At 07:10 AM 6/11/2005, Jobst Heitzig wrote:
Abd ulRahman has suggested recently to put up a wiki in which we
could try to reach consensus about elementary aspects of voting
systems.
On the Approval Voting yahoogroups list, I offered to put up an Approval
wiki if anyone asked me to. Since I was asked, I did,
http://av.beyondpolitics.org
Pretty empty at the moment, but at least it is there!
I make the same offer for Election Methods. If asked, I'll do it. By
default, I'd make it em.beyondpolitics.org, but I'm totally open to
suggestions for the subdomain. (And if someone wants to buy a domain with a
better name, that's fine too. They're cheap. Or, as I say below, it could
simply be the Election Methods wiki.)
My one condition for my offer is that the group *start* with Free
Association rules and delegable proxy, at least in theory. The two
provisions are actually both protections that interrelate. A Free
Association can, among other things, vote to turn itself into anything
else, and the caucus which wants to go that way may go that way and the
remaining caucus can continue with the status quo. I'd truly be a hypocrite
if I claimed to favor democratic organizational methods, and especially
methods that are designed to promote consensus, and then I prevented a
consensus from forming and tried to block its implementation, or I even
tried to block a majority beyond perhaps a little delay to ensure full
deliberation. So I promise that the *worst* thing I would do is to, with
notice, stop hosting the wiki and that in that case I'd make the data
available to any substantial group of members of the organization. And, as
usual, I use far too many words in advance....
(delegable proxy is not important when an organization is very small. I
just insist that members be *allowed* to name proxies if they choose and
that these designations be automatically delegable. In practice, if the
organization is very small, this will be practically moot.)
I consider this a nice idea and have as a first step started a wiki
page on which we could collect essential questions about what
single-winner election methods should be like, and what opinion the
individual members of this list have about those questions. It is in
an easy-to-edit tabular form with rows of possible statements and
columns for each person. You can indicate your degree of agreement
to each statement by entering --,-,0,+,++, or ?.
The page is this: http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Essential_Questions
I favor any and all such initiatives, without, as yet, making a personal
judgement as to the process implemented. We can improve a poor process (if
it is poor), just as an editor can improve badly-written material; but if
there is *no* process, nothing of value is likely to be produced.
It would be nice if many of you could have a look at it and add their
opinions -- it should be some fun!
I will.
I started with some 30 questions in several categories which seemed
important to me, but surely the list will have to be enlarged by you.
That's what wikis are for. If used, they can develop hypertext documents
that could not be produced by any single individual. They can develop
consensus and show it, but without some method of actually polling the full
community, there is no way to prove it, for some members may have stopped
looking, perhaps disgusted by the messy process along the way.... This is
why delegable proxy. It is a way for someone interested to decide to stop
personally following an issue, while still remaining connected and
reachable through their proxy.
Delegable Proxy is not an election method, though, as has been described
elsewhere, it can be used as part of one. Rather, it is a method of
assembling representation and ideas and communicating in *both* directions.
Delegable Proxy, in theory at least, I hope we know soon from actual
practice (a number of initiatives are in initial phases as this is
written), should allow a relatively rapid back-and-forth involving the
entire community of those who decide to participate. Since participation is
made so "cheap," there is really no reason *not* to join except complete
disinterest or a fear that the organizers will pester you. Hopefully, our
record will show that this latter fear is not merited.
At the moment, the page is not linked to from other wiki pages since I
did not quite know where to put that link -- perhaps someone could do
that.
The existing EM wiki may serve for the organizational purpose *if* the
owners are willing to serve as trustees for it, and are trusted. I don't
know them but I'm sure there are those here who do. From the appearance of
things, and if I had to make an immediate decision, I'd trust them.
----
Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
