HumidCity

Well I am back and the verbal floggings shall begin forthwith. As I am still getting back into the swing of things (and catching up on all the news I missed) I shall begin with a brief reading assignment. Without further ado here is an excerpt from a lovely post by Becky.

Becky Houtman
“Although the Roman empire expanded to a great territory, the Roman republicans were never concerned about the actuality of political participation by citizens living far away from Rome, where the assembly met regularly. In fact, most citizens of the Roman empire probably never attended an assembly, and the situation created a random and skewed system of representation - those living close to Rome became de facto “representatives” of other citizens of the Roman empire.” - Representative Government and Democracy, Bo Li

With all the invocation of Democracy and the Founding Fathers in this latest planning process, one thing that seems to have been forgotten is the role of representation. With all of our actual elected representatives snubbing the UNOP, it’s more and more doubtful how much backbone the UNOP will have as a “Unified New Orleans Plan,” but it’s far from certain yet whether or how much the Lambert plans or any others will bear much fruit with respect to funding and implementation either. Whatever the fate of the UNOP, it’s worth drawing some lessons from its latest venture, especially with regard to what passes for public participation, for posterity if nothing else.

Your assignment is to read the rest of her post (comment if so inclined) and chew on it for awhile.

This underscores my repeated refrain that real representation is lacking. Didn’t someone throw a Tea Party up north about that once?

For a look at the buzz that is starting already about the “democratic process,” in place  and how easily hacked it is. Read the comments under the original post Alan’s Blogometer » How You Can Rig the UNOP Election

I’ve voted three times in the UNOP planner poll. I did so to see that I could. It was easy for me. I don’t have to do anything special to create email addresses. My email server lets me make up fake address to catch spam. All I do is type them out. I have a dozen accounts anyway.

Please, don’t accuse me of election fraud. There is nothing legal about an online poll. This is not an election. There is no voter roll. There is no definition of who has franchise. They’ve changed the rules as they went along, in response to the many complaints. It’s the election that is the fraud.

All you need in order to vote to choose your planner on the the UNOP web site is a valid email address. This means that anyone with an email address can vote in this process. They do not have to be a resident of New Orleans.

How will we be able to verify that a given email address belongs to a particular neighborhood and district, let alone to New Orleans? (Answer, you can’t.) How will we be able to independently verify the results? (Answer, it’s too late.)

For some people it’s easy to create as many email addresses as they would like. They can vote as many times as they would like.

Yet for many citizens of New Orleans, obtaining an email address, or getting access to a computer is now a major challenge.

The UNOP has managed to develop a polling system that is trivially easy to fool, while at the same time extremely exclusive and difficult to use.

Any reasonable technology professional would be honest about how unscientific online polls are. They should only be used for entertainment purposes. (This process could hardly be considered entertaining.)

If all of our efforts in this democratic process are to be captured in what amounts to a web site’s guest book, I have no problem with that. But please, stop calling this a “democratic process”. Let’s let this be the final insult to democracy.

Our planners will be appointed. What’s wrong with that?

See: Outsourcing Democracy for further discussion, and How You Can Rig the UNOP Election.

Alan’s Blogometer / The Night Out Against the Night Out Against Crime

This morning it bothers me. My email inbox has invitations, from different neighborhoods, to join them in the Night Out Against Crime. I must respond that I’m going to be at the UNOP meeting. This is the planning meeting where we will be able to hear presentations from the different planning firms. This meeting scheduled in conflict with National Night Out Against crime, from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm. It is the only meeting. It is a difficult choice to make, and a crime that we are forced to make it.

This is one of the ways that disorganization and deliberately conflicting scheduling are impeding our rebuilding efforts. The UNOP meeting really had no excuses for its scheduling. After all the Night Out Against crime is well known, well in advance, and very much in people’s minds after the continuing escalation of violence. The number of murders this month is only slightly lower than las year at this time. Not bad unless you factor in the fact that we have only a small percentage of the original population back in Orleans Parish. Take that into account and it has doubled at least.

Just like the Mayoral race, we are given a catch 22. I raise my glass in Joseph Heller’s general direction.