At 03:14 AM 9/15/2006, Scott Ritchie wrote: >On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 02:50 -0400, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > > Gerrymandering uses the systemic disenfranchisement of voters through > > district elections to skew representation. That's all. Eliminate > > district representation and gerrymandering becomes impossible. > > >More specifically, gerrymandering exploits the wasted vote effect by >systematically concentrating wasted votes among a specific group of >people.
Precisely. > As a result, you can get rid of gerrymandering by any means >which lessens the wasted vote effect. Well, you can "lessen" gerrymandering, perhaps to a degree that it becomes more trouble than it is worth. Given, however, that wasted votes -- which discourage voting in general -- can be almost entirely eliminated, by a method which would probably bring other salutary effects, why not kill two turkeys with one stone? >There's no need for asset voting >in particular - any form of proportional representation with larger >district magnitude will handle the wasted vote effect. That is, with more representatives per district. This will *reduce* wasted votes, often. It still leaves substantial wasted votes. Wasted votes are intrinsic in systems that produce "winners" by eliminating "losers." Whoever voted only for losers has wasted their vote, in such a system. Ranked systems will reduce this effect, but only by forcing voters to cause the election of someone who might be repugnant to them.... Asset Voting cuts through this mess, wasting *no* votes except those that are wasted, deliberately or through negligence, by candidates receiving the votes, who refuse or are unable to combine excess votes with those from other candidates to create winners. In other words, there is someone specific who can be held accountable for the vote wasting. I would think that generally, wasted votes under Asset would be less than the quota for one winner. If it is a rule that one rep may be elected with less than the quota, being the rep with the highest vote after all the other winners are assigned, but not less than a majority of them, the only likely wasted votes would be no more than half the quota. Essentially, that last rep position becomes a single-winner election. Given that we assume that Asset Voting is public (the initial assignment of votes is standard secret ballot), the last position would likely be a negotiated one among all those candidates still holding unassigned votes. Asset Voting would, I expect, bring with it another major benefit. It is really a secret ballot form of delegable proxy. Under Asset Voting, and assuming that one may write in a candidate, voting becomes a totally free choice, by the voter, of a representative, to either fill the position, or to openly and publicly negotiate the winners. Consider the effect of this on campaign financing.... Imagine an assembly which is electing a council with N members at a public meeting, and I'll assume that the full assembly size is Q * N. The rule is that each member of the assembly gets one vote. Any group of Q members of the assembly may combine their votes and create a winner. This is a device for creating a proportional representation council from a larger assembly. Asset Voting is not necessary for this, with the assembly, because, I am assuming, the process is open, not secret ballot. Asset Voting is necessary in order to accomplish a similar purpose with secret ballot. It has been argued that Asset Voting is a bad idea because "I might not like the person chosen by the candidate I vote for." That's true. However, in a real legislature, much of the actual work is done by staff, which is chosen by the candidate who won. Being able to delegate, to choose trustworthy people, is actually a critical skill for any high-level office. In general offices like that of legislator, the skill set needed to perform the job includes or is similar to the skills needed to delegate the job. A legislator who cannot delegate well, essentially, should not be trusted with the job in the first place. So, sure, I might not like a choice made by the legislator. However, this is true of any choice made by the legislator during his or her term of office. Representative government requires surrendering personal control over governmental decisions (i.e., surrendering the right to directly vote on them), in favor of the efficiency of having this work done by a rep, an efficiency which becomes absolutely necessary when the scale gets large. But there is a possible exception. The efficiency is necessary with respect to the deliberative process. It is the inability to deliberate in very large assemblies that makes towns move from Town Meeting government, i.e., direct democracy, to (usually) Mayor/Council government. But this necessity does not apply to voting. Proxy democracy would allow the deliberation function to be concentrated in representatives, while still allowing direct voting by those citizens who decide not to trust how their proxy would vote. This can't be done with Asset Voting, or any secret proxy assignment process, because there is no specific connection between the voter and the representative. But with open proxy, where the proxy assigned is a matter of public record, it then becomes possible for an individual to vote and for that individual's vote, then, to be removed from the total votes being cast by the proxy. There are software systems currently being designed, it seems, that would accomplish this secretly. That is, the system compiles the total vote, allowing the individual to either vote directly, or to leave the vote to an assignd proxy. Presumably the proxy assignments are also secret, in that the proxy does not know who, exactly, has assigned the proxies to him or her. I consider this an interesting proposal, but greatly inferior to what I expect would happen where proxies are directly and personally assigned *and accepted*. I.e., as is standard in business proxies. (The argument that proxy assignments will be coerced has been raised, as an argument for secret systems. If it were such a problem, one would think that this problem would be manifest in the corporate environment, where billions of dollars can be involved and at risk.) ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
