At 05:30 AM 3/9/2006, Raphael Ryan wrote: >Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >[description of standard secret-ballot procedure] > >Is this not inconsistant with the following ? > > >But with direct democracy using delegable proxy, you can have your > >cake and eat it too. If you most agree with A, and by this you > >consider that you trust A, you can give your proxy to A, but if A > >happens to disagree with you on your favorite issue, you simply vote > >directly on that issue, for you will follow it and know when votes > >need to be cast. You don't have to follow all the stuff that you > >trust A to handle properly. You don't have to vote for F just because > >F agrees with you -- or, more often, pretends to agree with you -- > >thus sacrificing every thing else.
Yes, it *is* inconsistent. Secret ballot is inconsistent with clear and full assignment of responsibility, with mutual communication. I won't go into all the details. >The only way to link them would be to require that ballots are >stored for the duration of the term. Which still means that the rep does not know who voted for him, thus he does not know who is represented by him, and he cannot communicate directly with them. (There is also the problem of scale, which exists even without secret ballot.) Raphael goes on to propose a scheme whereby assignment of proxies is secret, but he postpones the effectiveness of legislation until what he calls "minor elections." However, I fail to see any true difference between the minor elections and the major one. The effect is that a voter may change his or her proxy at any minor election. I think there are holes in the scheme given, but it is not necessary to point them out. The problem of continuous secret assignment of proxies is soluble, I have no doubt about that. I think there are better solutions than here proposed. However, they all depend on some metasystem which is trustworthy. That problem, too, may be soluble. Open source software, verifiably running on redundant systems? But I also think that such a system would inevitably lead to one of two things: a new oligarchy or delegable proxy. Why not start with the preferred of these two outcomes? The problem of government is also the problem of democratic change. How do we organize to improve conditions? I'd say that whatever is efficient for one is also efficient for the other, as long as it is a scalable solution. Simple direct democracy is not scalable, that's well-known. Representative democracy is only scalable to a point, to the point where the gap between the representatives and those represented becomes too large for good communication to take place. Representative democracy, at best, only postpones the scalability problem. FA/DP solves it once and for all, by making the organizational structure into a fractal, self-similar regardless of scale. If secret ballot is necessary, then a very simple solution is to make the first level of proxy assignment purely local. However, this disenfranchises those who adhere to a small minority position, unless it is possible for a representative to be "elected" at this small level who only has one supporter, perhaps himself. Essentially, people could volunteer to openly vote. This does cause problems with maintaining secrecy in the presence of coercion. I'll note, however, that detecting coercion could be quite easy. To safely maintain coercion, the coercer must monitor *all* the activities of the one coerced, if, that is, coercion is unlawful. I really don't think that secret ballot is necessary any more, in most places. But many will still want it, and, as long as reports of coercion are taken very, very seriously, allowing people to voluntarily vote openly, which makes things *very* simple and efficient, make more sense to me than a complex scheme. (If there is a trusted overseer, even in the presence of serious coercion, one could have secrecy and openness. But I won't go into how here, no time. In summary, an open voter could secretly change his or her vote. I.e., vote openly *and* secretly, with the secret vote voiding the open one. There are details, to be sure....) ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
