Good Morning, Michael
re: "... I've corrected the passage to read:
... the individual voters do not intercommunicate *as
such* to make a decision; therefore no valid decision
can be extracted from the result.
It is often impractical for voters to communicate through
physical proximity. But the invalidity only arises because
they do not communicate by *any* means ..."
This inspires three comments:
1) Are we not both saying the same thing with regard to public
participation in the electoral process? Since I'm anxious to
understand your perspective, and particularly how it differs
from my own, can we differentiate between your point of view
and:
"What made the process democratic was not the method of
voting but that the people discussed the issues themselves
and decided which were of sufficient import to be decided
by finding the will of the majority."
2) "It is often impractical for voters to communicate through physical
proximity" ...
That is only true for large numbers of voters. For small groups, modern
mobility eliminates the problem.
3) "But the invalidity only arises because they do not
communicate by *any* means ..."
Do you mean by this that the ballot is invalid because it does not allow
the voters to express their true desire? To say the vote is invalid is
to say the issue on which ballots are cast, as stated, has not been
reduced to the essence on which the voters wish to express their
preference. What would be the point of communicating if not to alter
the issue in some way?
re: "I still maintain that the introduction of a ballot that
(unlike hands) is physically separate from the elector is a
technical design flaw. It is not necessarily a significant
flaw at the very moment of its introduction; but even still,
an elector without a ballot is formally not a voter."
Where voting is by ballot, it is true that a voter who does not cast a
ballot is not a voter. However, that does not seem to be the point. It
appears the point is that, at the moment a ballot is cast, the person
that casts the ballot ceases to be a voter. That is only true as to
future issues which may come before the voters. It is untrue as to the
issue on which the ballot was cast.
Ballots are the method by which voters express their opinions on matters
at issue at the time they cast a ballot. The fact that a ballot is no
longer in a voter's physical possession after it is cast does not alter
the validity of the expression of interest stipulated by the voter.
Voters are not diminished by the act of voting; they are no less the
voters on an issue after they cast their ballots. Subsequent events may
cause voters to rue the ballot they cast, but that does not alter the
validity of their ballot.
re: "It follows that communication among voters *as such* is made
impossible. Moreover, if there is grounds to suspect that
actual voter-like communication among the electors is now
hindered, then this suspicion alone is enough to invalidate
the election results."
This appears to be the crux of the matter. The right of the people to
communicate among themselves (i.e., deliberate) on matters of public
concern is the essence of democracy. The flaw in modern electoral
practice is not the separation of voters from their ballots but that
voters have no means by which they can deliberate on and decide for
themselves the issues on which they will vote.
re: Comment to Juho Laatu, 20 Oct 2011: "Recall that we already
discussed the power of one's vote. Didn't we measure it at
zero, not 1/N? The vote has no effect on the political
outcome of the election, therefore it has no power."
If only one person votes in an election, that person's vote decides the
election. As more people vote, their votes dilute the significance of
the single deciding vote as expressed by 1/N. As the electorate grows,
the significance of an individual vote diminishes but does not reach
zero (although it gets very close).
As Juho pointed out, interest groups form to attract votes to one side
of an issue or another. As the interest groups grow in size, the effect
of their members' votes increases. However, and this is the critical
point, for individuals that reject interest groups and vote their own
beliefs, the significance of their vote decreases as the size of the
electorate grows. Thus, the value of the individual's vote approaches
zero (but never actually reaches it) because it is swamped by the votes
of special-interest groups. It is proper to say the value of an
individual's vote is effectively zero, but it is not mathematically so.
Fred Gohlke
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