At 09:33 AM 12/17/2007, Kevin Venzke wrote: >--- Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : > > My own opinion is that state parties should directly elect delegates, > > not Presidential candidates. Then the delegates make the choice, at > > the convention. They can actually .... *deliberate*. What a concept! > >I'm skeptical that it would be feasible to be elected as delegate without >being willing to commit to voting for a specific presidential candidate.
Indeed, that is the problem. However, without something like this, the public will continue to be at the mercy of sophisticated marketing campaigns designed to influence the opinions of people who don't have the time to actually research and understand the issues. At some point, as Bob Dylan wrote, "You gotta serve somebody," which, in this context means "You gotta trust somebody." Voting for pledged electors is technically trusting them to vote as promised, it is not generally legally binding that they vote a particular way (I think this varies from state to state). However, "faithless electors" are rare. But, more to the point, it is trusting the named candidate to appropriately function in the office. However, a critical trait for a good President is the ability to make good choices in delegating power. Voting for a free elector is equivalent to voting for someone to hold and apply one's own power. The principles behind the choice are the same. In the original Asset, one is voting for candidates, and, presumably, one is voting for the candidate whom one thinks will make the best President. This same opinion should translate to being the best one to exercises one's vote to choose the President. We don't trust politicians, generally, because we know that they will (*they must*) engage in these marketing campaigns; out of despair, we may vote for the candidate whose lies we like the most, hoping that he or she will then act in accordance with those lies, which we think better than if the opponent, with lies (or sincere claims) we don't like so much, is elected. Obviously, this can break down! Yes, Virginia, there are (relatively) honest politicians, but we tend not to like them, because they tell us stuff we don't want to hear. I don't see any resolution to this problem except breaking down the scale, so that people can choose representatives in the process whom they could know well enough to make an intelligent decision to trust them. As readers may know, I favor breaking it down to a very small scale, through delegable proxy. However, as to the electoral college, the *original* concept was that electors would be chosen *not* pledged to candidates, but to represent the interests of their states. They were to be chosen by the legislature of each state, which is, an indirect election; ultimately, the people would control it through electing trustworthy legislators. However, the Constitution did not specify any method of choosing electors, leaving it entirely to the various state legislators. (The convention could not come to an agreement, so they punted.) When political parties arose in the U.S. it did not take the parties long to notice that if they controlled the state legislature, simple majority, they could set up a system whereby all the electors from a state would be pledged to a particular slate of candidates, and, naturally, this would be their candidates. *The people did not originate this change, they did not demand the right, at that point, to vote directly.* It is still a fact that state legislatures could decide to appoint electors, no vote at all is required. This would have been, for example, a solution to the Florida impass in 2000, and is a reason why the Supreme Court intervention in that case was bogus, for the precedents were clear. But, of course, that is another story. How do we get from here to there? I find the solution obvious: implement delegable proxy in small peer associations (or large ones, if one can get past the power structures that will typically have arisen in them, which militate against change in power balance). If the theory of DP is correct, these associations will be stronger and more unified, and thus the technology will be perceived as successful, and will spread. Asset Voting is, of course, another approach. If there is an Asset election for electors, people still ahve the option of voting for pledged electors, but votes for other electors are no longer wasted. Thus the argument that people will want to be able to vote for pledged electors is finessed. They still can. This principle, in general, that increasing the freedom of voters is an improvement (provided that the votes are also reasonably interpreted!), is of general application. The voting system that give maximum freedom is high-resolution Range, but Asset Voting is another approach, since, with it, one may vote for *any* candidate -- including, as I would have it, oneself -- without wasting the vote. In that form of Asset, the succeeding stages take place in public, not secret ballot, so voting for oneself (presumably this would take some form of registration, or the ensuing chaos would be a problem) is equivalent to becoming a public voter or public elector, who can then participate in subsequent process deliberatively (through various systems that could manage large-scale deliberative process, of which delegable proxy is probably the most practical and least vulnerable to corruption. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
