TED Community » Cristi Chiscop

Comments

• TEDCred score: +4.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: Do voters represent themselves?

  Mar 1 2011: hello, guys and gals, I would like to bring to your attention the voting experience of formerly communist East-European countries. In Romania, for instance, voter turnout during the communist time was around 98%, but the system was nonetheless a dictatorship; all the ballots were actually a hoax, since voting in itself was a mere formality with zero meaning (except perhaps propaganda reasons). Hence none of the voters could represent themselves properly.
  
  So my point is that voting alone doesnt represent much in a political regime if it's not accommpanied with other rights, which allow power sharing and a wide participation in decision making. Voting alone cannot guarantee a decent amount of political representation for the citizenship. On top of that, in conditions of pauperity of the electorate votes can be bought/sold, votes can be manipulated and twisted, as the conditions for an informed electoral decision are hardly met.

• A reply on Conversation: Make a poll: "What is the most important thing in your life?" and visualize the results with a chart (map/bar/scatter plot chart)

  Mar 1 2011: well, I beg to differ. It's a matter of perspective, after all: what are we looking at: a half empty glass or a half full? Just consider all this people who do have internet access...I think we should ask ourselves how to put together the poll: should it be an open question, respectively, should it have predefined answers etc. ?