At 03:37 PM 4/17/2007, Tim Hull wrote: >In my research of voting systems, PR, etc, I've been trying to come >up with the most simple candidate-based PR system that I can >possibly devise that uses votes for candidates and no other factors >to determine the winners ( i.e. open list and asset voting don't >count for this purpose).
This is a restriction which is guaranteed to reduce the fairness and flexibility of the system. Asset, in particular, is actually a deliberative process. It *does* use the votes alone to determine the winners. But the votes get distributed intelligently, by trusted agents. It's amazingly hard to get this very simple idea across: we already know how to hybridize direct and representative democracy, how to make it fully fair, it's been done for centuries. In business. Why we never think of doing it in politics is beyond me. Sure, you might argue that business is about property and politics is about ... what? ... but one would think that, at least, the analogous practices would be *considered* before being rejected. They aren't rejected. They aren't even considered. Asset Voting is essentially proxy voting. Proxy voting is used in business because people with power and choices *insist* on it. That is, such people want to be able to name proxies. A proxy is a *chosen* personal representative, as distinct from an elected collective representative. I think the reason it's difficult is history. Business *started* with individual rights, personal control of property, and then means needed to be developed for many people to make decisions cooperatively, *without* coercion. Coercion doesn't work when an investor can sell his or her shares and put their money elsewhere! But governments started (or at least became, long ago) as centralized systems of authority, and representatives, where they existed at all, were agents of the sovereign, assigned to a jurisdiction by the sovereign. And then came the idea of electing them, so that they represented "the people." In this, representatives were assigned and considered to represent districts. Not people. In a districted legislature, a representative supposedly represents all the people in their district, whether they love him or hate him, and whether he is fair to those who don't like him or not. As long as he represents the majority, his position is stable, and too bad about the minority. They do not get a voice. Period. Now, STV-PR does move away from this toward something more like personal representation. But Asset does it directly. It *is* personal representation. Delegable Proxy does this without the restrictions imposed by a peer assembly, so Asset Voting can be considered a more traditional form of Delegable Proxy. Asset Voting, by creating an elector class, makes it possible for something quite close to direct democracy to exist even with secret ballot. (To do this, it really becomes Delegable Proxy with a standardized distribution of votes so that the default voting power of each seat is the same, but when an elector directly casts votes, the elector's votes assigned to that seat reduce the voting power of the seat for that poll.) I'm not suggesting that the direct democracy potential of Asset Voting be used, at least not at first. It should be understood that simply using Asset to elect traditional members of an assembly, a group would be pioneering a new and quite exciting political reform. Asset Voting makes putting together an assembly a *cooperative* effort, quite distinct from it being a *competitive* one. Candidates who get enough votes are simply seated with no more fuss, but what is interesting with Asset is what happens with excess and other unassigned votes. Those who hold these "assets" *cooperate* to put together seats. (A few very popular candidates may be able to essentially appoint a seat or more, besides their own, but they still would generally have excess votes to distribute, less than a quota.) So, my question to Mr. Hull is this: Why would you prefer a deterministic, purely aggregative system, which must produce results with no further human input, over a deliberative one, which encourages and, indeed, requires voluntary cooperation? Aggregative methods are inherently inferior, as far as anything that has ever been proposed. Such methods are used, not because they are superior to deliberative methods, but because they have been considered more practical, due to the need for secret ballot. It's been thought that secret ballot requires a pure aggregative method. However, what has been overlooked, generally, is that, in the end, the representative is going to exercise what would otherwise be the votes of those represented, were it a direct democracy. Direct democracy is considered impractical because of the problems raised in deliberation in large groups. This, again, is based on an assumption that direct democracy requires the full right of deliberation on the part of all voters, i.e., every voter must be able to address the assembly and to enter motions. It is this that becomes impossible in large groups. Further, it is recognized that not all people have time to participate in the business of an assembly. If everyone can vote on assembly issues, what actually happens is that those who have more time to spare participate and those who don't have the time don't. And, one might notice, fanatics and ideologues always have the time. So representative democracy is considered essential to preserve the rights of the people in general. Asset Voting, it might not be realized, creates an elector class, a group of people who have accepted the responsibility of voting in public, not secretly. This isn't new! -- for this is exactly what representatives in assemblies already do. When you accept office in an assembly, you generally become public in your political actions. But in Asset Voting this is generalized to the election process itself. Under Asset Voting, we assume, anyone can declare as a candidate and becomes thereby eligible to receive votes. The votes aren't wasted, as they would be in many systems. The voting is far simpler. You don't have to rank a list. You can simply select the person you most trust. If you simply want to become an elector, you can vote for yourself, and it doesn't matter if you don't get any other votes. In the simplest form of Asset Voting, the ballot is a standard ballot. It might have a lot more names on it, or there might be a document with the names of all registered candidates on it, should such be legion. (This is the same as write-in votes, really, but chosen from a list of those who have agreed to accept votes. It isn't necessary if the number of people who wish to serve in that way is limited.) On that ballot, you vote for one or more candidates. It's like Approval Voting, with one critical difference. Approval Voting does not violate the one-person, one-vote rule because Approval is a single-winner system, and all votes for a candidate who does not win are moot. Only one vote has been effective, one cast for the winner, or no votes were effective. In no case is a voter able to cast more than one effective vote. But under Asset, *all* votes are effective, so, if a voter casts a vote for more than one candidate, the votes must be divided. It's easy to do with manual counting and trivial with computers. (I just described a manual method on the Range Voting list. It requires a ballot sort into piles with the same number of votes, before totalizing, that's all.) I've seen a series of objections to Asset Voting, and the majority of them boil down to objections to the very process of representative democracy. Allegedly, for example, Asset Voting will encourage corrupt "deals" in order to assemble the votes for seats. Yet, in the legislature itself, motions require the cooperative assembly of votes. Logrolling is simply part of the political process, part of how people compromise with each other. I'd suggest that if you don't trust a candidate enough to vote for him or her so that he or she can exercise your voting power in assembling seats in an assembly, you certainly shouldn't trust that candidate to exercise your voting power in the assembly itself! Where actual decisions are made, instead of merely deciding who makes the decisions.... There is, in fact, a deep cynicism that penetrates much of our thinking about politics.... it is part of the problem of reform, many or most people don't really believe that true reform is possible. This is actually the largest obstacle to improving political systems, an entrenched belief that it can't be done.... whatever we do, *they* will find a way to corrupt it.... ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
