Thanks very much for replying, Fred. Metagovernment is a good list for these kind of discussions, as good as any I know. You'd definitely be welcome there. I'll look up the reference you mention, and respond more fully soon. In the meantime, I wish to share an updated abstract, plus a first draft of the section that concerns the electoral system. Critique is welcome.
http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/fau/fau.xht ------------------------------------------------ ABSTRACT -------- An individual vote has no effect on the formal outcome of the election; whether the vote is cast or not, the outcome is the same regardless. This appears to open a structural fault in society between the individual person and the individual vote. The voter as such (as a decider) is thus alienated from the means and product of decision, and thereby disengaged from political power and freedom. I argue that the sum of these disengagements across the population amounts to a power vacuum, which, in mid to late Victorian times, led to the effective collapse of the electoral system and the rise of a mass party system. Today, the organized parties make the decisions and exercise the political power that was intended for the individual voters. I trace this failure back to a technical design flaw in the electoral system, wherein the elector is physically separated from the ballot. [QCW] A DESIGN FLAW IN THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM ------------------------------------- The electoral system uses a flawed model of the social world and no valid decision may be extracted from its results. The results depend upon a voting procedure in which the individual person as an elector is separated from her ballot (or his ballot) prior to the formation of a decision. This procedure not only invalidates the decision, but physically causes the structural fault in society between the individual person and the individual vote, thereby raising the possibility of broader societal failures. That fault and those failures are the topic of the previous and subsequent sections respectively, while this section deals with the root cause in the design of the electoral system. Objectively +----> meaningless vote ----+ | | (a) | V (d) | (g) Disconnect between elect- Structural fault between -or and ballot in flawed ------> person and vote in electoral procedure society | | (b) V V (e) Flawed model of social Power vacuum world in count engine | | V (f) (c) V Collapse of electoral Invalid decision system onto party system ========================= ========================= Formal failure of ------> Actual failures in technical design society (h) [REL] Causal relations. The direct causal relations among flaws, fault and failures (a - g) appear to establish an indirect relation (h) between a formal failure of technical design and the actual failures in society. Consider the voting procedure. On election day, the individual elector arrives at the polling place and enters a voting booth. There she (or he) places a pencil on the ballot and marks an 'X'. By this act, she becomes an actual voter. As a voter, she walks over to the ballot box and deposits her ballot, then walks away a non-voter again. She and her vote now go separate ways, her vote to remain in the ballot box to be summed with the others; and she perhaps homeward to await the announcement of the results. This, in essence, is the procedure for every voter in every state election. It is a direct cause (g) of the structural fault between person and vote in society, which here assumes its physical form in the disconnection between elector and ballot, as multiplied across the population. The individual votes are summed in the count engine to produce a numeric result, which in turn decides the final issue of the election - one of the candidates enters office, for example, while the others do not. This issue is interpreted as a legitimate decision of the voters. Some doubt might be cast on this interpretation, at this point, by observing the state of expectant curiosity in which the voters, now bereft of their votes, await to hear the decision. Ordinarily a group of decision makers is cognizant of the decision they are making. This doubt as to legitimacy takes on a technical form in the observation that the interpretation of results is lacking in material grounds. The formal aggregate of votes in the count engine does not correspond to an actual aggregate of voters in the social world. The individual votes were brought together to make a result, but the individual voters were not brought together *as such* (b) to make a decision; therefore (c) no valid decision can be extracted from the result. One might counter at this point with the argument that, as the decision comes entirely from the votes and the votes entirely from the voters, the decision must *also* have come from the voters. [QTE] This argument may be tested against a thought experiment. Imagine an extreme form of society that is constructed of cubicles. Each cubicle is provided with a television receiver, a voting slot and a single occupant. The occupants have free movement in the world, but no intercommunications with each other. Periodic elections are held in which each occupant marks a ballot, drops it into the voting slot and awaits the announcement of the results. In this extreme situation of a "cublicle society", it is clearly possible that someone (or something) behind the television receivers might be making all of the decisions. This remains a possibility even when the decisions are executed in proper form through the intermediation of the voters and their votes; the content of the televisions signals may nevertheless be exposing the occupants to decisive, manipulative force. Note that such exposure would be contingent on either (or both) of the following forms of separation: 1. Separation of person from vote 2. Separation of person from person To see why, imagine an extreme anti-cubicle society in which both forms of separation are eliminated. The voters retain (1) possession and control of their votes during the process of decision formation, and (2) freedom to intercommunicate and interassociate. Here it becomes apparent that only the voters could decide the issue of the election. No matter who (or what) had control of the television signals, it could never gain sufficient traction to sway the decision. Together the voters would see through the attempt and follow up individually by adjusting their votes. The situation of an actual, modern society is unlike either of these two extremes. Although the electoral system formally enforces (1) the separation of person from vote, no part of society attempts to enforce (2) the separation of persons; rather more to the contrary. In this situation, we cannot with confidence say anything about the actual source or sources of the electoral decisions, or how they are mediated. The content of those decisions might originate entirely in the voters, or not at all, or in some mix of different sources. We are left in doubt. At this point, it is useful to restate the criteria of reasonable doubt in a simpler form: 3. Separation of voter from voter To the extent that the voters are separate during the formation of the decision, and out of communication with each other, we may reasonably doubt that the decision was theirs. One thing we know with certainty is that the electoral system enforces (1) a separation of person from vote. We also know that a person who does not actually possess and control a vote is not *formally speaking* a voter. It follows that regardless of any intercommunication that occurs person to person (2), the electoral system nevertheless guarantees the formal isolation of voter from voter. Here the design of the system is working directly toward the ideal of the cubicle society, in that it maximizes our doubt as to the source of electoral decisions. Given that the purpose of an electoral system is quite the contrary, this particular design violates the basic engineering principle of efficacy, and this, in turn, enables us to conclude with some confidence that (b) the design is flawed. Moreover, since the flaw *might* be having significant effect on the content of the decisions, we may further conclude on the basis of that doubt that (c) those decisions are invalid. Finally, since the meaninglessness of an individual vote arises from the objective certainty that the vote is *not* a source of decision, the flaw can only (a) be contributing to that meaninglessness. These conclusions concerning the effects of the procedural flaw (a, b, c) were reached without knowledge of the actual extent of separation caused by the flaw (3). Further definite conclusions would depend upon that knowledge. It is possible that electors who are not formally voters as yet will nevertheless behave as such, so that elector-elector communications are voter-voter communications *in effect*. Such voter-like communications could break the formal bonds of isolation to some extent. This raises a question for empirical science: To what extent do individual electors who are not yet voting behave as a group of decision makers in the midst of a decision? Lacking an answer, the remainder of this study departs from the relative certainty of empirical facts and engineering principles, and moves into theory. NOTES ----- [QCW] Thanks to CW who's steady insistence (Skype, 2011-9) that the economy has primacy over politics has led me to the juxtaposition of these two snippets of theory: * The individual worker as such (as a labourer) being alienated from the means and product of labour, is thereby disengaged from economic power and freedom. * The individual voter as such (as a decider) being alienated from the means and product of decision, is thereby disengaged from political power and freedom. [QTE] Thanks to TE who prompted the thought experiment of the cubicle society with his counter-argument of: the decision comes from the votes and the votes come from the voters, so the decision must have come from the voters (Skype, 2011-9-30). -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
