- the transparency and
- the extent
A secret vote, that is a vote in which it is evident that a certain set of people have voted, but not how they have voted, can be considered a purer tool to reach that aim, but any such merit must be carefully weighed against the increased uncertainty, whether the destined participants have voted.
And then there is another issue, which will become clearer, when we have considered the alternative to voting, as we should anyhow.
Obviously, when there is no vote, it is up to a single person to make a decision, which does not mean however that it is only that person, who is involved in the process. Rather it means that that person organises and completes that process, the exact shape of which being only known to him.
Also, in any matter that goes beyond the private, the interests concerned by the decision go beyond the interests of that person, who is thus acting in the interest of others, the exact range of whom being also only known to him.
A brief historical observation perhaps. The Saxons, before their subjugation by Charlemagne, didn't have kings, but votes on public matters. And wherever the Catholic Church went, it introduced the concept and institution of monarchy, until it was forced to break with it in 1763, that is.
When we compare sets of people who vote, we must first and foremost consider, how much and in what way the interests concerned by their individual vote extend beyond their individual interests, because through this extension the process of decision-making can approximate the alternative to voting and thus render the guarantees of voting meaningless.
Let us consider three cases.
1. The Venetian Republic.
Venice being small and the set of people, who were allowed to vote, consisting of the movers and shakers of society, the interests concerned by their individual vote hardly extended beyond their private interests, that is at least in the sense that no-one of them could have conceivably by influenced to vote in the interest of a group not represented in that set.
2. U.S. State Representatives.
Obviously the interests concerned by the individual vote of the U.S. state representatives far extend beyond their private interests and hence it is a given that their vote can be influenced by groups outside of their set.
The question then is: What groups exactly?
The original intent was to tie U.S. state representatives to the interests of the movers and shakers of the region that would elect them, thus creating a scaled version of the Venetian Republic. For this to work it is of course imperative to exclude other groups, groups not native to the region, from influencing the local elections.
Would the original intent have been upheld, all newspapers, radio and TV stations would have required local ownership and national newspapers, radio and TV stations would be forbidden.
3. Continental Parliaments.
Continental parliaments are dominated by parties, who decide internally, who they send to the national parliament. It is thus clear that all votes are cast in the interest of the parties, but what are the interests of the parties?
Every party stands for certain ideas that attract members. These members control the concrete measures to which those ideas lead in a given political situation. In doing so they must gauge the extent, to which the general electorate will appreciate doctrinal purity in a certain question.
Party members are supposed to be ideologues and an ideologue is supposed to be interested in the highest possible degree to which his ideology can determine political measures.
Both assumptions are not exactly natural: party members may have a substantial interest in their own careers and an ideologue may very well prefer the measure that leads to the best consequences according to his estimation as opposed to the one that most closely follows his tenets.
Hence the characteristic schisms between common and career members and between fundamentalists and pragmatists in all continental parties (except those who are controlled by outside interests, whichever and of whatever nature they might be).
Simply put, these schisms reflect the gradual understanding on part of the seasoned party members that the idea, how democracy is supposed to work, isn't to be bothered too much about and this realisation opens up the closed party cosmos to outside interests in precisely the same way that the court of the king opens up to them, i.e. by setting up go-to people.
This is of course true only of multi party systems, one party systems are another matter.
Anyway, considering these cases we find that votes easily lose their function to distribute the responsibility for a decision on the shoulders of those who are interested in it in the right way, that is by personal concern or by being a vessel of personal concern.
We find that any such distribution that works is either of a modest scale or following the clearest and most doggedly pursued transfer of interest.
And we find that failure to distribute responsibility in this way will always result in secret counsels.
This assertion doesn't mean of course that success in establishing working votes means that a people are well governed, in fact the greatest tyranny might rule, when those who vote lack in human qualities, but it does mean that the mantle of joined responsibility can only be claimed in this way.
Postscript of the same day. Unlike my usual self I deliberately disregarded Switzerland, but all that does is to turn Switzerland into an excellent case study. I think it does overall agree with the above, the following remarks are in place.
- Direct democracy mostly happens on the local level.
- National politics is mostly made by parties like in the rest of the continent.
- National initiatives as a corrective to party rule do only partially protect the interests of the people, because of such tactics as conflation with other issues, shielding important aspects from public discussion, preaching ideology to the indifferent and what other means exist to plunge the analysis into irrelevance.