncertainty and transformational potential that haunts the party’s top operatives and strategists as they try to control the powerful forces of evolving complexity. 

Given how late it is and the restrictions of various established protocols and deadlines, I’m afraid not much is actually possible at this stage.  But that’s no reason to not imagine – and perhaps even test – what COULD BE possible if there were really some concerted energy behind it. 

And, regardless of what’s possible now, we will surely see more disruptive moments when “anything becomes possible” in the near future.  At such moments it is wise to have some good possibilities to feed into the rapids of change. So let’s check some possibilities we could feed…

Here are a few of the new social and digital technologies available to apply to choosing a presidential candidate:

*  Use random selection to choose one or more ad hoc councils of delegates to dialogue with and/or interview candidates on behalf of the full convention, to whom they report out afterwards.  Or do this not just with convention delegates but out in communities and states.  In 1990, for example, a Citizens Jury of randomly selected citizens interviewed each Minnesota gubernatorial candidate – and witnesses for and against each of them – on various issues and then publicly shared their findings and ratings.

*  Be creative about the kind of engagements such councils have with candidates.  For example, Ashland, OR, once held a World Cafe in which candidates for mayor mixed in dialogue with ordinary citizens – and each other – discussing what the city needed and wanted.  And then the citizens sat back and watched the candidates talk with each other about what they’d heard and what they thought about it – a process called “fishbowl”. (Interestingly, the candidate who demonstrated the highest quality of listening ended up winning the election.)   Or stretch even further and imagine a Democratic Party that sponsored widespread ongoing World Cafes exploring the question “What could the Democratic Party also be?” and harvested and shared the evolving results using Polis. Or that used Dynamic Facilitation in all its contentious conversations…

*  Use preferential voting for prioritizing issues or candidates at various stages of any election-related initiative. As noted above, in preferential voting voters are able to vote for multiple candidates – either using a ranking approach (in which they mark which candidate is their first choice, second choice, third choice, etc.) or a rating approach (in which they give each candidate a 0-5 score, like rating books or videos online).  The most well-known form of the ranking approach is Ranked Choice Voting (also called Instant Runoff Voting) – although I’m an advocate for a more sophisticated but less tested form called STAR voting which features ratings.  Both forms usually have two rounds – the first identifying the top 2-4 options from the full field and the second looking at the votes again in an automatic process to identify the top choice.  

These voting approaches are favored because they (a) more accurately reflect people’s often mixed and complex preferences about the choices they’re given and (b) they enable usually marginalized candidates or options to become visible and be seriously considered, thus liberating voters from “wasting their votes” and freeing candidates from becoming “spoilers”, as often occurs with voting for so-called “third parties” in the US.

* Use generative AI entities like AI Steve or Polis to engage citizens and/or delegates in conversations about their issues, concerns, preferences, and/or aspirations. The AI can then summarize, curate or map people’s responses in ways that can then enrich focused dialogue and deliberation or generate highly participatory production of reports, policies, platforms, and so on.

These innovations and others could be used and combined in many different ways to not only enable more profound, interesting and enjoyable engagements but also to model and stimulate new ways of doing politics, right inside or alongside more traditional approaches.  In a free market of political approaches, I suspect the new ways would win out, hands down.

So how might we try them out sooner, rather than later?

Coheartedly,
Tom

PS:  A relevant closing thought from a partisan political commentator who probably knows very little about what I described above, but happens to be thinking right next door to it… “Demographic and cultural changes are remaking America—creating a political moment that has cultivated the conditions for a Democratic ‘coalition of transformation,’ as I’ve called it, centered on the younger, nonwhite, and female voters who are most comfortable with this new America.” – Ronald Brownstein in The Atlantic 


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Tom Atlee, The Co-Intelligence Institute, POB 493, Eugene, OR 97440

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