Few thought on stability and continuous elections.
The first key thing is the continuous ability of voters to influence
(to change a seat or a decision). If there is such ability the voters
are more likely to follow what people do with their votes and then
react accordingly.
If the chain of influence is long and then the voter may find it too
tedious to follow which opinion his/her vote finally supports. He/she
might try a shorter proxy path, or find a path that is reasonably
stable and decisions predictable, or he/she might just stop
monitoring. In a long chain the probability of changes in the
opinions and in the final influence of one's vote increases.
If the proxies will decide only later what to do with the votes that
they have (i.e. the voter casts the vote without knowing the full
path), that makes the outcome less predictable to the voter.
If there are many decision in fast pace and with no wide discussion
(where proxies would indicate their position) voters may get surprise
results.
The key cure (that you also mentioned in your mail) is hysteresis.
Today in most political systems the hysteresis is such that the
voters may influence every n years. This is partially also
intentional. In some situations it is good to allow the
representatives to make the decisions without fear of being kicked
out next morning.
In continuous elections the hysteresis parameters must be planned
more carefully. Also giving early information to the voters on how
their representatives are going to vote may be essential. There may
be many different rules. Rules may be different for decisions on
seats vs. decisions. I'll skip examples since this mail is already long.
Juho
On Aug 28, 2008, at 21:33 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 05:18 PM 8/20/2008, Juho wrote:
There is a difference between methods where only voters can modify
their votes at any time and methods where the candidate that got some
votes can redirect these votes. The latter case may cause larger and
faster changes. And such changes may lead to reactions also among
those voters that gave their vote to this person (if the voters do
not like the change). These properties may mean higher instability.
One of the reasons why I've avoided speculating much about things
like "stability," with delegable proxy systems is that we have very
little experience with them. However, they shouldn't be *terribly*
different from the behavior in relatively small organizations of
standard proxy. (Proxies have almost always been delegable, in
theory, but the use of delegable proxy to handle large-scale
organization would result in *routine* delegation, whereas
normally, under smaller-scale situations, a proxy is given to
someone expected to participate directly, and delegation only takes
place in the case of unexpected incapacity.
However, I don't think that Juho's speculations are particularly
likely as effects. A great deal depends, though, on the conditions
under which the proxy network is formed. I'm going to start out,
though, by noting that present representational systems, if run as
fine-grained STV, should produce similar results if the electorate
is awake and informed, as, say, Asset Voting. Asset Voting simply
allows the sorting out that happens in campaigns to happen more
spontaneously; Asset should, in fact, make campaigning not only
unnecessary but actually rejected.
Currently, representatives (in an STV assembly, approximately) are
already trusted with our "vote." I.e., if we consider an assembly
to represent the people, those elected cast our votes in it. They
can "redirect" those votes, i.e., vote differently than what we
might have expected from them when we voted for them. And, in fact,
this is a good thing! For, quite likely, we would ourselves change
our minds, sometimes, if we were to participate in committee
sessions that consider evidence and alternatives, negotiate for
broader consensus, and so forth, all the things that real
representatives do.
In other words, we already have a system where "candidates" --
certain ones, those elected -- can redirect their votes. Does it
lead to instability? Sure. The kind of instability we want,
intelligent, flexible decision-making that is not bound to some
prior agenda.
We have discussed in the past what an Asset Voting Assembly with a
penumbra formed around it of electors, public voters, those who
received votes directly from the electorate in a secret ballot
election, and with election to the Assembly being a standing
result, subject to revocation in two ways. One is that electors
could vote directly on issues before the Assembly, including
Assembly rules, regardless of how their "seats" vote. These votes,
then, would be deducted from the seat votes according to the
percentage of such "free" votes cast from electors who elected the
seat. My prediction: it would be rare that such votes would shift
an outcome, but the fact that they would be possible could make it
more difficult for those with seats to decide in a manner wildly
different from the position of the electors; one of the jobs of a
seat would be to keep their electors informed and well-advised.
This is really, *almost*, direct democracy, with a twist: voting is
direct, except proxy voting is allowed and, indeed, encouraged.
And, of course, deliberative rights are limited to those with
seats, thus keeping the scale of the Assembly manageable.
The other way that votes could be "retracted" would be revocation
of the assignments that create a seat. I don't, expect, again, that
this would be common; though an obvious application would be the
ability of such a system to replace a seat that becomes
incapacitated or resigns. Theoretically, even one vote of
withdrawal would result in a loss of the quota, but I'd probably
want to see hysteresis built in so that minor fluctuations didn't
have major effects. I'd probably want to see a new seat put
together from votes, before the old seat is replaced. There is no
harm ad-interim because the electors involved could still control
all the votes. (It should be allowed to name a proxy to exercise
elector votes; thus, for voting purposes, almost all the votes of a
seat could be controlled by a single person, not the holder of the
seat.)
I think that many of the problems we'd expect simply would not
arise, but others would, and the system I've described would be
self-modifying, by permission of the electors. The electors would
be a broad group, and I've mostly thought of them as volunteers
(but I've also gone a little way down the road of considering what
compensation of electors might look like ... not for now). If the
system settles as I'd expect it, most voters would be voting for
someone who isn't going to be directly elected. They will vote for
someone they personally know, quite often, someone whom they can
talk with. So at the base, we would be setting up a system that
collects public views, in one direction, and informs the public, in
the other. And then the process of amalgamating the votes would
encourage that communication to continue, up the hierarchy, to
seats. As a voter, you would know who you voted for, and you could
talk with this person. The person wouldn't know if you voted for
him or her, for sure, but *it wouldn't matter. Remember, you vote
for someone you can talk with *already*. And from there on up, your
"proxy" is handing over an identified vote, the seat knows exactly
who elected him or her, and presumably will listen. And it is this
communication that's crucial, that makes this kind of structure
into an intelligent decision-making system that takes full
advantage of the resources of the entire society.
I actually think that it would be quite stable; that when it
reversed direction rapidly, it would be because it became obvious
that this was the best thing to do. If it is routinely making
decisions by supermajority (which a good and appropriately scaled
Assembly should do, not as a rule, but as a desirable condition),
then small shifts in seat assignments, or small numbers of direct
votes, aren't going to make much difference. An Asset Voting
assembly would make a party structure unnecessary for election
purposes, but parties would still exist, I'd think, but they would
simply be caucuses of seats with similar ideas. Currently, the
electoral system in the U.S. fosters two major parties that strive
for an appearance of difference, and intraparty politics tends to
move each of the parties away from the center (of the whole
electorate, toward the party center). The parties tend to form
around two "wings" of the electorate, and thus they tend to stay
more or less in balance. This, then, leads to instability, as
"course correction" by changing the party with a majority is too
broad for finer control. You would never engineer a control system
this way, it simply grew as a response to conditions.
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