2.
Outline of Deliberative Tournament Elections (DTE or
Bottom-up elections)
DTE (Deliberative Tournament Elections or Bottom-up Elections) is
a newly suggested election system which incorporates concepts of Deliberative
Democracy into National or Regional Elections of respective countries, thereby creating
opportunities of face-to-face discussion/life-long learning among all the
voters including candidates, and enhancing ideas to improve the societies
through Bottom-up Approach and networking of the participating voters, whereas
in the current election systems by simple voting, the results are often
influenced by superficial information, e.g. gossips, appearance of candidates, and
articles by certain magazines.
DTE will enhance engagement of voters through in-depth group
discussions in order to develop and elect good leaders with hands-on experience
in the fields of business administration of organizations with adequate
knowledge on science & technologies. Accordingly potentially excellent
leaders including those quite modest, unaggressive at self-promotion could be
elected for a community, a region or a country, and even at a school.
In DTE, voters will form groups respectively of 30 members in
which in-depth discussions are held on current situation, issues and problems,
potential solutions and policies, ideal images of leaders and qualifications.
After the discussions, each group elects 10% or total 3 members as candidates
or final voters by voting after presentations and Q & A by the candidates.
To be political candidates, they have to submit true resume,
motives, and evidences to the Election Committee of the region. No fee is
necessary to become a candidate because all the steps to elect a leader(s) will
be the same irrespective of the number of politicians to be elected.
The respective facilitators, a lead facilitator and an assistant
facilitator in each group, will be officials, citizens, teachers, and
university students, all of whom went through facilitation training for this
purpose to understand Kaizen and Kenzen concepts together with benefits of
Small Meetings.
Those once elected will get together again to form respectively
30-membered groups, and each group elects 3 members as candidates of
politicians or final voters through the same process as in the first tier of
30-membered groups.
Table 1: Small Meeting program for deliberative discussion
Main role by Programs
(1)Facilitator(s) ⇒Methodologies
and code of ethics
(2)Participants ⇒Self-Introductions
(3)Officials or volunteers ⇒Current
status & issues
(4)Participants ⇒Discussion
on directions and policies
（Small
Group Discussion → Summary）
(5)Participants ⇒Discuss
required capacities as leaders
(Small
Group Discussion → Summary）
(6)Election committee ⇒Confirm
resume/qualifications of candidates
(7)Candidates ⇒Speeches
and Q & A
(8)Participants ⇒Voting
to choose top 3 by several rounds
(9)Candidates ⇒Speeches
and Q & A
(10)Participants ⇒Confirm
requests to the elected ones
Note: Candidates are those to be politicians or final voters
If 12,000 candidates run for a leader, DTE can come up with 1,200
candidates after the first tier of Small Meetings, 120 after the second tier,
and then the final one after total three tiers of group discussions. As far as
places for the Small Meetings can be arranged, three days of group discussions
at many places will come up with just one leader.
During the election period, many restaurants and meeting rooms at
hotels, and city council or school buildings will be full of participating voters
with ideas and opinions for implementation to improve the society, the region and
the country. After the respective election at each discussion room, all the
voting participants enjoy themselves to celebrate their peaceful meeting with
songs and dramas, thereby creating local communities encompassing different
jobs and generations.
When politicians solve problems, they tend to deal with laws and
regulations with additional budget, but when citizens discuss issues, they could
come up with solutions without political intervention nor a budget, thereby realizing
smaller public spending than otherwise.
When a final one is elected as a leader or a mayor by DTE, all the
voters within the same groups as the final one will be Advisers or evaluators
during the service period (term) of the leader. All of them belong to an Advisory
Committee to evaluate the leader’s performance every half a year.
(They do see the job
performances/values, but not issues of personal life as some gossip magazines.)
If 3 quarters of the Advisers say “No!” to the leader, one has to
step down. To appoint a new leader, those in the final group will get together
and elect the substitute from the final group. In case, it is close to the end
of the term, DTE will be conducted from the beginning. (Recall System)
(The number of Advisers
could be less than 200, even though a political leader needs to go through 5
times of Small Meetings, to be elected.)
Deliberative discussion at the Small Meetings could be time
consuming learning experience, possibly for several hours, and
objective-oriented for problem solving in the society. Therefore, even one is
elected from the first tier of a Small Meeting as a candidate or a final voter,
one can be proud of oneself. If a mother, a father or a school teacher is
elected even one time, their children will be impressed and ask many questions.
“Why and how were you elected?” “What kind of discussions did you have?” “How
many in the group voted you?” ”What policies did you suggest?” etc.
To be followed by “DTE: An Answerto Reduce Terrorism (C)”