At 11:22 AM 9/21/2007, Howard Swerdfeger wrote: >The drive behind thes moves it usually that the old system fails to >translate votes into seats "fairly". (Votes != Seats)
If we want to understand fair proportional representation, we must look back to the principle of representation itself, and to pure representation, which does not involve elections, except in the most basic technical sense. If we have an assembly at which all members of a society may attend and vote, and if every eligible voter actually attends and participates, we have a pure and complete democracy. Unfortunately, as scale increases, and even on a small scale in common situations, this goal is impossible to attain, because there are differing abilities of members to actually attend a meeting and devote the necessary time to the issues. So even Town Meeting government, as we have in New England in many small towns, fails in certain respects. Town Meeting in the small town where I lived for some years often had trouble finding a quorum for meetings, and the quorum was five percent of town members. However, it still worked reasonably well, because town government tended to operate seeking consensus. These were neighbors and friends, and the people who actually attended Town Meeting were, informally, representing many of those who could not. But not all, and not proportionally, which we could see clearly in some situations. Massachusetts law requires secret ballot votes, at the regular polls, for tax overrides. It is fairly common for a tax override to be approved by Town Meeting and to fail at the polls. Obviously, Town Meeting is not accurately representing (or shaping, same thing) Town opinion. We can presume that most people active in Town Meeting also vote at the polls, but then there are many more who vote in the polls but who don't attend Town Meeting (perhaps larger by a factor of ten or so). So, in order for everyone to be represented in an assembly, we need some kind of representation. There are two basic forms, and the difference between them is so drastic that it is a wonder to me that we have the one, in political practice, supposedly in democracies, when, in situations where people have free choice, they would never pick it! But, to my knowledge, for governmental applications, we have never been offered that choice, and, where we might have been able to implement it -- as with Town government in New England -- the idea seems to have never even occurred. The two systems are, of course, elected representatives by some scheme, for better or worse, or chosen representatives. A "choice" is an "election" which is why I will acknowledge that proxies are "elected," but it is not a contested election. That is, the "voter" has the absolute right to choose anyone as representative, or to participate personally. This is the *norm* in business! But it is *never* done in politics! Part of my task is to ask the obvious question, as with the emperor wearing no clothes: "Why?" I do have pieces of the answer, but it is an open question. Much of it is simply history. Our present governmental systems, in "democracies," evolved from undemocratic forms, with a gradual extension of freedom coming down from the top. That is, a collection of feudal lords were able to demand rights from the sovereign whom they chose to govern the overall society. But they were a small group, and they had no need for proxy representation. (But note that in some assemblies, even governmental ones, such as in New York, members can vote by proxy in some situations, I think committee votes can be by proxy. And there are moves to attempt to limit this, it being considered an abuse, and if a "proxy vote" is merely an absentee vote, I agree. The systems I propose do not necessarily allow directed votes; rather, the proxy simply votes, and those represented are considered to have voted in the same way, unless they intervene and vote directly.) Proxy democracy creates a perfect PR assembly, practically by definition, but it is not, generally, a peer assembly. There is a variant which, with a sufficient "district" size -- particular an election district which is the entire jurisdiction -- is usable with secret ballot, and which creates *almost* perfect proportional representation. Note that I say proportional representation, not proportional voting. However, when we have party-based PR, and we assume party-line voting, then voting power and representation are essentially the same thing. But the key to understanding PR is not voting power, per se, but rather moves two tumblers: (1) representation in deliberation, and (2) representation in voting. One of the realizations I came across in this study was that the two were separable and have different requirements. One of the reasons that direct democracy has been considered impossible to scale has been that the two were not separated. Direct participation in deliberation is what is impossible for all, when the scale is large, the noise becomes insuperable. (There are attempts to deal with the problem, to be sure, in certain web communities, but they involve software filtering based on voting. These are *not* direct democracy, they are machine-mediated representative democracy, where the machine acts as the representative, amalgamating judgements by members without exercising focused intelligence. I haven't participated in such communities, but I pretty much know what to expect: frustration. Nevertheless, there are hybrids possible which could ameliorate this, but then we would look at what the hybrid would involve... which is what I'm proposing.) Direct voting has been possible for a long time. Direct voting has a severe problem if it is exclusive of representative voting, but this problem was solved long ago, or, more accurately, it never arose in the business applications, because the foundation in business was a full and direct democracy of money, i.e., of shares. If you owned shares, you had so many votes, period, and you could vote directly or by proxy. Some corporations (particularly co-ops and the like) had only one share per member allowed, any other capitalization was through loans and bonds, so these were, in fact, one-vote per member democracies. But, often, I've seen, proxy voting is prohibited. And the arguments for the prohibition are not against proxy voting, per se, but against *directed voting*. In one organization, the argument against proxy voting was specifically given in the rule, and it clear was referring to an absentee vote, where a member present says, "I have the vote of so-and-so on this subject," which is offensive, because so-and-so did not participate in the deliberation leading to the vote, and has simply assumed that the vote is a fixed thing. Which is contrary to the basic principles of deliberative democracy, which include the *necessity* that people change their minds when exposed to debate and deeper consideration. To the point: the standard for measuring PR, to my mind, is the extent to which voters are represented by free choice. While it is true that electoral systems create strategic necessities for voters to select representation from a limited set, we can still attempt to measure the performance of an PR system in terms of the degree to which it assigns representation proportionally to voting choices by the voters. We can also look, separately, at the limitations the system places on those free choices. But we would start by *assuming* that the choices were free, even if they are not in reality. There is no way for any election system to match the representational power of delegable proxy, creating an assembly which represents in deliberation nearly all voters by a representative chosen directly or indirectly, without contests, and which allows all voters to vote directly, if they choose, but by proxy if they do not vote themselves. However, this creates an assembly where the voting power of members can vary greatly. But for representation in deliberation, voting power is not an issue, voting power only becomes an issue when decisions are being made. The issue is more complex than I can completely present in a few paragraphs, so at this point I'm simply holding up a PR assembly, created through delegable proxy and through participation rules set by the assembly itself, not by law. That is, the law creates the Assembly itself and provides it with whatever decisive power is considered appropriate, and does create or confirm basic rights of all "members," which can be all voters in pure DP, or "electors," in Asset Voting, but leaves the rules of the Assembly, which govern, among other things, floor access, to the Assembly itself, which may create whatever rules it considers appropriate to govern its process, provided that they preserve the basic rights of members as provided by law. Asset Voting is a system which can create a PR assembly that is almost as representative as a DP one, but the ordinary voter has two choices: the voter may vote for anyone through secret ballot, and may, *in addition,* register as a "candidate," at very low cost -- or no cost. Any candidate who gets at least one vote (his own?) becomes an elector; an elector is a public voter, all votes cast by electors are public record. Thus we can have a direct democracy -- direct democracy does, in fact, require public voting, if it is to be true deliberative democracy -- with a reduced set of voting members, who have variable voting power. In Asset, these members may create "seats" by amalgamating a quota of votes. But if it is Direct Democracy - Asset (DD-Asset), votes which are not assigned to seats are still active, they are not wasted. Seats are created for the purpose of standard representation in deliberation as well as with voting, and the vast majority of voters, I'd predict, would in fact have their vote assigned to a seat, so that if they do not vote directly, their voting power is exercised by someone they chose, directly or indirectly. The Asset creates a peer assembly that is likewise pure PR, with deviations from it being extremely small and practically trivial. No votes are lost, no voters are unrepresented unless they are not electors and they chose someone who defaults. TANSTAAFL. (Note that if electors use DP to amalgamate their power, and if proxy voting is allowed for electors, *outside of the assembly*), the electors with no seat assignment still, nevertheless, have the advantage of concentrated voting power and the associated efficiency.) Now, if we neglect the constraints on choice, STV with many seats can get pretty close to this. A very rough estimate of the degree to which STV fails this Representation criterion is the difference between the Hare quota and the Droop quota. The Droop quota assumes representation failure! Asset, accordingly, would use the Hare quota, and would accept the possibility of a vacant seat, or even of a few. Given the direct voting possibility, and the existence of sub-seat representation in effect, the loss of a seat or two is actually harmless. Even that could be remedied, but I won't go there now. Now, where does Swerdfeger go with this? >but most of these reforms fail to recognize that that Seats do not equal >power. So we are still still stuck with a similar problem (votes != power) I don't find the proposition "seats do not equal power" clear. That is, neither the meaning of "seats" or "power" are defined. If you have a standard by which you can amalgamate seats to consider them a block, then you are defining a block with so many seats worth of voting power. In Asset, though, the voting power associated with seats is only a default, in actual votes, the votes of those with seats can be deweighted according to how many direct votes are cast. Ah, yes, it should be mentioned. In Asset, the votes that create a seat are identified, and they come from specific electors, they are not just assigned as a pool. (Warren's original Asset completely ignores this issue, he has been interested in "election methods," not in representational process.) So we know which seat's vote to devalue if an elector votes. This also has the highly desirable trait that electors (and thus voters, who know whom they voted for) have a specific seat representing them. And then we can also see why direct democracy of this kind requires public voting. Without public voting -- or some god-machine running things -- there is no way to have simultaneous direct voting and representative voting. Completely missed in many discussions of representative democracy is the back and forth between voters and those they represent. Some assume that the ideal representative would vote the way the voter would vote, always. But that is actually quite sub-optimal! If I manage to elect, as my representative, a perfect person, who always gets all decisions right, I'm quite sure I will disagree with some of them! (By "right," I mean that, if matters were sufficiently explained to me, I would agree. I'm not necessarily proposing an absolute right or wrong. I'm simply acknowledging that, generally, my representative will be more informed on the matters being voted on, and when he or she is not, that I can discuss it with my rep. Or if not with my rep directly, because the scale is too large, then with someone who has better access than I to my rep. And with Asset, I have that specific chain of representation. If I'm an elector, it is quite specific and known by the rep as well, if I'm a voter but not an elector, I know and can, if I wish, represent that I voted for a specific elector, and precinct records would confirm at least one vote from my precinct -- which is also public record. Not proof, to be sure! But so what? >I was looking into 2 methods of measuring power in a weighted voting system. > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banzhaf_Power_Index This index does not apply to an Asset assembly because the power of all voters to change the outcome is equal. Nor, in fact, does it apply to a PR assembly where seats have equal voting power. Only if we attribute the voting power of seats to the voters who created them with their votes do we see, with STV, for example, variation. The variation is between 100% (i.e., 1/N in an Assembly with N seats), down to 100% * Droop/Hare. Do I have that right? >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapley-Shubik_power_index Reflects the power of coalitions. What's a "coalition"? For this purpose, it is people who vote together. Could be a political party, could be any kind of caucus. >I was wondering first if there are any methods of measuring power in a >legislature that I am unaware of? Secondly if anybody has tried to >design a generic system where by votes are kept proportional to power, >via allocation of seats? Yes. DD-Asset does it perfectly. If you look at the default voting power of seats, they are identical (down to a fraction of a vote, for seat assignments in Asset are created through *exact* quotas, which are not generally integers. In Assembly votes, I'd assume that each seat would have exactly one vote, and that this represents Q voters, exactly. I've said all of this before, and there is an obvious contradiction in what I've written in this post. But most readers don't read carefully enough to notice it. I wonder if any will. Yes, there is answer, a resolution of the contradiction, but I've never written about it. And I won't at this point.... I won't even give a hint, except through the position of this note, unless asked. In any case, the point belongs in a full discussion of Asset and what it could do. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
