On Tue, 24 May 2005 02:03:57 -0400 Abd ulRahman Lomax wrote:
At 04:02 AM 5/23/2005, Dave Ketchum wrote:
This time I see "variable voting" introduced as if it is a new concept
to be added.
Going back to the beginning of this thread, I had specified "Each
proxy has as many votes as they represent, directly or indirectly; a
voter with no proxy would have one vote."
Seems clear that the new phrase is not a new idea.
The original concept exists in all proposed bodies. It is
qualified with a limit in any body to prevent a single member
acquiring unacceptable power.
I think that Mr. Ketchum is responding to what may have been a
misunderstanding of mine, somehow it seemed at one point to me that he
was referring to a body with members who would have one vote each. It's
not worth it to me at this point to try to figure out how that
misunderstanding came about. Suffice it to say that we are talking about
proxy voting, where one person may exercise more than one vote, the
additional votes having been entrusted to him or her.
This time I see reference to a "Town Meeting town" - I did not intend
to force the proxies I propose on any government that had something
that worked well. Instead, the goal here is to offer better
representation when the best competitive method is PR.
Town Meeting works well. However, it could work much better. For
example, I've lived in this town for about three years and I just
attended my first Town Meeting. I've wanted to go before, but something
always came up. I had to stay home with my daughter, or we were
travelling, or is was sick, or whatever. That's a problem with Town
Meeting. If you can't go to the meeting, you are not represented at it.
Proxy voting could make this work better. There are other problems, too,
which could be ameliorated.
The essential problem is that, even though this small town is a direct
democracy, people still feel, quite often, alienated from the
government. I've written about the fact that sometimes Town Meeting
votes one way on an issue that Massachusetts law requires be submitted
for secret ballot, i.e., in a regular election, and the town votes
differently. Quite a bit differently sometimes. One person claimed that
this was because people didn't want to express their true feelings in
public. I don't think so. I think that most voters don't go to Town
Meeting, but they do vote. (There is always higher turnout in elections
than there is for Town Meeting.) And the communication between the
voters and the Town Meeting is obviously sometimes not as good as could
be. A delegable proxy system could accomplish this communication.
And, indeed, it could do it without any change to laws or existing
institutions. But that's another story, that's the Free Association part
that Mr. Ketchum would prefer kept apart from this particular discussion.
We argue over loops, which I declare must be forbidden. To clarify that:
Members of bodies are each the top proxy in a chain of proxies.
Seems we have TWO ideas, which I am convinced, need to be kept separate:
A delegable proxy chain, which has been the center of this
discussion, needs to have a top proxy in each chain, which becomes a
member of the body being created, and is responsible to those who
"elected" him.
What I will call an absence proxy may be included in the rules of
some bodies. These give the proxy holder whatever authority the rules,
and the proxy giver, choose to permit - but, generally, expect the holder
to act in the interests of the giver - rather than getting extra power to
advance the holder's interests. These have no effect on membership in, or
responsibility to, the body. I do not see value in these extending into
loops, but would not object if others see value in such.
A loop has no top proxy, since each points "up" to another voter
in the loop - so all the voters in the loop have deprived themselves
of representation in the governing body.
Turning this the other way, permitting a loop and then identifying one
member to represent the loop in the governing body, would require rules
designed to solve that problem.
--------------
As I have said, each member of a body has a weighted vote, according to
how many voter proxies the member holds, directly or indirectly. There
are many possible ways to set this up. There need to be limits on how
many members may exist, forcing small groups of voters with unique
interests to share a member - to have some voice together, rather than no
voice individually. There also need to be limits on the voting power of
individual members - preventing a single person from being too close to a
majority.
My picture is each voter, V, enrolling as giving proxy to Y, much as the
voter enrolls in a political party. Could be that Y gives his proxy to Z,
who thus inherits all that such as Y possess. This is flexible in that V
and Y can update their enrollments at any time. It also is public, in
that enrollment books cannot be dependably kept secret, even should this
be attempted.
Could do some variation of PR elections. No actual proxies here, but
secrecy is doable. Preparing for weighted voting changes the requirements
a bit. I propose that, after the election, those with too few votes to
become members combine forces to share a member. I have not studied PR
enough to get into more detail. Write-in candidates make sense, though
they might be required to register willingness.
I've been writing, off-list, a description of a delegable proxy
election, designed for situations where security or other concerns
require that most voters be able to assign proxy secretly. Essentially,
prior to balloting, persons willing to be chosen as proxies so announce,
they become registered proxies. Then there is balloting; in the
balloting, a means is provided for voters to name their proxies. This is
really like an ordinary election where vote counts are tabulated for
each candidate; but the number of candidates might be quite large. I
won't deal with the technical problems of ballot construction here, I
think they could rather easily be solved. The outcome of the balloting
and counting process is that registered proxies now have a number of
votes assigned to them. Neither they nor anyone else knows who these
proxy-givers are, only that they were voters.
My previous paragraph is compatible with this one, except they lose all
excuse for using the word "proxy". Agreed the ballot could be long, for
each voter gets to choose among ALL the prospective members. Might be
that a popular position could attract more votes than a single member
should be allowed - perhaps slates of candidates could run for such
positions.
(This is not how I'd prefer to see delegable proxy work, for it
eliminates an essential communication aspect of the system, the personal
relationship between representative and the one represented, but this is
a design for difficult circumstances, or as a replacement for an
ordinary election.)
The result of the election is that there is now a body of voters, the
registered proxies, who collectively represent all voters, including
themselves. Some of them might only represent themselves. (Registered
proxies would not be allowed to vote in the secret ballot; they exercise
their own vote in the subsequent process.)
Somebody only representing themselves has been shown by the election to be
unpopular, thus not deserving to be a member of the body.
At this point there is now what could be called the extended electoral
college, which votes in public. Because the point of using delegable
proxy is to obtain a deliberative body, it may be necessary to winnow
down the number of proxies who may have full participation rights in a
meeting of the body. This would be done by the open assignment of
proxies. The body size is fixed at N members maximum. The rank of each
elector is determined by assuming that no other electors are present at
the meeting: how many votes would the elector be holding? That number is
the rank of the elector. Starting at the top rank, electors are admitted
to full meeting rights, until N members have been admitted. If the
admission of a block of members of equal rank would cause N to be
exceeded, they are not admitted, and admission stops at that point.
(There are other reasonable procedures, this is merely a simple one.)
I choke on use of the phrase "electoral college" here - that body is off
in its own world.
The remainder of electors are regular electors, they still have the
right to vote, but not to enter motions, nor to speak at the meeting
absent permission from the meeting. (For some meetings, it might not be
practical to allow regular electors to vote; in which case those
electors may only exercise their vote by assigning proxy to a qualified
member, or, in some cases, to one who becomes qualified by the act of
assignment. I won't address bumping, where such an assignment causes a
qualified member to lose qualification, other than to mention it.)
Disagreed - I say above only that the remainder may combine forces, to get
representation of themselves by true body members (either by those inside
the quota, or by combining into a new member to displace a weak previous
member).
Again I choke on loops, but have some words earlier.
I see no reason to limit the creation of superproxies; however, the
rights of superproxies may be restrained by absolute quorum rules,
reconsideration rules allowing any member whose vote was cast for a
motion, directly or indirectly, to move for reconsideration of the
motion, and the like. A superproxy would be a total consensus president.
Not terribly likely. More likely there would be a number of top-level
proxies in a meeting of the college and each of them would contain a
loop, assuming that all top-level proxies each name a proxy, presumably
within their own group. (If they name a proxy outside their own group,
they just merged two groups, with the top of the second group being the
new top-level proxy.)
Do not understand superproxy as used here. The bodies would operate the
same as bodies elected by other methods.
See no merit in next paragraph.
Then the electoral college proceeds to carry out the election process.
It may use any election method. I'd suggest that it might start with an
approval poll, but my purpose here is not to choose the optimal election
method to be used by the college itself. It would choose that. It's a
deliberative body. But I'd think that one very simple method would be an
Approval Poll, followed by a motion to elect the winner of that poll.
The motion might require a simple majority to pass. However, the college
need not be restricted to any specific method, and the college may
develop its own standing and special rules. It may also recommend
overall election rules (including the first, secret-ballot phase) for
referendum.
Secrecy of proxy assignment. I see this as equivalent to voter
enrollment in a political party. Anyway, we need a verifiable record
of how many voters are represented by member X of a body.
We currently have election means of recording how many voters voted for
candidate X. That's enough. It is not necessary to know who those voters
are. (I claim it is generally desirable to know, at least for the proxy
to know whom he or she represents, for the giver of the proxy in any
case knows to whom it is given, but conditions, for a society in general
-- Iraq, for example -- or for individuals, may require secrecy, to
confine danger to those who have voluntarily accepted the danger. You
should not have to be willing to accept a danger of retaliation in order
to vote. No voter is required to join a political party, you do not lose
your vote in the actual election if you do not join, only your vote,
under some rules, in party primaries or other party process.
Proxies are not political parties. They do not need to have any
platform. In the system proposed, all they need to do is to be
identifiable and registered. If people don't trust them, they won't vote
for them.
If this is an election method, what counts is proxies in place at the
time of the election. Proxies might be frozen the day before.
Here the election CONSISTS OF the assignment of proxies, which thus
CANNOT be frozen the day before.
Earlier I now discuss proxies, whose selection is public, and PR
elections, for which secrecy is normal. What follows seems to mix the two.
There are two phases, about which I may not have been clear. There is
the secret ballot phase, which assigns proxies which cannot be revoked
(until the next election). This is undesirable, in general, but any
person who desires, who wishes to be able to revoke his or her proxy at
any time, may register as a proxy and thus participate in the second
phase. In the second phase, which takes place publicly and where proxy
assignments are public record, proxies may be revoked at any time,
though there might be some practical limit to this.
Yes, there is the "election" of proxies. The term is a little confusing,
because proxies are not elected. Proxies, in the system described,
volunteer. Their voting power is amplified if they are chosen, and if
enough people choose them in a system which has restricted membership in
the electoral college, they qualify for that college based on the number
of "votes" they receive, directly and indirectly.
I would prefer to leave proxy assignments to be as fluid as possible.
When I wrote of freezing proxy assignments, this would be a concession
to expediency, to be avoided if possible. I cannot possibly anticipate
all conditions!
I see assignments as public, just as party enrollment is public -
though this is election of body members, which is a bit more sensitive.
Indeed. In Iraq, as in many other places in the world, you publicly name
the wrong person as the one you trust, and you can't afford bodyguards,
you are dead. Secret ballot was invented for this.
I'm grateful for this exercise. For some strange reason, having an
initial secret ballot phase, creating an initial set of variable-vote
electors, had not previously occurred to me. This is because most of my
thinking has been about non-electoral systems; I'd worried about how to
use delegable proxy under unsafe conditions, and, before this, I hadn't
seen how, except by imposition of a trusted external authority. Which is
problematic, to be sure. (It is still necessary to some extent. Ballot
boxes can be stuffed, ballot destroyed, voter identities betrayed, etc.
Still, secret ballots are a pretty well-established solution to the
problem.)
I've also thought a bit about how to prevent the implied betrayal of a
voter to a proxy who was expecting to get at least one vote.... but I'll
leave describing that for another day.
We can think more on secrecy, but hard to do here without causing more
trouble than it is worth.
I think the secrecy problem is solved, with the exception of the detail
mentioned.
Where do you find an agency that deserves trust?
As I said, it's not easy. But we do it all the time. You do the best you
can. Fully public systems don't have the problem, I'd expect. But they
then have another problem, coercion and intimidation. So which problem
is the more serious one?
I actually think that a secret ballot phase could be a safeguard in any
system....
(Actually, one of the problems with present secret ballot systems is
that votes can't be verified. That could be fixed. But fixing it does
provide an abuse pathway. I think of the enforcer bullying the voter,
demanding to see their vote receipt, or their password. Or simply the
spouse....
I CANNOT picture a vote receipt that deserves trust - but that is a
problem for another day.
If you can verify votes, then, as I said, there may be a way to abuse it.
I would turn that around. Considering the quantity of work to be done,
you about need multiple committees - which demands a body of over a half
dozen members.
This assumes that all members of committees are what I've been calling
"fully qualified members." That is not a necessary restriction. You
could have a central council which has a relatively small number of
members, which can debate thoroughly, and a committee system around it
which has representatives, some of who would be of lower level. Acting
in committee, members would not necessarily be exercising proxies.
Committees, ideally, are places where a consensus is developed prior to
going for full debate and vote. So votes need not count in committees as
much as they count on the main floor. Committees, in my view, should
never make decisions, they rather make reports. The decisions are made
by the body as a whole.
I am thinking of the work a Senate or Assembly has to accomplish.
Certainly they must have a staff, but the committee members must put in
enough time for the output to be valid.
Also need enough members to permit a reasonable quantity of groups to
each have one or more members.
I'm concerned about what size does to an assembly. It makes it
impossible for every member to be heard, really. A body should be able
to create working committees which include appointed external members,
if more hands are needed, or hired staff.
Proxy trees for each body about have to be independent. The
issues that cause grouping of voters differ for each body and thus
mean that the trees must be created according to those issues.
Incidental that a group of voters MIGHT share interests and lower
level proxies for multiple bodies.
Note also that voters in a county proxy tree would often include
voters from multiple villages.
Yes. Of course. However, they might be organized into subtrees, each
from one village.
Mr. Ketchum conceives of proxy democracy being organized around issues.
I conceive of it being organized around relationships of trust. In the
latter, issues are tests, perhaps, but not the actual thing. The
standard for proxy that I would suggest is "Would you trust this person
to handle your affairs -- related to the activity of the organization
involved -- in your absence?"
Trust is important but, thinking of defining marriage or right to life,
you want to be able to trust your proxy to fight for what you believe in.
With delegable proxy, you don't have to know the person who will be a
member, say, of a high-level council. You just have to know someone who
knows someone who....
Yes, there might be different proxy trees for different governmental
levels. But I think it need not be that complex. In the end, people will
make what they want. Proxy democracy will allow them to do that...
It is not enough that ten voters could share a proxy. It only works
if ten voters who share a goal find, and sign up with, a proxy willing
to back their goal.
I think this is backwards, actually. But certainly Mr. Ketchum's view is
the common one. I think of the proxy in a proxy democracy as a leader,
not as a follower. The proxy is not a rubber-stamp for the voter.
Rather, the voter chooses a proxy as one trusted. This includes trusting
the proxy to change his or her mind if convinced by deliberation and
debate. It also includes explaining why, back to the voter.
So when government doesn't do what you think it should, at least you
will know *why*. And it will not be a dead end. If you know why the
arguments used to accept a motion were invalid, you only have to present
them to your proxy. You should choose someone who you would trust to
listen to you and give your ideas a fair hearing.
But part of the job of the proxy is to protect the generality from you,
from all your hare-brained ideas. I mean "me," of course. I really wish
I had a proxy I could present these ideas to, and he or she could tell
me why it is such a bad idea.... But I don't, so I have to keep plugging
away.
You cannot go to the top, combining such trees, for their tips have
to end in different bodies.
Ah, but what if a proxy at a level can choose the representative at
that level. This is effectively automatic with delegable proxy.
I see no value in this idea. My proposal is that the tip proxy in a
chain IS the body member representing that chain. Now, assuming a tip
proxy did not wish to be a body member, simple enough to find someone
willing to be a body member and make them the tip proxy.
I'm not sure how Mr. Ketchum could be so sure about "no value." I don't
even know what I was trying to say.... :-)
Yes, if a "tip proxy" doesn't want to participate in a body, but does
want to be represented there, together with all those represented by him
or her, it is only necessary to name someone else as proxy, delegable
proxy automatically transfers all the proxies. Indeed, one can name
someone else and instantly invalidate the assignments, simply by showing up.
This adds up to more rigidity than I propose. The voters in a tree
that defined a village trustee are not necessarily agreed as to which
state legislator they are willing to support.
Sure. But I was not proposing it as a *necessity*, only as a *possibility.*
We could sidestep a lot of this discussion by realizing that it is still
pie in the sky. We'll be lucky to see a Town Meeting adopt delegable
proxy, or even ordinary proxy; I'd really like to see some experiments,
and with these experiments, most of these complex questions are going to
be moot.
You *could* have a single political DP organization that managed all the
bodies. (Strictly speaking, the "single" organization is a collection of
mini-organizations, with different tip proxies. I'll define a single
organization, however, as one in which you may, at any time, name one
and only one proxy. Yes, for different organizational purposes, you will
need different organizations. But government might possibly be seen as a
single organizational purpose.... thus it *might* only require one
organization, but with levels, geographically organized. From the
collection of proxies which make up a town council, proxies are given to
other persons who form a county council; from the collection making up
the county council, proxies are given to persons who make up the state
legislature, from the collection of proxies which make up the state
legislature, proxies are given to persons who serve in the national
legislature, and beyond to an international organization.
Seems to me the U S Senate represents a rejection of this paragraph:
Originally, state government elected senators.
Now the voters elect senators.
This system would essentially require that direct proxies be given
locally; however, on reflection, I think Mr. Ketchum may be right, in
that if I'm in a town, I would want to name another person as my proxy
to serve on the town council in my absence (perhaps it is Town
Meeting...). If everyone does this, no proxies leave the town. But it is
desirable that everyone do this. So there must be a separate proxy
structure to go above the town level, that is, proxies which are active
on a different level. Essentially, a separate election for the various
"offices".
However, the secret ballot phase need only be one phase, a local one....
Succeeding levels are built from the local phase.
(And, of course, my proposal is to form the fully democratic and
equitable structure independently, which does not require changing
any existing institutions, and *then* to work on existing
institutions, which may or may not take on DP characteristics.)
But, if you make a structure independent from what exists, how does it
get control to accomplish anything?
The independent structure has the power to advise the people who retain
the power, the individual members. The people do have the power in our
societies, but they are not organized. Special interests are organized.
FA/DP is an organizational tool, a means of creating an organization
which can be trusted, and which must continually earn that trust, or it
loses most of its power.
"power to advise" does not sound like much muscle.
FA structures don't collect money for unappropriated purpose. They don't
have independent income; if they want to do something that requires
money, they must convince their members to contribute to that specific
cause. Pure FAs don't ask members to pay dues or fees which may then be
spent contrary to the member's beliefs or desires; rather FAs to be
effective, must develop internal consensus. However, the FA does not
restrain caucuses within it from acting independently.
Essentially, there is no reason not to join an FA, if you are interested
in what the organization addresses. Yes, it is true that the FA can't,
by itself, do anything. That's the good news!
Hey, you asked! :-)
Corporation shareholders do not have the voting rights you seem to
imagine. They do have some control, but not detailed management -
they have neither time nor skill to become management (though an
individual may prepare to cross the line).
Some shareholders do. There are companies which do nothing but represent
and exercise proxies for large institutional shareholders.
The problem with the corporate system is that shareholders are not
independently organized. FA/DP could reform the whole corporate
structure. All it takes is shareholders forming an organization to
facilitate corporate oversight, to advise the shareholders regarding
proxy assignments.
Yes, shareholders at present have very limited voting rights. That's
because they have not asserted their rights. If they were organized, the
rules would allow them to do pretty much whatever they pleased. All it
takes is a majority of proxies. And if they can't do it at one company,
they can sell their stock in that company and move to another. Share
corporations are close to Free Associations of capital. (But they hold
property, so they can't be true FA; the independent shareholder
associations would be, though, that could effectively run the
corporations, not directly, but by controlling the choice of directors.)
They say more than "I want the job". Assuming the body will have some
control over the response to Bush proposals about Social Security, the
candidate promises to support (OR fight against) the Bush proposal.
Which, to me, is not the proxy I would choose. Rather, I would choose a
proxy who, I thought, was able to understand the Bush proposal and what
is right and wrong with it, and able to make better proposals, and able
to make compromises if politically necessary, to generally act with
balance and wisdom.
Some who is eager to make promises, I wouldn't trust. What Mr. Ketchum
is suggesting as a standard for choosing proxies is exactly what we have
been using for two centuries. I'd say that part of democracy hasn't
worked very well....
Delegable proxy is a mechanism to make direct democracy scalable while
remaining deliberative. It is representative democracy without
elections, and it will work best when proxy choices are based on trust,
and direct proxy assignments are made at a low level, person to person,
where the giver knows the receiver and they can have a chat.
I see some more fine tuning, followed by practice runs:
In organizations outside government, and
In smaller government units such as villages and towns.
Yes. And the NGO trials don't require any laws, they only require a few
people deciding to organize on this basis. If it works, it will be imitated.
One of the realizations has been that FA/DP as applied to, say, a small
town, could create an independent organization of town voters. I think
this may actually happen in our town, there is starting to be some
interest, some realization that it need not be complicated, and it need
not take a lot of effort, and yet it could be quite effective in
improving communication between the town and the town citizens, between
Town Meeting and the majority of voters who are unable to attend.
How does all this stop me, with 10,000 proxies, from disconnecting
from the member I had liked, and connecting to the one I now like
better?
Nothing. However, the response of those you directly represent might
give you pause. If your decision seems foolish to them, they might
decide that they can't trust you, especially if they don't trust the
person to whom you gave proxy.
Trust is only part of it. Going back to Social Security (or whatever
are our important issues), did my switch please these particular voters.
This concept is one which assumes a maintained distance between voters
and government. But the proxy is a bidirectional communications link. If
direct proxy assignments are generally limited, to communicate to the
voters the reasoning behind a governmental decision only requires that
proxies communicate back to their direct proxy-givers, to explain why
they voted as they did. Then those give the explanation down the tree,
each one only handling a relatively small number of communications. Thus
someone you trust contacts you to explain why the Town Meeting voted to
have a tax override, and why he or she thinks you should support it.
You are still free. Here in Mass, tax overrides must be presented for
secret ballot...
Ignoring the label "media star", the ideas in this paragraph influence
voters in their choice of proxies, plus what I said before about
voters looking for proxies who will advance their goals.
Which, as I've said, is not the best criterion for choosing a proxy. A
good proxy will essentially enhance communication between the member and
the organization, which might or might not advance a preconceived agenda.
However, people will be free to use whatever criteria they choose in
selecting proxies; sometimes I think, however, that direct proxies might
be limited to a certain number. And other times I think this is
unnecessary, and it does limit the freedom of members to make that
restriction, so on principle I'm inclined against it.
Wouldn't it be interesting to find out? This is another aspect to the
FA proposal. It represents trying out the proxy system in an
organization that doesn't own anything to damage.
If no ability to damage, how much ability to be constructive?
There is the possibility of damage; however, FAs, in order to do much
damage, must convince their members to do the damage, and that
conviction must arise in a process which is constitutionally open to
full debate. I simply think it quite unlikely that FAs will be
destructive, unless destructiveness is a consensus position among
members. In which case it is likely to take place anyway.
What we are missing is a way to coordinate our activity with efficiency
and in such a way as to encourage the development of consensus. FA/DP is
an organizational techology which could do it. And if we can do that, we
could then apply our collective power. It is this power which will
accomplish things; the FA/DP organization is only a means which could
make it possible for that power to be focused.
The word "platform" seems to disturb you - what label would you place
on a potential proxy's positions on Social Security, etc.?
Platform is a collection of fixed positions. Politicians use platforms,
as do political parties. To my mind, platforms simply confuse issues,
especially because they conflate various issues that are not
intrinsically connected. I'm interested in what ideas a candidate has,
how they think about the issues of the day, but I'm not interested in
promises. Platforms, generally, consist of promises. And the norm is
that those promises are broken.
And, quite often, the breaking of the promises is the salvation of
society. And that is crazy. We shouldn't push our servants, which is
what officials should be, into making promises. We should insure that
they are educated and prepared for the challenges they will face, we
should certainly have some idea about how they will proceed, but we
should not nail them to their promises. And, as I said, promises carry,
for me, a slightly bad taste.
When someone says "I will never lie to you," I start to wonder about
everything they have said.... But there are people that I think will
never lie to me, but they never have to say that. They simply show,
again and again, that they tell the truth, even when it is inconvenient
and uncomfortable and it means admitting error.
Happens the people who wrote the constitution DID RECOGNIZE the
possibility of needing change in the future, DID PROVIDE a mechanism
for making changes, and dozens of such changes have been made.
Dozens of changes have been made in a system which is reeking with
difficulties. I'm not proposing radical and sudden change, which
generally does more harm than good, but the Constitution represented
many compromises made for the conditions of the time, which conditions
passed and we are largely stuck with the consequences.
There is a tension between the need for stability and gradualness in
change and the effective dictatorship of the minority which is created
by supermajority requirements. We have a very quirky system, however,
where a small majority evenly distributed can act as a supermajority. If
we fix that, we are going to run into a problem, it will become much
more difficult to amend the Constitution. That, I think, will not be
good.... This is a big issue I'm not even going to begin to address today.
[Dividing the electoral vote]
Exists, to a limited extent in a couple small states, if I remember right.
Yes, I just forget the exact number and which states.
Now, think of New York doing this in a large state that presently
expects all its votes to help Democrats.
New York COULD split its votes between Democrats and Republicans -
greatly pleasing the minority Republicans, and infuriating the
majority Democrats.
Can you imagine the New York legislature making such a change?
No. Because the change requires the majority party in every state to
transfer votes in the national election to minority parties. It is
against their interest, or, at least, in the short term it is. Come a
shift in party loyalties, it could help them in the future.
But it is clearly an equitable change, and this was my point.
Institutions resist equitable changes when those changes deflate the
artificially inflated power of a subset of members.
Now, a constitutional amendment doing this in all states could make
sense. How do you sell this, when it is different from what the
couple states have done?
Obviously, it will be a hard sell. Not impossible, but it is not the
first project to tackle. The first project is simply to test delegable
proxy (and the same thing is true for the various election methods; from
my point of view, any application of any of them is a step in the right
direction. The more people realize that there is more than one way to
run an election, the more they will start to consider alternatives. But
the basic thing I think that needs to be taught is the power of
consensus. It really is shortsighted for a mere majority to impose
itself on a substantial minority; absent necessity, it weakens society
to some extent whenever even one person is coerced. When society is
weakened, we are all hurt.
(However, I'm generally opposed to rigid supermajority or consensus
rules, for they can result in the tyranny of the minority, which is
clearly worse than the tyranny of the majority. Essentially, the
majority must retain the right of decision; but the process should
clearly provide for full hearing and response to minority views, and for
amendment, where possible, to widen consensus. I.e., Approval Voting, as
an example of something that tends in this direction.)
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Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026
Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
If you want peace, work for justice.
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