The Mission of ChoiceRanker

This concept was originally launched under the name Indaba.org. Indaba is the Zulu word for "important meeting," much like the Native-American word, "Pow-wow." The name ChoiceRanker may help promote understanding of how this works, but the word Indaba continues to reflect the underlying motivation.

The problem: In this age of increasingly polarized and angry politics, is it possible to find ground for a stable consensus? If so, how can that consensus be expressed?

The opportunity: If a stable consensus could be found, what might be gained? Is it possible to overcome polarization in ways that promote appreciation and advancement of common interests?

The possible solution: Restore confidence in democratic processes through the example of an Internet-based Indaba.

This Indaba is an experiment in collaborative expression of converging and diverging opinion... an Internet-mediated venue for an honorable exchange of views. If succesful, people will be able use this technology to accomplish the following goals:

• 1) Take stands on particular candidates and issues;
• 2) Justify those stands in ways that foster comparison with stands taken by other participants, and;
• 3) Test the ground for common consensus.

The process will start by undertaking simple challenges.

In anticipation of the 2008 Presidential primaries, there will be monthly web-based polls for Democrats and Republicans. Those sorts of polls let partisans be partisan.

The next challenge is to create a massively scalable mechanism that can facilitate broader sorts of comparisons. The recent debate in the US House of Representative regarding the Iraq "surge" provides a good case for consideration. Debates of similar importance will come again. Concerned citizens would benefit if a well-structured interface for collaborative assessment of numerous speeches could be made available.

The goal is for participants who identify themselves as proponents of a given resolution to be able to rank the speeches given in support; self-identified opponents would rank those they deem to be the best speeches against. As a result, members of each side would be able to clarify their own justifications and build the reputations of their most articulate leaders.

In addition, where the journalists in the mainstream media tend to direct public attention to the most polarizing and sensationally extreme statements that are made during partisan debates, voters within the community would be more likely to draw attention to the most substantive and centralizing views of their own camps.

Once again, the system would let partisans be partisan, but it would also reveal the blurring of partisan stereotypes. Rather than being herded lockstep into focus group categories to be tagged by party labels and demographic stripes, individuals who participate will be distinguishable by their own votes and nominations.

The ultimate challenge is to provide a venue for articulation of common values. This is the most daring part of the experiment.

Let partisans work out the core values around which they rally. Let them nominate and rank their own statements, backed by links to offsite blog entries. That will build a body of indicators about a group's underlying principles.

As those data points come into view, it may be possible to establish principles that cross partisan lines by discerning overarching sets of statements agreeable to otherwise opposed partisans. Then it will be possible to ask even deeper, more probing questions.... What values are axiomatic to people who say they believe in god, or freedom, or the rule of law? What do people who call themselves Americans actually stand for?

The interface will implement several distinguishing features. Some are taking shape and are ready for testing and evaluation. Others are still in development.

Features available now:

Instant Runoff Voting.

Ranked Ballot. The balloting system currently in use is adapted from demochoice.org.

Irving Chart. Multi-round ballot results can displayed on a single page via a novel type of graph called the Irving Chart.

Features in development:

Voter Authentication. For ChoiceRanker to be successful, nominations and votes must be treated as the honest submisions of a honorable individuals. Vote fraud, therefore, must be considered a malicious act. Participation will be based on membership, with higher regard reserved to those members willing to validate their identity through password-based login, memberships validated through partner websites, and cross-references with postings in other blogs.

Massive Scaling to Support Member-Created Nominations and Elections. The current design loses effectiveness beyond ten candidates per election. Brute force programming could easily double or triple that number, but a more elegant solution is desirable. The goal is to boost scalability by a factor of 50 or more, and to add dynamic querying features that would provide an ability to study results filtered by expressed partisan loyalties, demographic alignments, and most importantly, shared perspectives that cut across those standard categories.

This project reflects the efforts of Craig Simon, a self-employed database application specialist whose online writings occasionally appear under the pen name flywheel. He is very interested in politics and religion, especially with regard to the nature of freedom and power. Craig recently earned a Ph.D. in International Studies at Florida's University of Miami. Using a method of analysis called Rule Oriented Constructivism, his dissertation focused on the rise of Internet Governance in the mid-1990s.

Many people have politely hinted that Craig should get a real job. He concedes they may be right.