Fred Gohlke wrote:
Good Morning, Kristofer
re: "So, in essence, the pyramid structure remains even after
selection?"
Yes. We have the capability of retaining the information and it should
be used to enhance the role of those elected to act as spokesperson for
a segment of the electorate. In this connection, we should note the
random grouping of candidates at each level insures that the segment of
the electorate represented by each elected official will be diverse.
How this capability is actually used will depend on those who implement
the process. As I've said before, I don't favor rigid monitoring of the
people we elect. However, because the process provides a simple means
of enabling referenda and recall, the implementors should establish
rules for their use.
Even without rigid monitoring, there should be a counteracting measure.
After all, the councilmembers work on behalf of the people, so if they
start consistently diverging from what the people want, there should be
a way of directing them back. This way must not be too strict, or we get
short term interest on one hand and populism on the other. It should
still be there; I think that's partly the point of the bidirectionality
we're talking about, although it's not limited to "counteraction", but
also involves information (to guide).
re: "You'll lose the corruption resistance by surprise property.
This would mean that external parties could try to corrupt
those at the next highest level in order to overturn the
highest; that is, if the next to highest council has formal
powers. If it doesn't, there's nothing to say, in the worst
case, that the highest level will listen to them, so let's
say they have."
The process does not give unselected people any powers. If they are to
have powers, they must be granted by those who implement the process. As
you point out, it would be fairly easy to devise rules that destroy the
integrity of the system. Indeed, that is precisely the way the current
system was devastated, so the risk is real and imminent. The best
defense may be analyze the rule-making aspect as quickly and as
thoroughly as possible, one of the many considerations I hadn't
anticipated.
My idea was that even the unselected helped the selected become
selected. In one sense, they used their power (what one may call that
power) to reach an agreement. Therefore, the selected are to some extent
accountable to them; which makes sense if you go all the way down,
where the people (except the candidates) are all ultimately unselected.
As you say, formal power might not be the way to do so, though.
re: "... lower levels may initiate referenda (initiative or
recall) as if a majority of those below them in the pyramid
had requested it ..."
I understand the reasoning but wonder if it's not a bit dangerous to
assume those at lower levels support a given side of a single issue?
Would it not be better to ask them, since the means of doing so is at hand?
Your suggestion that "... if a person at level n wants to ask the people
of something, he must get a majority at levels below him to agree, or a
majority of the two levels below, or something like that." is probably
the better option.
There's a scale: on one end of the scale is a referendum. On the other
end is an immediate decision by the council or government. The former
end is direct but takes very long time, while the latter is indirect but
goes quickly. The suggestion was of something in between. Setting "a
majority of the two levels below" or similar might work; this all
depends on how much the selected at one level can be considered to
represent those below them.
The resolution of this issue it tied to the particulars of the election
cycle(s), particularly the term of office of the elected officials.
Where an entire body is replaced every two years, there should be little
need for referenda. The combination of the time it takes for a public
official to perform a misdeed and for that fact to become public,
combined with the time the referendum takes, will usually exceed the
time it will take to replace the individual in the next election. Even
so, we must have a mechanism to deal with malfeasance during longer terms.
We end up at another element of that which it's hard to predict. If the
final council (or aggregation of councils, assuming the body in question
is larger than a triad or council) represents the people well, there's
little need for a referendum - if they represent the people perfectly
and would always do what they'd do given a magic "zero cost referendum",
then there would be no need or point at all. To the extent they
disagree, referenda and initiatives would have a point. If we're unsure
about whether they're useful, I think we should include them; they could
be removed later if not used at all, whereas if the system turns more
flawed than expected, the backup option (of direct popular opinion) can
be used to fix things more easily than would otherwise be the case.
re: "If you have computers, you could [pass messages] in a manner
similar to delegate cascade. Anybody can submit a message.
The message is given weight according to (strength gained
from those below the sender in the pyramid) / (population
size). The computer lists messages sorted by weight. PR
methods could have some form of successive downweighting so
that say, a very persistent person in the middle of the
pyramid doesn't crowd out others at his level.
I will have to consider this more carefully. The capability for
referenda is important, but I suspect the process should be simple and
direct. In each case, referenda can only instruct a single
representative to act in a certain manner or remove that representative
from office. If a movement intended to alter the direction of the
government arises, it must take form in each 'pyramid' separately.
I didn't mean for this to be part of the referendum mechanism. Rather,
it would be a quicker element of bidirectionality, to just tell a given
member of the body about the concerns of those who selected him, or
selected those who selected him, or selected those who.. and so on. This
need not, and probably should not, be adversary; if he continues to
ignore the "selectors", other parts of the system could come into play,
while this would be more of a communications channel.
Parties can, will, and should exist, but lacking control of the process,
they will perform their proper function of giving voice to ideologies.
If a groundswell evolves, it can force a change of direction of
government, but that is much more likely to occur through repetitive
elections than through referenda.
With regard to 'tiny voters', I'm inclined to think they may be the most
important. Here's why. The majority of those who do not advance beyond
the lower levels are people with little interest in holding public
office. They are content to let others fill that role. If an event
energizes them to alter their aversion to political involvement, it may
be worthwhile to consider their point of view. (Of course, there is the
matter of those who whine and complain about everything. Separating the
wheat from that chaff may be non-trivial.)
There would be at least one way of doing so, if we assume the people in
the middle don't discard messages. Say there's an issue of whether a
certain service should be funded more than last year. The common
agreement was that, yes, it should, but opinion is shifting (perhaps
because of corruption or similar), and it's doing so broadly. Now, the
ultimate voters, the people at level 0 have two options. Either they can
all tell their body members (final councilmembers) directly. Each of
those messages will have a weight of 1/(population size). Or; they can
group together and tell someone at level 1 who tells someone at level 2,
etc. If we have a triad, then at level 2, the message would have weight
(3^2)/(population size) if sent directly up. In a way, that would be an
election (using the same mechanism as was used to elect the members of
the body), except of a message rather than of a person.
There are two problems with this idea. First, whatever distortion may
exist because of PR issues would return, and probably stronger too,
since messages can't change (although they can be rephrased by members
at a higher level). Second, and more importantly, some level-2 members
may simply decide to ignore the message, and there would be no
repercussion to them (unlike with the final layer) since they're not
part of the formal structure.
re: "What do you mean by requests for guidance?"
Although I think, in general, those we elect should be left to fill the
roles we elect them to fill, unusual circumstances can arise that are
beyond the realm of normal governmental operation. The current
financial debacle is but one example. At such times, our
representatives should recognize the need for and seek the guidance of
their constituents. I'm not confident we can form a generic injunction
that they do so because I'm not sure how to define an 'unusual
circumstance'. It may be that the body, itself, should be required to
instruct representatives to seek guidance in the event of an 'unusual
circumstance' but I fear that opens the door for distortion and abuse.
Message-passing might help. Also, backup methods could also do so, or
direct communication between the constituents and the selected. The
latter happens, to some degree, already, such as by "contacting your
congressman". The point, in any case, is that the method shouldn't need
to recognize an "unusual circumstance"; rather, it should follow by the
method that it would be used more when what the people consider an
unusual circumstance occurs.
But to contradict myself, let's see what other options could be used.
Perhaps either people (through communication or, failing that,
initiative) or the body members could, when they consider an unusual
circumstance, convene an independent body to investigate. This body
could be selected by consensus or just randomly. The former could lead
to the same sort of distortions as you find with "bipartisan
gerrymandering" (the body being friendly with all parties instead of
completely independent), so the latter may work better, based on
something like British Columbia's Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform.
A couple of additional thoughts:
1) So far, I've left open the means by which candidates reach specific
offices. After thinking about your suggestion for larger group sizes,
it occurred to me that might be the best solution for the final stage.
By that time, all the candidates have been throughly examined, several
times. When a number sufficient to fill all the open posts (and a few
extra) is reached, that group decides who will fill what office by the
means you described: Candidates list their preferences for each office,
by name. Those most frequently listed for a given post are elected to
that post.
If you're thinking about an executive council (like the government in a
parliamentary nation, or the executive power in a republic), you could
use a matrix voting system, as I have talked about in an earlier post on
this list. Basically, in matrix voting of n candidates for k positions,
the voters rank the candidates k times, one for each position. Then the
method selects that which gives the best overall result. In doing so, it
might give one position to the second place winner of that election
instead of the first place, if that means another position will have its
second place winner rather than its fifth place winner instead.
One version of the matrix voting problem would be this, for Range:
You have an n*k matrix. Each cell gives the average rating of a given
candidate for a given position. Now select k cells within the matrix so
that the sum of the ratings is maximized, subject to that
no candidate is elected to more than one position (impossible),
and
no position is vacant (unless n < k, i.e there are not enough candidates
to go around).
I think that problem can be solved using a computer. That's a
majoritarian version of matrix voting. A PR version would downweight
those who got the, say, minister of the interior, when deciding who
should be minister of defense.
Matrix voting would be of an advantage wherever the tasks are
significantly different (meaning that a certain person might be well
suited for a certain position, while being considerably less suited for
another).
2) Governments have a plethora of appointive offices. Although many of
these are plums, dispensed for political advantage, there may be some
offices that are properly filled by appointment. If so, the
appointments must be made come from those at the highest level who were
not elected to public office. Also, in the event of the recall of a
public official, the replacement must be selected from those at the
highest level that were not elected.
If you wanted to be sophisticated, you could weight the other councils
(not underneath the recalled official) higher. That would produce an
incentive to not be subject to recall in the first place; though it may
be more reasonable to do the weighting of all councils except the
appointer's.
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