The Assembly Democrats defend their secret, quadratic voting system. Throwing money at problems doesn't always solve them.
The Assembly Democrats defend their secret, quadratic voting system.
Back in July the Public Trust Institute (see earlier posts--they're a conservative legal group that brings suits against progressive, Democrat policy here in Colorado) sued the Assembly Democrats over their use of a secret quadratic voting system to help them decide what bills would make it to the floor and/or get funded.
They alleged (an allegation I personally agree with) that such a voting system was a violation of open meetings law in Colorado.
This article is the first one I've seen that outlines the arguments made by the Democrats' lawyer and thus I thought it interesting to share.
I'll leave it to you to read the article below to get a flavor for the legal arguments made both for and against this system being a violation of law.
I, however, don't see it as anything so complicated. Whether or not a court (all the way up to the CO Supreme Court who would be the ultimate arbiter of the legality) sees the quadratic voting system as legal, it will not make it okay. Legality doesn't equal morality.
And the Colorado Democrats cannot make a claim to transparency while they use this system.
Not even the ones like Epps and Marshall who got their 15 minutes of fame suing over other alleged violations of open meetings law (and stayed silent on this).
https://coloradofoic.org/court-briefs-lay-out-arguments-in-open-meetings-cora-lawsuit-over-lawmakers-use-of-anonymous-ballot-system/
Throwing money at problems does not always solve them.
The article linked below is a deep dive into the problem Colorado is having in staffing its prisons**. It's long but worth a read.
What I want to touch on here is the part underlined in red from the screenshot attached. This comes from the link.
I chose that because I think it's pretty generalizable with regard to throwing money at a problem. A common solution you hear to dealing with employee shortages is to say something akin to "well, we need to get the salaries to get more employees there".
I don't doubt that it will get heads turning when salaries come up. I also don't doubt that it will drive more people to try the job. This is Economics 101.
But we need to remember that people come into, and choose to stay in, jobs for a whole host of reasons, only one of which is money. In fact, I'd argue that outside of getting the basics right (making sure that taking a particular job doesn't mean poverty, for example), there are some jobs where money isn't in the #1 position.
I myself didn't go into teaching for the money. I knew what I was buying into and don't regret my decision even though it's meant lower income. I'm not alone in this either. Ask nearly anyone who's been a teacher a long time and they'll say the same.
And so we might get people into a job with higher pay, but we likely don't keep them because the pay was the only draw. Given that, and you can probably find tons of studies on this with a simple Google search, it often takes more money to get a new employee than to retain one, are we doing any good by spending more to cycle through tons of new recruits?
It gets worse, too, when you consider that there are some jobs (prison guard and teacher being examples) where experiences matters. New teachers are terrible for the first two or so years. New prison guards face experienced inmates who know the system and are often master manipulators. They need time to learn the scams. You could probably say teachers need to learn them too!
We should look beyond the simple and expedient answer of "they need more money". We should be looking at the traits and desires of those that have proven longevity in whatever jobs we're considering and aim our recruiting at people who have those traits. We should focus on the job satisfaction factors that matter to those currently holding positions we deem valuable and invest our time and money there.
Throwing money at the problem is not a fix and might indeed cause more issues down the road.
**I live out in Logan County not far from the Sterling Correctional Facility. There was talk a while back about needing teachers to teach college courses to prisoners. I threw my hat in the ring, but thus far the program has stalled. The reason why is that the prison has struggled to find guards enough to do its basic function. This is echoed in the article below and SCF is no exception in Colorado apparently.
https://www.westword.com/news/turmoil-inside-colorado-understaffed-prisons-18157923