On Apr 7, 2007, at 8:01 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Consider this: if you have a system designed for one vote, what do
you do if the voter marks more than one? Typically, it will be
considered an error and the vote is discarded.
Note that depending on the style of ballots the risk (and
opportunity) of voting several candidates may not exist. See e.g.
http://www.vaalit.fi/17098.htm and http://www.vaalit.fi/35412.htm.
It is easier to arrange the option to vote for multiple candidates in
single-winner elections (e.g. Approval) than in multi-winner
elections. I don't have any favourites at the moment on how
MultiGroup could be enhanced in this direction. Asset style vote
splitting is one option but it may add more complexity than it brings
benefits (at least if the ballots are as described above).
Once you are going to consider having overlapping districts, i.e.,
there can be more than one representative who represents a
particular geographic location, with some representing the entire
state, my question remains. Why be more complicated?
My default setting comes from the multi-party tradition where it is
typical that regions are quite large and several candidates are
elected from each of them (PR). The MultiGroup method makes it
possible for some candidates to indicate that they represent e.g. the
western section of the region, or that they represent the western
section of region B and eastern section of region A.
One interesting scenario would be to allow any candidate to collect
his/her votes from area of his/her preference as long its size (in
number of citizens/voters) stays within agreed limits. The basic
assumption here is that the society wants to force proportional
regional representation and therefore no candidate is allowed to
collect votes fro the whole country. MultiGroup could be used to
relax the fixed (and possibly too rigid) region borders. Candidates
representing "border areas" could also get a natural base (for them)
of citizens to represent. In addition to this kind of mandatory
regional representation rules also smaller voluntary regions/groups
could be used.
Complex reforms are pretty unlikely to be implemented. I don't
think that the citation of "tradition" as a difference makes sense.
Neither of these is traditional.
For an open list system the delta to MultiGroup is just to add some
attributes in the candidate list after each candidate name and
enhance the counting rules a bit to cover this. The structure of the
groups (e.g. parties, regions and their relationship) could deviate
only a little from what the grouping has been before.
If we really want to go outside of *political* tradition, we could
go to delegable proxy (though this, in fact, simply brings in long-
standing tradition in corporate governance); Asset, as I've been
describing it here, remains with a peer legislature.
I have no particular need to step out of the existing traditions of
any country/organisation/society. In some cases radical changes may
be needed to improve the system, but in other cases small
enhancements could make the difference and put the evolution in a
constructive/positive track.
I will also note that I did look over Juho's proposal, and, beyond
seeing similarities to Asset, I didn't understand how it works.
That should be taken as a flaw. (Certainly how it works may have
been explained, but that I didn't see it readily means that it has
not been explained in a way to make it easy to follow. Part of the
problem could be the complexity.)
I had one example but I admit that it was not very detailed and I
used a lot of abstraction, not fixing the s function, the criteria
for "optimal outcome" and the calculation process to be used.
This mail is already getting long, but I give one additional short
description of how the calculation could be done.
Each voter votes one candidate. Each candidate may belong to various
groups. Each group will be guaranteed a proportional share of the
seats (on could use e.g. largest reminder as the criterion). Check
all possible outcomes of the election (this is a laborious task but
the idea is simple). The outcome that implements the proportionality
best for all groups and candidates will be selected as the final
outcome (best = largest deviation compared first, then next in case
of a tie etc.).
I think this is quite simple, with the exception of the computational
complexity of checking all the possible outcomes (=> some heuristic
approximate algorithm can be used to fix that).
Another existing stream with connections to multiple interests is the
possibility to give proxies to different persons on different topics.
What does this have to do with Multigroup?
No tight connection. Just that it addresses the question of how to
better address multiple topics like use of nuclear power, education
and employment within one election method/system.
The bills before a legislature are generally not "topics." There is
not one legislature for, say, business law, and another for criminal.
The vanilla version of MultiGroup doesn't address this problem. Of
course proxies and "different proxies on different topics" could be
used to elect different legislators settings for different areas is
an option also in MultiGroup (maybe practical, maybe not).
Asset Voting...
A political party that was small and spread thin, but with enough
loyal voters, state-wide, to gain a quota of votes, would gain
representation state-wide. A party with even less support than
that, could cooperate with other similar groups to create a seat
that represents more than one party, presumably with similar
agendas or interests.
I tried to go also further, to allow even country wide small (roughly
quota size, cross region, possibly cross party) groups to get one
representative.
That's not "further." That's what I proposed and describe, and what
I described went a little further.
Ok, sorry, I thought you limited the interest groups to the (U.S.
style) states and did not allow federal level support to be
collected. One very key property of MultiGroup is to be able to
support "cross anything" groups (if the society so wants).
If the system doesn't *require* formal groups, and Asset does not,
it fully "allows" them.
Ok, STV and Asset Voting could be used e.g. so that the candidate
lists clearly present the candidates as belonging to parties. Voters
are then free to either support candidates of one party or make some
other choices.
To apply the terminology of "imposed system," you would look at the
election methods and procedures. Currently, political parties in
the U.S. typically own the ballot. Yes, you can get on the ballot
as an independent, but it can be an onerous process.
The U.S. system is one very special example. I see it as a two-party
system. You could say that it fails to elect anyone outside the two
parties, or you could say that since the system is (intentionally
planned to be) a two-party system it is not even supposed to elect
anyone outside the two parties.
Also the latter viewpoint has some interesting justification behind
it. One could say that in a two-party system the intention is to seek
the median opinion of the voters, and the opinions of the two parties
are expected to change so that the borderline between them always
moves towards the median opinion when the median opinion changes.
I leave it to the U.S. citizens to decide if they want the system to
be changed to a multi-party system or if they want to continue using
(and enhance as needed) the current two-party system. (Also
intermediate forms are possible, like allowing presidential elections
to sometimes pick a candidate outside of the two major parties - but
that is maybe a separate topic for discussion.)
it is an imposed system that the party names are on the ballot at all
That could also be called "information" (at lest in MultiGroup in
multi-party countries). The act that the two major parties of a two-
party system dominate e.g. the candidate nomination process may be a
source of irritation though (and arguably even a factor that limits
the responsiveness of the political system).
If there is some structure for allocating votes, something, perhaps
that Juho is designing now, that's a "top-down, imposed system." I
mean that it is not created from the bottom, contrasted with how
Asset creates seats or delegable proxy selects top-level proxies.
One idea behind MultiGoup is to soften the monolithic party model by
allowing them to show different flavours and colours within them. In
principle also political parties (especially in dynamic multi-party
systems where parties come and go) should be seen as organisations
that are created bottom-up by citizens to represent them and their
viewpoints/ideologies/targets. Associating candidates and parties
formally on the candidate list is maybe not that different from use
of informal associations between candidates and parties (I'm assuming
that parties or similar groupings will exist in any case in "country
size" political systems).
in
MultiParty candidates declare their affiliations/preferences/policy
before the election,
Is that a difference? Can't candidates do that in Asset? Are
candidates *required* to do this in Multiparty?
Voluntary declaration of links to parties is possible in Asset
Voting. Declarations are also fully voluntary in MultiGroup. The
candidates may or may not belong to existing parties. (The society
may however set some limitations on who is accepted as a candidate
(one may e.g. need some fixed number of signatures of supporters
before one is accepted on the formal candidate list) and if each
candidate has to represent some limited region.)
One difference is that in MultiGroup the declared associations to
different groups are used in determining which candidates will be
(proportionally!) elected.
So instead of deciding based on platforms -- which are simply
promises and, often, platitudes, designed to create an appearance
of "this is what we want" for voters -- I vastly prefer to see
representation based on trust. Personal trust. There is no
substitute for it except the deception, hypocrisy, and pretense
that passes for politics today. Even the best and most trustworthy
candidates are forced to play the game.
Note that to some extent grass always looks greener at the other side
of the fence. Current political systems may not work optimally. But
also future and alternative political systems are subject to
corruption. Continuous efforts are needed to keep the system working.
Sometimes it is better to change an old system to a new one, but
often it is also enough just to remove whatever rotten apples there
are and find ways how to avoid such problems to emerge repeatedly in
the future.
I certainly don't believe that the current models of democracy are
optimal and final but I want to see good justifications for each step
we take. This is to avoid steps in wrong directions. There have been
also failures among the new social trials of different countries.
Proxy
Yes, there are many potential uses for proxies.
Juho
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