Kitchen Democracy Turns into Online Oligarchy

A tiny nonprofit operates a web site that allows citizens to weigh in on local issues like zoning changes without attending city council meeings.  But there are complaints of ballot stuffing in online polls, which a little analysis shows is a credible claim.   

The East Bay Express (Jeremy Singer-Vine) reports on discontent with a web site with the public purpose of increasing participation in local government.  Kitchen Democracy (EIN 20-5151205 too small for a Form 990) was started by Robert Vogel and his wife Simona Carini in March of 2006. 

Its web site is so well thought out and slick in its presentation that it's hard to believe that it's the work of a single dedicated couple.  Elected officials and registered participants have the ability to suggest topics for discussion.  For the topics suggested by participants, other participants rate the participant topics for importance, actionability, balance, and clarity.  Based on the ratings, these topics are then moved to the open issues section, where participants are allowed to vote and comment on them.  There are over 2,000 registered participants, but average participation in votes is a bit over a hundred. 

Controversy arose because city councilman Gordon Wozniak took interest in the site, and even provided $3,000 in funding for it.  The plurality of registered users are from his district, which other councilmen say is not representative of the city as a whole (apparently it is more affluent and has fewer minority residents). 

In one instance, a zoning proposal to convert a garage into a restaurant (which would create local parking issues) was put to a vote on Kitchen Democracy and received an 80% favorable decision, prompting claims of ballot stuffing. 

I took a look at the votes so far on KitchenDemocracy.org to see whether there were any patterns (click image to enlarge).  What I found was that the average number of votes in the case of lopsided decisions (80% or more for one side) was 235, while the average close vote (less than 80% for the winning side) had only 90 votes.  Three of the top four issues in total participation were local zoning issues that one would not ordinarily expect to attract wide interest, and the side favoring zoning change had margings of 70% of 235 votes, 80% of 217 votes, and 92% of 409 votes. 

Kitchen Democracy as presently constituted seems like an excellent and well thought-out way for the affluent to publicize issues that they are concerned about and to make their views known to their elected officials.  Anybody can participate in theory, but in practice those with a vested interest in any given subject will be able to dominate the conversation.  Of course that's more like oligarchy than democracy, but nobody ever said the Internet was for everybody. 

Comments

[Robert Vogel]

Thanks for the compliments about the site design. Indeed, Kitchen Democracy is largly the work of me and my wife - it has consumed nearly 100% of my time over the past 16 months!

The statistical trends you observe are true, and simply reflect the fact that issues which attract large vote counts tend to do so on one side of the issue - When people feel strongly, they tend to feel strongly about one side but not the other.

As for your concerns about the role of the affluent versus the general population, I share them. Affluent residents are overrepresented on Kitchen Democracy, leading some to believe that it represents the vested interests of the wealthy. While the affluent do indeed participate more than the poor, this is true not only for Kitchen Democracy. Unfortunately, this problem is endemic to our political system; just look who actually votes in elections.

The good news is that Kitchen Democracy makes government accessible to anyone who uses a computer (including those at the public library). Because going online is considerably easier than attending late-night meetings, we believe Kitchen Democracy makes the democratic process more inclusive of a diverse range of participants. In fact, Kitchen Democracy issues typically attract participation from 10 times as many people as agenda items discussed solely in council chambers. More importantly, it appears that this is true for participants from the poorest district to the most affluent.