> Hertfordshire County Council did issue an "opinion gathering"
> voting sheet a couple of years ago, which they weren't bound to
> follow, but which gave the impression that they were asking
> people what they wanted

>From Think It Over, NZ Listener 16/7/05, an article about
information overload. The article also questions how any
decisions can be made, given the conflicting studies about
just about anything

"The infoglut is not only stifling intelligent debate but also
threatening consensus, the very basis of democracy. With
so many sources of information available, it's much harder
for the politicians to get their messages across because the
audience is increasingly fragmented across different media.
Appearing on Close Up won't help you influence the younger
demographic who watch Campbell Live or the devotees of
Shortland Street [all of these are on at 7pm] or those unwinding
with a Sky movie or video game. It's not surprising then that
polling has assumed paramount importance. It's the only accurate
way of determining how voters are reacting. Instead of politicians
taking positions closer to their personal convictions because
they had no real idea of what voters thought on particular issues,
they now find themselves reacting to a constant stream of
polling information.

As David Shenk [Data Smog - Surviving The Information Glut]
says, this has reduced leaders to followers. Which might be no
bad thing if citizens were capable of making leadership-quality
decisions, "But they're not, because they're simply too busy
with their own complicated, distracted lives, and because
their knowledge is too specialised and fragmented to help them
make intelligent decisions on broad national issues. Therefore we
have the an unfortunate coinciding of two consequences of
technology : more citizen power with less citizen understanding"

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