On May 27, 2008, at 1:29 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 02:23 PM 5/25/2008, Juho wrote:
On May 25, 2008, at 4:16 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
How about Asset Voting? It is a truly brillig method. Simple.
Invented over a hundred and twenty years ago.
I didn't include Asset Voting or related features since it includes
"cabinet negotiations" between the candidates and the to-be-elected
representatives. That may be considered to open too many doors for
the parties/groups/strong individuals to impact the outcome.
Delegable proxy represents the idea of bottom-up influencing in a
more basic way.
Asset Voting is delegable proxy (or could be) with a secret ballot
ground stage. That's all.
Tell me, if you were deciding on who is to represent you, wouldn't
you want to be able to sit down with candidates and ask questions?
Would you want this to be secret or public? Either could be
arranged, you know. Sequester the candidates who hold votes, like
they did in Venice, give them each a room and a terminal that
allows them to send messages to anyone. Public only. But I'm not
sure it's a good idea.
I think all methods allow this. It is very typical that candidates
can arrange meetings where their potential voters may come and
discuss with the candidates. I don't see how Asset Voting would be
better than others here. (Was this the claim?)
Even if this type of meetings where candidates and voters meet face
to face are arranged it is usually considered to be a good practice
to keep the votes secret.
I can say that personally, I'd like to be able to look the
candidates in the eye, see the high-bandwidth information that we
get from personal presence, ask questions and see immediate
responses, changes in respiration and pulse, body language, etc.
Not necessarily consciously. And there is no way to make that
public, in fact, with present technology (unless you spend a
fortune on each meeting, and even then, what would you do with all
that data?)
Now, if you can't meet a candidate in person, how about someone you
choose meeting the candidate. You choose someone you *can* meet in
such a way. And that is whom you vote for in the election. Frankly,
it's *stupid* under Asset to vote directly for the famous person
who doesn't have time for you. You like that person, fine. Find
someone you trust who also likes that person. And if you can't,
well, that might say something to you!
This is an example of applying party-system thinking to what,
though simple, is really a radical reform. Warren Smith didn't get
it, he was thinking of a candidate set more or less like what we
already see. What I see is that there could be, in a large
election, thousands upon thousands of "candidates." It would be the
*norm* that nobody gets a quota in a multiwinner election in the
secret ballot.
But what is *not* secret is the vote reassignments. What an asset
holder in an Asset election is, is nothing other than an elector, a
public voter. That's crucial. The *negotiations* may be private,
but the voting is pubic. Some kinds of negotiations might be
illegal, that's another matter.
Remember, all that is being chosen in an Asset PR election is an
assembly. If one thinks that "secret deals" are going to be
prevented by avoiding Asset Voting, what happens, then, once the
seats are assigned. There are now -- unless we go whole hog and
keep up with direct voting by electors allowed in the assembly --
specific people with voting power. Classic targets for corruption.
The more concentrated power, the more attractive it becomes. Asset
with direct voting is about the only idea I've seen that could
really address this; generally, when power is more broadly
distributed, corruption becomes more difficult, because it becomes
more expensive.
In Asset with direct voting allowed, the seats are proxies and
represent the electors in deliberation. They also vote, but if an
elector votes directly, this vote power is subtracted (fractionally
( from the vote of the seat. So, what a seat crucially does is to
present arguments, and that is public. Corrupt a seat, and you may
get corrupt arguments.
But then around the seat is a penumbra of high-level proxies, i.e.,
electors holding lots of votes, and these are relatively likely to
take an active interest in the business of the assembly.
Collectively -- and they are in touch with each other -- they have
the power to remove the seat, if needed, and they can gut the
seat's voting power immediately even without removal process. On
the other hand, because the relationship is voluntary and
relatively uncoerced (for most seats), the level of trust and
communication between the seat and the direct providers of seat
votes should be high. And suddenly the seat is presenting some
weird argument that, yes, we should use voting machines with
particular specifications that favor a particular vendor. Why, ask
the direct supporters of the seat? "Uh, well, it's really
complicated, I'll get back to you next week...."
You know what I think would really happen? Remember, these people
have good communication, they *like* each other. The seat would
privately tell the proxies, "They offered me ten million dollars if
I presented those arguments. Of course they are phoney baloney. I'm
about to retire anyway, and, of course, I'm going to publicly
present you with excellent arguments that this is great stuff to
buy. Privately, you know better. Do what you need to do, please
don't say I said this. So the seat makes his arguments, fulfilling
his agreement with the vendor. The proxies gut his voting power and
also spread contrary information through side channels and other
unbought seats, saying, "we just don't know what got into our
friend! maybe it's time for him to retire!" And he does and they
throw him a big party.
When power is broadly distributed, it is much cheaper to put sales
efforts into providing arguments that will prevail. And that is
easiest if your intention is actually to serve, instead of to rip
off. One can get plenty wealthy providing good service. Corruption
only pays when it's a good buy, i.e., when you only have to buy off
a single individual or a few, because of their power. When the
numbers get large, it gets risker, for one thing, and it gets
highly inefficient. Those who would corrupt do so because they see
a profit in it. A few million dollars to make a few hundred
million? Of course! But if you have to pay off scads of people, and
if all those people can do is present arguments and relatively few
votes (they will lose votes if the arguments they make don't make
sense to their supporters, and because Asset doesn't need
campaigning, the same considerations don't apply as with more fixed
seats), you might as well simply present the arguments. You can do
that for free, and it's legal. If they are good arguments. That'
might cost some money. Start with good products!
After the lists of electable persons (candidates) have been created
we can arrange the election. Winners will be simply picked by
random
votes.
How about simply allowing people to choose who represents them?
At the end of my mail I mentioned delegable proxy as one method that
is "party agnostic". At this point I covered only the random ballot
based options (and tried to avoid collegial decision making as much
as possible).
In other words, tried to avoid democracy, which is founded on
collegial decision making.
I avoided collegial decision making here since I proposed possible
alternatives to Fred Gohlke's "rather collegially oriented" method
(collegial = shared responsibility of making consensus decisions in a
group; majority = decisions by 51%; random = decisions by lottery).
This has been a point I've been making for a long time: voting is
actually a small part of democracy. Aggregation vs. deliberation.
Aggregation without deliberation is a pretty bad idea, it's
responsible for the worst in democracy.
(There are also other methods that are based on a very bottom-up
oriented approach like direct democracy and delegable proxy.)
Btw, I should have mentioned also STV as one central "party agnostic"
method.
Yes, in theory. But because it demands name recognition for the
candidates, and there are too many voters, in general, and too few
possible candidates, voters can't truly vote with complete
sincerity for the person they consider -- out of the whole world --
could best represent them.
Why does particularly STV demand "name recognition"?
The only systems that allow that kind of sincerity (which really
ought to be obviously desirable, but which we are so far from that
we don't even think of it as missing), are Asset Voting and, yes,
Delegable Proxy. Same systems, really. (Asset leaves silent how the
electors negotiate the seats. Delegable proxy is a very simple way
that could be use to suggest vote assignments, spontaneously,
through electors simply choosing which person they most trust, this
time openly, using delegable proxy analysis to identify seat
candidates as being in proxy chains large enough to elect.
Asset Voting is clean enough and simple enough and really can
become DP beyond the secret ballot level.
What property makes Asset Voting be better here? (DP and many methods
may have problems when votes become public, but why does Asset Voting
stand out here?)
Asset Voting bridges the gap between secret ballot and public
voting. Delegable proxy requires public voting,
Why?
in fact, or, in my opinion, it is far too dangerous. It's essential
that proxies and clients have direct communication, and that each
know who the other is.
My definition of DP doesn't require candidates to know their votes. I
think also secret ballots are OK.
The reason why I positioned AV differently than DP is that the
definition of AV seems to assume negotiations between the candidates
that treat their votes as "assets" that they own (and since these
negotiations would happen after the votes have been cast).
I used term DP as an abstract concept that defines how the votes of
the candidates may accumulate bottom-up from the voters to the
representatives in multiple steps.
The theory of DP is that uncoerced choices, made with knowledge are
likely to collect trustworthiness. (i.e., the client is choosing a
proxy personally known to the client; in our proposals we usually
incorporate "acceptance" as part of the process, and discount
unaccepted proxy assignments; accepting a proxy is equivalent to
accepting communication, and I'd never give my proxy to someone who
didn't give me their phone number....)
Asset, though, as normally described, creates a peer assembly,
through voluntary vote assignments. Now that there are public
electors, and a *relatively* small number of them (there may still
be many), and that there are now seats to represent all the
electors, and thus all the voters, in deliberation, direct voting
and, indeed, a consideration of the Electoral College, we could
call it, as a standing body that does not formallhy meet, but whose
members continue to represent those who voted for them, direct
voting becomes possible. The seats serve as proxies for this, but,
as with proxies in general, if the client (the elector) votes
directly, the proxy's vote doesn't count.
Asset creates a peer assembly that would look like today's
assemblies. The process does not have to be reinvented. My opinion
is that direct votes would *ordinarily* not amount to much, but the
very possibility has some nice effects. First of all, it prevents
the seats from holding too much power, they could lose their seats
quickly (I'd have persistence of seats, but voting power can go in
a flash; a seat without voting power can still present motions,
etc., but can't vote on them.) Secondly, it allows true minority
groups, small numbers, to cooperate on a seat without thereby
having to accept all the views of that seat. If they are willing to
follow the assembly business and vote, they can. So really all they
*must* find is someone that will present to the assembly their most
notable arguments. Even if it is to say, "I don't necessarily
accept this, but I have constituents who believe that ... and in
fairness.... blah, blah."
The point is to make the assembly truly representative of the
people, and *keep it that way.* The electors are not high-level
politicians, usually. They are relatively ordinary people who were
willing to become public voters. Under difficult conditions,
precautions might be needed to protect them; this would place
restrictions on the number of votes held by a public voter. (I.e.,
you can't allocate protective resources to every voter who decides,
"I want to vote in public," and there are certain other problems --
soluble, I believe -- with very small numbers of votes held, like
down in the twos or threes or so. Vote coercion becomes possible
when the numbers are very small.) (Possible solution: when
registering as a candidate, candidate names a proxy. Small numbers
of votes are not announced as going to that candidate, but to the
proxy. But all this is for difficult conditions. I don't see the
U.S. as being difficult in this way.)
Note that coercion covers (maybe typically) cases where a wife must
vote for her husband (or get a black eye) and where a member of a
(work/hobby) team must vote in line with the other members of the
team in order to maintain credibility/trust/friends/job.
Juho
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