Re: [EM] Sociological issues of elections
Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: From a control perspective, voting happens too infrequently. It would be like trying to keep a temperature by adjusting the power to the heater once every four (or two) years. Also problematic from this perspective is the degree of indirection. The would-be temperature controller knows nothing of power adjustment, but only of electing a body of power adjusters. Fred Gohlke said: Pivato moves beyond our common structures of political parties and periodic elections and outlines a permanent institution where the people can replace their representatives in the legislature 'on the fly', as the needs of the nation change. So faster changes to the body of power adjusters... The power of the system is vested in small groups of motivated citizens organized into a pyramidal hierarchy who participate in deliberative policy formation. Each group elects a delegate, who expresses the deliberative consensus of that group at the next tier of the pyramid. ... ... plus explicit directions concerning the temperature. I like to keep the two types of issue (law makers and law) separate. After all, if Pivato's method yields legislative directions that are valid, then we can expect those directions to be followed by any competent legislative body, even if it wasn't elected by a Pivato method. Or if the method yields a competent legislative body, then we can expect that body to follow any valid legislative directions, even non-Pivato ones. So we can decouple the two solutions. Or anyway, I hope we can, because it would allow for independent variance and a wider range of overall choices. This seems important because the problem of who are the law makers already has an electoral solution that's difficult to change, being cast in constitutional stone. Meanwhile the problem of what ought to be the laws has no solution at all, nor is there any great hinderance to implementing one. I think it's here in the ought questions that are raised by the decision systems (legislative, executive, electoral) and yet go unanswered that sociology can be most helpful. For instance, a political ought question can never be answered by a decision. That would be begging the question. The question of what ought to be the decision can only be answered from quarters that are free of the power of decision and defenceless before its effects. This is equally true of electoral issues. The electors as such (as power holders) are incompetent to answer the question of who ought to be elected, which is a question of the proper use of their own power. That question can only be answered from outside the decision system, as by ordinary people who are (between elections) without electoral power and defenceless before its consequences. From this point of view, a continuous election would be problematic. When the electors fail to make good decisions, the only available space in which to implement a solution is the gap between elections. Or coming back to Kristofer's thermostat analogy, it's important to know what the temperature ought to be. That's one thing. Then to tell the landlord, because he alone has access to the controls. Sometimes you need to change landlords, but not often. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Sociological issues of elections
Vidar Wahlberg said: ... I would like to see a system where electors are encouraged to gain insight and reflected views, and vote thereafter. Me too. I spend much of my time chasing such a system (as do Abd and Fred, I believe). Please share what you find. ... Giving the electors balanced information and maintaining a transparent government is desirable, but this also depends on media and influental people playing by the book. ... They won't do that, of course, not when it would harm their interests. Either we must change their interests or neutralize their influence. One way to neutralize their influence would be to enable the electors to listen instead to each other. After all, they together are the experts in the business of electing; the ones who do it every time; and the best source of information on the subject. Normally experts are confident in their work and not easily influenced by non-experts. To be sure, the crucial word is together. Elections are aggregates not isolates. The formal aggregate of votes is supposed to correspond to an actual aggregate of voters in the social world, but it does not. The individual votes are brought together to make a result, but the individual voters are not brought together as such to make a decision; therefore no valid decision can be extracted from the result. The wrongful influence you mention in your original post might be just a manifestation of this basic invalidity. Suppressing, or disabling, or failing to encourage valid influence (elector on elector) can only help to encourage invalid influence to pop up in its place, as though into a vacuum. Do you follow my reasoning? Mike Vidar Wahlberg said: Do you have a preferred solution of your own? No, not really. Giving the electors balanced information and maintaining a transparent government is desirable, but this also depends on media and influental people playing by the book. While better information obviously will improve electors ability to make rational decisions, it will still be quite possible to influence the voters based on less relevant traits (charisma, fearmongering, etc). Then again, what is relevant and what is not is neither a clear distinction. I mainly wanted to raise the subject that there's a lot of information going around before an election that's only meant to convince the elector to vote for a certain candidate/party, regardless of whether that would be the electors preference given enough insight into the candidate/party's capability. I would like to see a system where electors are encouraged to gain insight and reflected views, and vote thereafter. Some claim that preferential election works well against negative campaigning, anyone looked into if there's any truth to this? As mentioned, this really is a fuzzy area, and encouraging electors to vote based on a rational decision is obviously not a simple task. I appreciate all the feedback and would still like to hear more thoughts anyone may have. Many thanks to Gohlke for providing papers on the subject, I'm reading up on it when I got the time. -- Regards, Vidar Wahlberg Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Sociological issues of elections
Fred Gohlke said: The other is Dr. Mansbridge's working paper entitled, A 'Selection Model' of Political Representation, which is available at: http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP08-010 This link worked for me: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=5548type=WPN -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Sociological issues of elections
Welcome Vidar, You're not off track [Juho], the basis of my question was that given a democratic election, how should the government/election be formed to reduce the incentive for candidates/parties to talk down other candidates/parties, and encourage people to vote for candidates/ parties based on the their ability for the task and not their less relevant traits? Enable people to do their own talking. I mean enable the electors to discuss the matter amongst themselves in advance of the election. That would be my preferred solution. And earlier: For instance, when voting for persons then candidates with high popularity and charisma are likely to win more votes than less charismatic candidates, despite the less charismatic candidates being far more suited for the task (more knowledge, experience, talent, etc.). In the Norwegian system where we got multiple parties, but two blocks (left and right), we also see that some people vote for their second preference rather than the first, because the first is in the wrong block or intend to cooperate with another party which the voter dislike the most. I agree with Juho, the problem is a lack of information. I would add that a rational decision can only be made by first learning what the decision *ought* to be, then by making it so in fact. Therefore the rational decider will always know the decision in advance. We have empirical evidence (so to speak) that modern electors never make rational electoral decisions. Every election night finds them glued to their TV screens waiting to learn who they just elected. Again, I think it would be better if the electors discussed the matter in advance of the election and agreed amongst themselves who to elect. Then they could throw away their TVs. ;-) Do you have a preferred solution of your own? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Top 2+1 Approval primaries
Isn't the crucial thing just the design of the open primary? I mean if the primary is good enough to flush out the relative strengths of all candidates (assume this for sake of argument), then the simplest solution for the general election might also be the stupidest. It might be okay at this point to be stupid (in a sense), because the necessary information was already gained in the smart primary. The general election need only contribute a decisive form to that information, and plurality might even be ideal for this. Maybe I misunderstand (I'm not an expert on methods). I wonder what information a smart general election can provide that a smart open primary cannot. I ask because the primaries are extra-constitutional and relatively easy to improve on the basis of technical merit and utility, whereas the structure of general elections cannot be changed except by force (big money, big media, big fight). -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/w/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/in Jameson Quinn said: The simplest good solution would be *Top 2+1 approval*. That is: - a primary using approval voting - the top two advance to the general election, plus the top vote-getter outside that party if they're both from the same party - then a general election using approval voting. Why is this good? In the US today, primaries serve two purposes. They help general-election voters focus their attention, so they can take a deeper look at the serious candidates and ignore the less-serious ones; and they help avoid problems with vote-splitting. But vote-splitting is scarcely a problem in a decent voting system; the only reason it's so important is that we use a stupid voting system ... plurality voting. ... Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Electorama wiki requires login to view????
Jameson said: I think we could have plenty of question captchas of the form: * What letters are missing in E_ecto_ama (in order, no spaces)? * What letters are missing in Gibba_d-Satterth_aite http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Gibbard-Satterthwaite_theorem (in order, no spaces)? etc. (Note the link in the second question) The current question I have set is: Please locate the captcha password on the main page. What is the captcha password? On the main page it says: Captcha password: ballyhoo This suffices to stop the spambots. QuestyCaptcha can also take an array of multiple questions and present them at random, but I prefer a single question; then I know when it needs changing. Kristofer said: I think that one should try using a general-purpose captcha (like Recaptcha) first. If the spammers are just drive-by spammers, as it were, they'll pick another target. But if the spammers have decided to spam Electorama, and so using a general-purpose captcha doesn't work, then we can try using a more special one. Yes, because it's easy to install a different captcha implementation. And if captchas are the only front-line defence (as I recommend), then you'll know when it's been breached and needs strengthening. But I think the spammers are almost entirely bots. I believe the more sophisticated ones defeat conventional captchas by crowd sourcing the challenge to high traffic sites (porno, gambling, etc.) and replaying the responses. The programmer need only understand the general form of the captcha (text, image, whatnot) in order to handle any content. But this approach is defeated by QuestyCaptcha provided the content of the question depends on the site context and is therefore incomplete in itself. This is the crucial thing. Another good defence (but expensive) would be to use an unconventional *form* of captcha. Then the bots couldn't read the content at all. Mike Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: On 06/12/2013 05:29 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: I think we could have plenty of question captchas of the form: * What letters are missing in E_ecto_ama (in order, no spaces)? * What letters are missing in Gibba_d-Satterth_aite http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Gibbard-Satterthwaite_theorem (in order, no spaces)? etc. (Note the link in the second question) Obviously a programmer could figure out how to defeat this pretty easily, but it would discourage a just answer all the questions exhaustively strategy. If you'd like me to make a program that gives a long list of such questions (including links), I would be happy to do so. I think that one should try using a general-purpose captcha (like Recaptcha) first. If the spammers are just drive-by spammers, as it were, they'll pick another target. But if the spammers have decided to spam Electorama, and so using a general-purpose captcha doesn't work, then we can try using a more special one. The advantage of using a general-purpose one is that most users are familiar with it. Thus, there would be a lower barrier non-robots. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Electorama wiki requires login to view????
Regarding spam, here are the settings for the wiki I administer: http://zelea.com/w/Wiki:Main_page http://zelea.com/system/host/obsidian/var/www/localhost/htdocs/mediawiki-c/LocalSettings.php See spam protections, particularly the escalating countermeasures A.1, A.2, ... But I've found that A.1 (captcha) is sufficient to stop all bot registrations and bot spam, provided the captcha is good: ## (A.1) captcha: uncomment ConfirmEdit extension at bottom The one I use is perhaps the simplest of all: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:QuestyCaptcha I choose a question that requires the user to navigate to a another page in the wiki where the answer is. This makes it difficult for the bot to replay the question to visitors on a porn site or whatnot, and then pass back the answer. General captcha settings: $wgGroupPermissions['*']['skipcaptcha'] = false; # the no-group $wgGroupPermissions['user' ]['skipcaptcha'] = true; $wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['skipcaptcha'] = false; # that would be everyone, new users are currently autoconfirmed immediately $wgGroupPermissions['bot' ]['skipcaptcha'] = true; # registered bots $wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['skipcaptcha'] = true; $wgGroupPermissions['bureaucrat' ]['skipcaptcha'] = true; $wgCaptchaTriggers['edit'] = false; # on edit $wgCaptchaTriggers['create'] = false; # on page creation $wgCaptchaTriggers['addurl'] = true; # on edits that add an external URL $wgCaptchaTriggers['createaccount'] = true; # on Special:Userlogintype=signup $wgCaptchaTriggers['badlogin'] = true; # on Special:Userlogin after failure The captcha on 'addurl' stops anonymous bot spam; they all add URLs. The captcha on 'createaccount' stops them from registering. A bot that registered could start spamming without restriction, even adding URLs, but none ever gets through. If necessary, I can escalate: ## (A.2) SimpleAntiSpam: uncomment extension at bottom # guards only web editor (I think) not API, unsure it actually helps ## (A.3) captcha: set ConfirmEdit $wgCaptchaTriggers['create'] = true ## (A.4) captcha: set ConfirmEdit $wgCaptchaTriggers['edit'] = true ## (A.5) close API to anonymous, unregistered users # $wgGroupPermissions['*']['writeapi'] = false; ## (A.6) no page creation by anonymous, unregistered users # $wgGroupPermissions['*']['createpage'] = false; # $wgGroupPermissions['*']['createtalk'] = false; ## (A.7) close API to ordinary users, leave open for registered bots # $wgGroupPermissions['user']['writeapi'] = false; ## (A.8) no editing by anonymous, unregistered users # $wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false; ## (A.9) no editing by unconfirmed email addresses # $wgEmailConfirmToEdit = true; ## (B.1) SpamBlacklist: uncomment extension at bottom ## (B.2) no registration of new users # $wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false; ## (B.3) no editing by ordinary users # $wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false; # $wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false; # $wgGroupPermissions['user']['edit'] = false; # $wgGroupPermissions['bot']['edit'] = true; # $wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['edit'] = true; ## (C) no access by public, per /etc/apache2/modules.d/90_mediawiki.conf Before installing QuestyCaptcha, I often had to escalate. But now A.1 alone seems to be sufficient. Note that I also use this extension, which may confuse some bots: http://zelea.com/project/mailish/MailishUsername.xht -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: On 06/12/2013 07:04 AM, Rob Lanphier wrote: Responding to Abd's points: We're operating under very different parameters than, say, a Wikimedia-operated wiki like Wikiversity. In particular, we don't have the infrastructure to deal with user creation spam. There are big advantages to sharing spam fighting resources with Wikipedia. I imagine that using some spam-deterring plugins would go a lot of the way. See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam . I don't know this, though, as I haven't administered any Mediawiki sites myself. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Open budget primary
. That's perhaps the dream of every executive. The clearer the mandate (what ought to be) the greater the power to make it a fact (what is). Mike conseo said: Hi, Michael Allan wrote: This is fairly complicated. But it's interesting too, because it shows how different types of primary come together in the budget. conseo said: Yes, if [supply side] accounting happened in the same process, then budget drafting would be embedded in the process, right? ... We spoke since. Here's a summary of how we figured the budget is decided, and how that decision is guided by the participants. The summary reveals some holes, which I try to fill in below. It looks like whole-budget drafting fits in one of them. Issue Guiding PrimaryDecisive Authority = Forced Legislative (tax law) [1] Assembly revenue Unforced Planning (production) [2] Executive (sub-office) revenue Planning (donation) [2] RAC pledger [3] + executive (sub-office) - Forced - (supplier contracts) None expenditures Legislative [1] Assembly (statutory expenses) Unforced Budget (expenditures) [4] Executive (finance) expenditures = Budget ???Executive (finance) + assembly - - - - - - - - - - - - + judiciary (all decisions) Forced revenue comes from taxes guided by legislative primaries and decided by the assembly. (These could be member fees for other types of organization, but I use government as my standard here.) Unforced revenue may come from production (goods and services charged for), which is guided by planning primaries and decided by the officer who is charged with executing the plan. Unforced revenue may also come from donations that are pledged to specific variants of the plan via the RAC, the pledged amounts being decided by the pledger (of course) while the variant is chosen by the executive; the pledge is redeemable only if the pledged variant is chosen. (We discussed how wealth could influence the planning decision here, and we mostly agreed it's normal in this context, and not a problem.) Forced expenditures come from supplier contracts that are already in force for materials, manpower, capital and such. Payment for these is mandatory by contract law, and not decided by anyone. Expenditures may also be enforced by statutory law, as with statutory programs or services. Unforced expenditures - the discretionary balance among departments, programs and services - are guided by the budget primary for that purpose, but decided by the finance officer. The sum of all these decisions is the budget (bottom left), which again is decided by the finance officer, typically in conjunction with the assembly, which has a veto. Note that we're missing a primary here to guide the budget as a whole (???). So I guess we need: (A) Budget primary (whole budget) It might be implemented like a legislative primary [1], with variant budgets instead of bills. It also needs special markup to read data from external sources that are shareable by the variant drafts, and it must render the data on the fly, instead of writing them directly to the text. These data include things like the latest results of the expenditures primary, cost of supplier contracts, interest rate projections, and so forth. It also needs spreadsheet-like capabilities to display intermediate and final calculations on the fly instead of writing them in. Then it might be possible to patch variant budget drafts using text diffs, like we patch bills. The drafting medium (so modified) is the budget composing tool we spoke of earlier. The chief financial officer uses it to compose the official budget. And rivals for that office in the *executive* primary (or budding future candidates) tend to be experienced drafters in the *budget* primary, where they all work more-or-less together. Yes, this is important imo. Also you are right that it should build a common process instead of being separated in budget primary, plan drafting (with RAC and pledges for supplies) and executive primary. In the budget everything comes together really. The spreadsheet like features will also be very interesting. I hope I can dive into hacking that soon. All decisions in the authority column (above) are subject to judicial review. Courts may strike down or alter decisions. So
Re: [EM] Open budget primary
== - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Government + judiciary (all decisions) The sum of all the decisions on the left is a government. But we're missing another primary here (???), the one that guides the choice of judges. Judicial appointments are one-off, so I guess it would similar to a single-winner assembly primary [5]. Maybe call it: (B) Judicial bench primary. Just as experienced primary budget drafters are the best candidates for financial office, (and experienced primary bill drafters the best candidates for the legislature), so maybe we need a drafting primary for the judicial candidates. I guess it would be one that provides guidance for judicial decisions: [7] (C) Judicial case primary. Again there are deciders in the authority column above (electorate) who themselves are the products of decision: Issue Guiding Primary Decisive Authority == === === Electorate Legislative [1] Assembly (maybe others) (constitutional law) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + judiciary (all decisions) The constitution says who the electors are. The constitution is guided by a legislative primary and decided by the assembly under special rules, such as super-majority, consent of other authorities (executive, federal states), and so forth. Mike [1] Legislative primaries. http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/legislative_action [2] Planning primaries. (not yet drafted) http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/administrative_action [3] Resource accounting framework (RAC). http://zelea.com/w/Category:Account [4] Budget primary (just expenditures). The whole-budget primary (not yet documented) would run in parallel with this. http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/budgeting [5] Single and multi-winner electoral primaries. http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/assembly_election [6] Executive electoral primary. http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring [7] To be sure, it's important to bear in mind that: (a) primaries run long in advance of decisions and keep running afterwards; (b) while anyone is free to vote, anyone is also free to filter and recount the votes, e.g. restricting them to legal experts; (c) the appointments of higher judges tend to be secure; and (d) they have the authority to temporarily shut down sources of information, which includes things like case primaries. conseo said: Michael Allan worte: Thanks C, Since it is also combinable with our resource accounting, people could both determine the global budget and contribute more than the vote, but their taxes rather directly with their vote in form of resources. I guess the budget vote is a vote for expenditures (i.e. for a program or service or purchase). Maybe the RAC pledge would be where the voter contributes additional revenue as a kind of donation or (government) voluntary tax toward the same expenditure. You asked on IRC whether additional code might be needed for the budgeting practice. Two things I can think of: (1) Tool for finance officer to produce budget itself. He adds revenue, debt servicing and other forced expenditures, account cancellations, and so forth. The tool combines these with the current results of the budget primary, and produces the official budget. I see. Maybe candidate finance officers can produce their budgets in advance, as part of applying for office in the executive primary. Maybe the opposition finance officer (out of office) always has a shadow budget, as a kind of critique of the gov't. Yes, if accounting happened in the same process, then budget drafting would be embedded in the process, right? The finance officer would then define the according accounts with targets and describe their distribution to budgets in the account definitions. That way budgets could be defined globally through the primary voting with votes through budget pipes, while resource flow could contribute to budgets to allow economic expenditure locally, in context of the application of the budget. Both ends, global only expenditure, e.g. space program, and a losely related local economic process beyond the global budget, e.g. local growing cooperative, are covered that way. Does that make sense to you? (2) Tool to compare official budget with the primary, verifying that the wishes of the primary participants are being met, or what the discrepencies are exactly. Probably these two are related, maybe even the same tool. Ok, sounds interesting. Pipes have some drafting potential. conseo Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Closed list and open primary
Here's a puzzle of party strategy. A continuous open primary (0) ranks all possible candidates by primary votes received. The assembly size is 12, so the predicted election bar (---) is below candidate (Fi). Candidates are divided by known party preference (H, J) and independents (i1). This division yields the default nomination scenario (1). Ah, Bh, Dh and Eh are expected to accept the nomination of the left party, while Bj and Ej accept that of the right. The remainder go to the open party (i1). The open party is apolitical and nominates anyone, but is constrained to list in primary order (0). (0) | (1) | (2) P | | all | Hi1 J | Hi1 J --- | --- --- --- | --- --- --- 30 Ah | Ah| Ah 29 Ai |Ai |Ai 14 Bh | Bh| Bh 14 Bi |Bi |Bi 14 Bj | Bj | Bj 13 Ci |Ci |Ci 10 Dh | Dh| Dh 10 Di |Di |Di 9 Eh | Eh|- Eh 8 Ei |Ei |Ei 8 Ej | Ej | Ej 8 Fi |Fi |- --- | --- --- --- | --- --- --- 6 Gh | | Gh 5 Gi | | 4 Hh | | 4 Hi | | 4 Hj | | 4 Li | | --- | --- --- --- | --- --- --- | 63 + 82 + 22 | 60 + 83 + 22 | | | = 167 | = 165 Figure [NB]. Two nomination scenarios. http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/assembly_election/multi-winner#NB Scenario (2) differs in that Eh accepts the nomination of the open party instead of H. But she remains left in orientation, so the left is now predicted to elect 5 instead of 4. This is by assumption P: P: Electors use their votes on election day to elect the seating of PARTIES that was predicted in the primary and the default nomination scenario (0, 1). So H seats 4 regardless of the actual nomination scenario (1, 2 or 3). Suppose the left and right compete in this. Scenario (3) shows both increasing their seat counts by 50%, which is the most they can do. (0) | (3) P | (4) C | | all | Hi1 J | Hi1 J --- | --- --- --- | --- --- --- 30 Ah | Ah| Ah 29 Ai |Ai |Ai 14 Bh | -Bh | -Bh 14 Bi |Bi |Bi 14 Bj |Bj - |Bj - 13 Ci |Ci |Ci 10 Dh | -Dh | -Dh 10 Di |-|Di 9 Eh | Eh| Eh 8 Ei |-|Ei 8 Ej | Ej | Ej 8 Fi |-|Fi --- | --- --- --- | --- --- --- 6 Gh | Gh| 5 Gi | | 4 Hh | Hh| 4 Hi | | 4 Hj | Hj | 4 Li | | --- | --- --- --- | --- -- | 49 + 94 + 12 | 39 + 120 + 8 | | | = 155 | = 167 Figure [FC]. Two electoral assumptions. http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/assembly_election/multi-winner#NB The same nomination scenario (3) is repeated in (4), but here the electoral assumption is changed from P to C: C: Electors use their votes on election day to elect the seating of CANDIDATES that was predicted in the primary (0). So they follow the candidates into the open party, and Ah to Fi are elected regardless. The truth must be somewhere between P and C (3 and 4); each is true to some extent. They therefore work together to take bites out of the parties: first P attracts the better candidates (or at least gives them political cover to escape the party), while C takes an electoral bite out of the party in consequence. The measure of that bite is the effect on candidate strength (summed at bottom). It's a smaller bite if i1 is small to begin with, but it grows with each election cycle. So what could party H do to avoid being eaten up like this? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [Politik] Helping the Pirate Party to vanish
fisch01 said: I appreciate your visions. I think we all share the same here. :) To my mind the idea as a whole has to be spread and understood before a toolset yet to be developed and put together can be used to avoid the usual pitfalls. ... But anyway all this should not keep us away from prototyping a whole new system. Thank you. I agree we need to be cautious. We can only understand a little of what we're trying to build, so we should build only a little at a time. We should proceed in small steps, and with prototypes. I was slow in replying because I wanted to document a sound practice first. Unfortunately we cannot say to the electors (as I'd hoped), Vote for an open party and the same candidates are elected regardless! the parties are vanishing! The German election act doesn't allow for multiple party nomination, after all. So the practice needed some slight changes: (and maybe this is better anyway) http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/assembly_election/multi-winner#In_Germany The furthest the Pirate Party could go on its present course is to replace the SPD. It would then become like party H here: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2013-April/031770.html But if that argument is correct, the Pirates would then be eaten up by the open parties (i1). To avoid that fate, the party would have to become an open party itself. It would have to offer nominations to all candidates (left and right) based purely on the results of cross- -party, open primaries. The election act doesn't allow candidates to be *copied* across parties, but it does allow them to *move* across parties (of course). So I think this is one of the practices we need to prototype and learn about. Mike fisch01 said: I appreciate your visions. I think we all share the same here. :) To my mind the idea as a whole has to be spread and understood before a toolset yet to be developed and put together can be used to avoid the usual pitfalls. If people understand the idea they will be able to use the tools. Maybe they will even use the current tools in some more efficent ways to put pressure on politics. Else the tools could be target for abuse. The problem again is the established system. If we have no in germany called Fraktionszwang for members of a party in a parlament no matter of what instance and where things might begin the analogue way. In fact many even pp members just now refuse the use of LQFB because there is no trust in digital systems[¹] http://liquidfeedback.org/2013/04/17/liquid-democracy-ist-keine-alternative-zur-parlamentarischen-republik/[²] http://ccc.de/de/updates/2008/brandenburg-beobachterbericht regarding that purpose (although many use fb on a daily basis. So in fact it would be easier for now that people really understand get explained the dimension of how they use their now digitalized social networks in some new ways they weren't able to use before). As we begin to use our tools in a small context just to avoid the usual issues regarding time and geographical context things might change. As of now I did not know how to proper explain even a political interested person the use of LQFB other than as a new experiment in making political decisions. But anyway all this should not keep us away from prototyping a whole new system. [1] http://liquidfeedback.org/2013/04/17/liquid-democracy-ist-keine-alternative-zur-parlamentarischen-republik/http://liquidfeedback.org/2013/04/17/liquid-democracy-ist-keine-alternative-zur-parlamentarischen-republik/ [2]http://ccc.de/de/updates/2008/brandenburg-beobachterbericht http://ccc.de/de/updates/2008/brandenburg-beobachterbericht -- Politik mailing list poli...@lists.piratenpartei.de https://service.piratenpartei.de/listinfo/politik Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Open budget primary
Thanks C, Since it is also combinable with our resource accounting, people could both determine the global budget and contribute more than the vote, but their taxes rather directly with their vote in form of resources. I guess the budget vote is a vote for expenditures (i.e. for a program or service or purchase). Maybe the RAC pledge would be where the voter contributes additional revenue as a kind of donation or (government) voluntary tax toward the same expenditure. You asked on IRC whether additional code might be needed for the budgeting practice. Two things I can think of: (1) Tool for finance officer to produce budget itself. He adds revenue, debt servicing and other forced expenditures, account cancellations, and so forth. The tool combines these with the current results of the budget primary, and produces the official budget. Maybe candidate finance officers can produce their budgets in advance, as part of applying for office in the executive primary. Maybe the opposition finance officer (out of office) always has a shadow budget, as a kind of critique of the gov't. (2) Tool to compare official budget with the primary, verifying that the wishes of the primary participants are being met, or what the discrepencies are exactly. Probably these two are related, maybe even the same tool. Mike conseo said: Michael Allan wrote: Here's a rough design for an open budget primary based on transitive delegation: http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/budgeting It runs in parallel with an open executive primary of similar design. The officers currently nominated in the executive primary maintain accounts for particular programs and services in the budget primary. Each voting participant has a single vote to cast into an account. Together the participants shift these votes to ensure that the most important accounts are sufficiently funded. When the executive is eventually elected, it comes complete with a primary budget. Will this work as hoped? Or is there an obvious flaw? I am not sure whether this is close enough to democratically steer the economic process, but it is definitely a well-integrated way to develop a budget. I don't see a direct problem with it and I think it is a very interesting idea which matches the pipe indirection nicely. Good idea! Since it is also combinable with our resource accounting, people could both determine the global budget and contribute more than the vote, but their taxes rather directly with their vote in form of resources. conseo Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Open budget primary
Here's a rough design for an open budget primary based on transitive delegation: http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/budgeting It runs in parallel with an open executive primary of similar design. The officers currently nominated in the executive primary maintain accounts for particular programs and services in the budget primary. Each voting participant has a single vote to cast into an account. Together the participants shift these votes to ensure that the most important accounts are sufficiently funded. When the executive is eventually elected, it comes complete with a primary budget. Will this work as hoped? Or is there an obvious flaw? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] a comment
David, Which post are you commenting on? David L Wetzell said: If you're going to pit two election rules against each other by using them both and then have voters decide between the cases when they differ then you're going to have sample selection problems. For it's potentially more work, there might be a learning curve for many voters with some rules, which would muddy the evidence, and I find it hard for politicians to agree to such an experiment or not tamper the evidence by additional targeted campaigning if it did go into a face-off. Or what if there's been significant amounts of voter error in a close election(in one of the two) or even possibly selective tampering as a potential source of differing outcomes? C It sounds like a nice experiment, but it'd have a terrible marketing problem, apart from perhaps the internal elections of modestly-sized third parties committed to experimenting with different elections. I am fascinated with the scope for increased experimentation in the USA if the GOP civil war weakens the center-right-ish party so that it'd be in their interest to push for a less winner-take-all electoral system. But I think it's fair to focus on electoral reforms that won't end the tendency to 2-party domination, but rather end the tendency to single-party domination that currently exists in the US's political system and that makes it so hard for our leaders to get anything done... dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Helping the Pirate Party to vanish
Maybe this should be published. If the party system isn't about to fall apart - if the argument can be refuted or undermined - then we want to know that in advance. An academic paper plus a Web teaser would probably force the issue one way or another; either prove us wrong on paper, or give us the resources to run the experiment. Alexander Praetorius said: An elector who participates in the open primaries will probably want to vote for an open party. The elector need not participate in the primaries, of course, but open primaries are more meaningful and interesting (c and d) than closed primaries. Yes, but WHY should anyone become an elector who participates in the open primaries in the first place? By elector, I mean someone who is eligible to vote on election day. So most citizens of age are already electors. But it no longer matters what party the elector votes for (open or not). The election results are more-or-less the same regardless (c). (e) The mass media will inform people of this strange news. People will want to know what it means. Journalists will explain: The parties are dying. No, i dont think so. They only started to cover pirates, when they had a lot of voters voting for them. Currently they dont cover pirate stuff at all. The media covers those things which have impact to some degree and impact means, a lot of people are affected by something. So if you have open primaries and two open paper parties, that means, its still a lifeless construct. Media will not cover it. ... You missed point (c), Alex. The open candidate list is largely elected to the Bundestag even if nobody votes for an open party on election day. The votes could all go to the Union, SPD, etc. as usual, and *still* the open list would be largely elected. In that sense, the open parties always win. They are unbeatable. That's food for thought if it's true, and it's also newsworthy. I think the motivation is (d). Nowhere else can I (a German citizen) discuss and vote on the membership of the Bundestag, the candidacy of the Chancellor, and the thousands of official appointments (direct and indirect) of the Chancellor's office. yes you can. join the pirates and you can discuss and vote on the membership. ... Not for the government as whole, you can't. The Pirate Party's candidate list is not the assured membership of the entire Bundestag; nor is the Pirate's leader the assured Chancellor; nor are any of the other primary nominees of the party assured of appointment in the government. These assurances can be provided only by open electoral primaries, and the Pirate Party is not hosting any (d). So the way to move forward is to bring two toolsets together to eliminate the primary network effect (i.e. host an open primary). That's the fastest way I can see. yes, but which two toolsets? I feel the community aspect should be added. In addition to what you've said, there should be communities chosen for strategic reasons. ...to make it even faster. (That will not prevent any other communities from using any one of the two first toolsets, but at least it will make sure, that the communities targeted in the first place are huge, so the features are catered to their needs) Yes, maybe a community can help in bringing two toolsets together. This has been my hope for AG MFT and other Pirates. It's worth a try. But the Pirate Party has not adopted an open primary (d). ... They have. An open primary cannot be anonymous. People have to authenticate themselves in some way. Pirates do not deny people to join in :-) You can participate in crafting the party program, even if you are not member of the pirates. ... If the primary votes of outsiders were counted equal to the member's votes *and* could be cast on facilities beyond the control of the Pirate Party (or any other organization), then that would be an open *program* primary. It would enable the German citizens to craft consensus programs for the government as a whole. Further, if it were backed by open *electoral* primaries, then the consensus programs would be assured of implementation. But none of this is the case. The Pirate Party does not (at least not yet) enable any of this. ... The same is true of the CDU/CSU Union and the SPD. So the Pirate Party is not applying any pressure to these other parties in favour of open primaries. (Conceivably it might by first destroying itself, but I think that's too much to expect of any party organization.) The CDU/CSU and will never use digital tools in order to enable all of their members to participate. ... It wouldn't help them to do so. As noted previously (quoted below), Union members will feel compelled to join in the open electoral primaries *regardless* of what the Union does. Open primaries are necessarily beyond Union control. So it no longer matters what kind of tooling a party organization supports (or does not
Re: [EM] Helping the Pirate Party to vanish
vote against any candidate at any given time, forcing him out of office and replacing him by someone else. The Basic Law probably makes no provision for that. To change the Basic Law would require a legislative primary and a fairly strong consensus for that change. Any consensus that held steady would be acted on by the Bundestag and other authorities *if at all possible*. No elected body could defy an electorate that was conscious of its own power, nor (hopefully) could such a conscious electorate hold to an unreasonable demand. (It seems at times that the Athenian democracy willfully destroyed Greek civilization at its peak. I hope we don't repeat their mistakes.) Mike Alexander Praetorius said: On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 3:01 AM, Michael Allan m...@zelea.com wrote: Hi Alex, If no second party were willing to help, then we might create a new party. yes, BUT :-) ...to build a party and trust, so that many people are willing to vote for it is a very tough thing to do. ... The parties we need are relatively easy to obtain. (We're speaking here of Germany, or other states with proportional representation.) We need formal parties empty of all party content. Call these open parties. We want the party name to appear on the ballot on election day, that's all. These open parties will all share the same leader and candidate list as determined through the open primaries. On election day, a given elector may vote for any one of the open parties, and the effect will be the same regardless. It's not really a vote for a party at all, but rather for the candidate list and leader (the would-be Chancellor or Bundeskanzler) that were previously agreed in the open primaries. Do you see? Yes, that's technically a nice approach. Other parties could join this system if they drop their candidate lists and instead use the open list, right? But although i can see it working technically, i fail to see how this will become a reality, because no matter if there are 1, 2 or 10 or even more open parties on the ballot on election day, nobody would vote for them. In germany, you normally have a dozen or several dozen of electable parties on the ballot on election day, but most people will never vote for anything else than what they already know. The first time the pirates were electable, many people laughed when they read the ballot and for the first time in their life learned about the pirate party ;-) personell had to remind them, that they please be quit and not comment on any parties :D All we have to build are the open primaries. We do that using the primary toolsets. By mirroring the primary votes across all toolsets, we ensure the primaries are truly open; not belonging to any party organization. yes, i understand the technical approach and i like it very much. What i still fail to see is how people will start using the tools. I have a feeling that they wont. In order to have real users using the tools and spreading the word, the usability has to be very very good and people should be able to re-use knowledge they got from their previously used tools (e.g. wiki, facebook, email, mailinglists, forum, twitter, etc...) The pirate party is just one of many possible targets with a lot of similar users, that means homogenous experience in their current tool usage and goals (thats crafting positions for their party program) ... I am very happy, that the pirates exist. Luckily, the pirates are a kind of anti party :-) Their role is to vanish, I think you said. But the open parties I just described are already vanished. yes, they are a technical hack right from the beginning in order to inject the open primaries into the current system. Thats a good thing, but still, its necessary to gather users which use the open primaries and spread the word about which technical vehicles to elect on election day. This whole thing can only take off the ground, if there is a MOVEMENT behind it, thus a lot of users with similar motivation which makes them use open primaries to change the world for the better. What kind of people are these people? Probably young people, which are younger than 30. Those which are older than 30 might be a minority compared to the mainstream behavior of their age and are not likely to create a critical mass. In lack of alternatives, young people around the world join the pirate movement. They identify as pirates, because it serves their purpose. They were NOT BORN as pirates nor will they necessarily be pirates till the end of time. They just use the pirate party, because there is no alternative TINA! There might be other people as well, which are not pirates, but still very open source mindend, maybe mostly software developers from all walks of life, and other geeks... BUT i think many of them dont use (or waste) their times in discussing political issues
[EM] Primary network effects and national dialogue
Hi Alex, It can never be about eliminating the network effect. The network effect in itself is one fundamental evolutionary principle. You cannot circumvent it, you can only try to work WITH it. Public telephone networks are the classic example. Bell's network dominated for roughly a century in North America because it had more subscribers and therefore more people to call. Small carriers could not get subscribers. That's the network effect. Today, the subscribers of small carriers in North America can call exactly the same number of people as Bell subscribers. The network effect that favoured Bell vs. the smaller carriers has been eliminated. So it's clearly possible to do that. Mike Alexander Praetorius said: I have one objection so to say. It can never be about eliminating the network effect. The network effect in itself is one fundamental evolutionary principle. You cannot circumvent it, you can only try to work WITH it. People have to orient themselves somehow and it doesnt matter in what way they do this. It might be through following people, following ideas, following principles, following beliefs, whatever... Once they do that, and they always do in any given point in time there is some guiding or governing things, it can be abused. So if people follow a person, that person can abuse it. If they follow money, whoever controls money could abuse it. If they follow a product (e.g. a software), the developers could abuse it... All people might realize they are being abused, but how should they alter their behavior? In lack of consensus or the opportunity to sync their behavior, its not an easy task to agree upon THE solution which everyone might use as an alternative. And beside that, this alternative solution, even if people COULD agree to use the alternative (which might take huge efforts) could then again start to abuse people So its a NON TRIVIAL PROBLEM :-) The only thing people can hope for is to choose an alternative which will not abuse them or might make it more difficult to do so. So i think, what is needed is to create a very good alternative, which people start to use, because its better than all the other alternatives, thus it creates traction. Now eventually enough people join and the network effect starts to build up, so in order to end the negative effects, meaning the potential for abuse through those people which created the new solution is, to make sure, that everyone else can join in and can collaborate and change whats there. Its the open source principle, but with the twist, that a fork does not really fork in a sense that the current version and the forked one loose compatibility, but following certain principles, the compatibility is not broken. I think what it needs is open standards, but not only for data to be interchanged or for protocols to be open, but also open standards (maybe initially created by core developers, but later on agreed upon through all the users) about HOW to set up vote mirroring, not only for votes but for every imaginable aspect of the system. Thus, where NO shared underlying standard for stuff exists, there should be at least a good method of how people can MAP their approach to another approach, so that their systems can communicate and eventually a standard will evolve. This mindset is the principle for which we would in fact really like to have a NETWORK EFFECT :-) ...please everyone join in to the common cause ;-) this mindset is something i personally would very much like to have a very strong network effect in, so that other mindsets, which are exclusive, cannot survive so to speak ;-) -- Best Regards / Mit freundlichen Grüßen *** Alexander Praetorius Rappstraße 13 D - 60318 Frankfurt am Main Germany *[skype] *alexander.praetorius *[mail] *citi...@serapath.de alexander.praetor...@serapath.de *[web] *http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Benutzer:Serapath *** Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Helping the Pirate Party to vanish
. A network effect can be seen at least from two perspectives. ...1. it sucks aways everything into something that i am not part of ...2. it brings everything into ONE and i am part of and therefor things are no longer devided. ... So the best possible thing one could possibly achive is to move forward but stay OPEN, so that others can join in. This way, you use all your strength to create a network effect (and so will others). ... The difference is, if YOU succeed, then all others can join you and will not loose their investments or at least only their selfish investments. This might also be exactly WHY you win and can create the network effect, because you follow a vision that encompasses everyones best interest and not only your own best interest. I won't answer here yet, because you didn't fully understand what I propose. It's something more immediate, as I explained above. Mike Alexander Praetorius said: On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 5:55 PM, Michael Allan m...@zelea.com wrote: Alex and Marc, Alex said: It will happen fast. Enabling people to move freely among toolset platforms (by a solution we haven't yet discussed), will necessarily enable them to move among political parties *without political consequences*. This will destroy the party system. ... I feel the same. Once, people can move freely among toolset plattforms, this will be the case, but at least in germany, the pirate party, as a toolset plattform in itself, will probably be the only political party, which is open to such a solution. ... If no second party were willing to help, then we might create a new party. yes, BUT :-) ...to build a party and trust, so that many people are willing to vote for it is a very tough thing to do. I am very happy, that the pirates exist. Luckily, the pirates are a kind of anti party :-) Its a worldwide movement. If u ask people in any country if they know this or that political party, they probably will only have heard about it, if its a party which is active in their own country, or if its republicans or democrats, because everyone knows the major parties of the USA. ..or ... its the pirate party :-) ...that says SOMETHING. The pirates are the political aspect of the open source movement. The pirate party was born online and its motor is the spirit of the web ...metaphorically spoken :P We could equip it with a position-forming (primary) toolset of its own, preferably something different than the Pirates are currently prototyping. Votorola is available for this purpose, for instance. YES and NO. In order to work, pieces must fit together. And there is at least ONE major gap, an thats the coupling device :-) Human-Computer-Interface must neatly fit together and currently it's far from that point. what i see in votorola is two fold: 1. it's a lovely vision 2. it's a proof of concept. but it's NOT a product ...yet. There's many aspects to a real product. The reason why linux did never succeed in becoming mainstream is, that its not a product. (and products dont have to cost money!) But the actual toolset doesn't matter so much. NO! ...IT DOES MATTER A LOT! It's very true, that its extremly important to break the network effect and enable people to move freely between tools, but in order for people to actually USE ANY Tool AT ALL .. there have to be NON-CRAPPY Tools. All i have seen until today, is total crap! Sure, there is adhocracy, there is liquid feedback, there is vilfredo, there is onethousandandone toolsets, but they all SUCK! They can do what they can and are somehow interesting and proof of concept, ... but there is a reason, why people in reality use EMAIL LISTS and WIKIS and eventually ETHERPADS and MUMBLE and the like. There is a reason, why you are NOT ABLE to use Votorola and some kind of voting/delegation mechanism to replace the job offers or wants you currently search for the votorola project. Votorola is great and there is a reason why i'm sticking to all this, because i believe in the vision. But all it currently does is stealing peoples time. Its not usable and its the same with all the other tools out there. They are impractical and currently only of scientific use. If you want to know what is needed, look at how mainstream people currently actually REALLY solve their problems. It's email It's wikis It's telephon/skype/mumble It's linkedIn/facebookco. It's twitter It's google calendar and the like There are so many tools, which all solve one aspect of what people need. And because people use a huge variety of devices (mobile, desktop) (windows, linux, android, mac osx, ...) and they have to work together... html5 as technology in itself is, in my opinion, the only way-to-go. What matters is that we enable the individual users (members) to range freely across toolsets/parties and settle where
[EM] Helping the Pirate Party to vanish
Alex and Marc, Alex said: It will happen fast. Enabling people to move freely among toolset platforms (by a solution we haven't yet discussed), will necessarily enable them to move among political parties *without political consequences*. This will destroy the party system. ... I feel the same. Once, people can move freely among toolset plattforms, this will be the case, but at least in germany, the pirate party, as a toolset plattform in itself, will probably be the only political party, which is open to such a solution. ... If no second party were willing to help, then we might create a new party. We could equip it with a position-forming (primary) toolset of its own, preferably something different than the Pirates are currently prototyping. Votorola is available for this purpose, for instance. But the actual toolset doesn't matter so much. What matters is that we enable the individual users (members) to range freely across toolsets/parties and settle where they prefer. ... So in order to make open toolset plattforms interesting, there has to be at least ONE party, which supports them ... At least two, I think. We'll eliminate the network effect that binds the users to the bigger toolset/party. In order to demonstrate this, however, we require at least two parties. Immediately both parties will be destroyed *as parties*. That's necessary, because otherwise nothing changes and the world just yawns. ;^) If the Pirates cannot stomach this (it's a bitter pill to swallow), then we might create two new parties expressly for this purpose. ... so people eventually vote for the pirates in order to get the results of the open toolset plattforms into laws, which might force the other parties to open up too, and as soon as they do, the party system will be destroyed. ... Yes, but already the demonstration above has politically destroyed the two parties. True, they can expect to receive more votes in the next election, but never again can a party candidate *as such* be elected to office. The open parties all share the same candidate list, which they discuss and vote using their primary toolsets. So the elected candidates are independent of all parties. (If it's the Pirates then, you see how quickly you are destroyed as a party. No Pirate *as such* will ever again be elected to office. You commit to that.) Likewise, the open parties all share the same leader. The leader has no authority as such within the parties. His/her only function is to become Chancellor when the parties win the federal election - then to make a huge number of official appointments, directly and indirectly. Those appointments too are discussed and voted using the primary toolsets years in advance of the election. This attracts users, and this is where the party system starts to seriously fall apart. Those users are not going to turn around and vote for a conventional party on election day. They will instead vote for one of the open parties (no matter which, the effect is always exactly the same) and that too will be known years in advance of the election. Anyway, this how we figured it. So two parties (as such) are destroyed immediately. The party system as a whole is not seriously shaken until the primary toolsets start to gain users. The timing depends, therefore, on how many developers we can attract to push the toolsets into beta. But if we attract just a few more developers, then that'll be a vote of confidence in what we predict, and we'll attract more on that basis. It'll snowball. Can anyone see a flaw? Please point to anything that seems doubtful. Which is the election methods list? I'd like to join that list :-) Here it is, Alex. http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/ Marc said: I am not sure about the speed things will fall apart. But in general it will happen. And YES - let's move forward into this direction with joined forces. We are already on the same track, but we need to shape our minds. Let's do it! Good! I see no problem with the standards for porting user data that you described. I don't think we'll get stuck on those. I'm more concerned about the method of eliminating the network effect. I think there's only one feasible method, but I want to hear your thoughts. Should we discuss sometime by Mumble? My hours this coming week are roughly 0800 to 2000 UTC. Or 1200 to 2400 the week after. Mike Alexander Praetorius said: On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 11:18 AM, Michael Allan m...@zelea.com wrote: (cc AG Politik, Election Methods, apologies for cross-posting) Marc said: Sorry that I have put it this way. Unfortunately it is realy hard for me to express my thoughts in english language, because it's not my mother language and sometimes I feel like lost in translation... I appreciate the effort you're putting into this lengthy thread. You must have other important things to work on, too. But I assure
Re: [EM] Helping the Pirate Party to vanish
(cc AG Politik, Election Methods, apologies for cross-posting) Marc said: Sorry that I have put it this way. Unfortunately it is realy hard for me to express my thoughts in english language, because it's not my mother language and sometimes I feel like lost in translation... I appreciate the effort you're putting into this lengthy thread. You must have other important things to work on, too. But I assure you, your English is excellent. I understand your words. I don't think our misunderstanding is about words, but rather about larger concepts. I hope we can clear it up shortly. Please refer once more to the two choices we, as technicians, have for obtaining users: * ** (1) Eliminate the network effects between platforms, thus leveling the playing field and enabling the users to range freely from platform to platform. Beseitigen Sie die Netzwerk-Effekte zwischen den Plattformen, so Einebnung des Spielfeldes und ermöglicht den Benutzern, reichen frei von Plattform zu Plattform. (2) Rely on network effects to force all users onto our own platform, thus establishing it as a de-facto monopoly. auf Netzwerk-Effekte Vertrauen, um alle Benutzer auf die eigene Kraft Plattform und schafft so als einer de-facto-Monopol. I am fine with (1) and therefore (a). We are close to an understanding, then. We both want (1) and (a). Let's move on to discussing the solution. This is where it gets interesting for the Pirate Party. But thinking one step beyond, (b) and (c) are NOT conflicting with (a) from my point of view. . . . The SOLUTION should... a) ... enable free choice of the tooling for every users. b) ... cover all parts of the decision making process. c) ... make all discourse related data entered by any user available to others. You understand that user freedom (a) cannot be realized except by eliminating (1) the network effects that underpin toolset lock-in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netzwerkeffekt In obtaining users for our tools, therefore, how do you propose to eliminate those network effects? What is your solution for that? (And again the future of the Pirate Party is bound up in this, even if they don't see it yet. So altogether it's a very interesting topic.) Unfortunately from time to time it seems to me you are baked into old belief systems. The Pirate Party is just a vehicle to ride with for a while. It's necessary to speed up things. Not more. Not less. Things will go very fast indeed if we keep on talking, so much so that the party (as such) won't be able to handle the speed. But nor will the other parties, particularly the mainstream ones with members in the Bundestag and state assemblies. All will be shaken to pieces. Do you know why? My own thinking on this has improved in the last month, thanks to discussions in the Election Methods list. Last month, you said: What should I say? I have currently no crystal ball around to predict the future. The only thing I know about the future is that it never comes like I thought. Just look at the present for what it is *technically* and you will see the future. The future hinges on something you already understand in the present: position forming (Standpunktbildung), or primary voting as I call it. A political party is just a vehicle for position forming. Technically speaking, it is nothing but a toolset platform for that purpose. Here I don't mean just the Pirate Party and other online parties, but *all* parties. Look at them through a technicians eyes. All are toolset platforms. But mainly the process of changing democracy will take up to three generations of man. Today our society is not prepared to take over the power. So that's nothing I want to take care about right now... It will happen fast. Enabling people to move freely among toolset platforms (by a solution we haven't yet discussed), will necessarily enable them to move among political parties *without political consequences*. This will destroy the party system. Immediately it will begin to fall apart at the seams. In technical terms, it will become rationalized into purely technical functions on the one hand, and purely political on the other. The political parties as we know them will have vanished. Are you comfortable with this? Should we make it happen? Mike * We must be clear on this issue. A platform cannot succeed without users. There are two ways to obtain those users: (1) Eliminate the network effects between platforms, thus leveling the playing field and enabling the users to range freely from platform to platform. This is the right way. (2) Rely on network effects to force all users onto our own platform, thus establishing it as a de-facto monopoly. This is harmful and unnecessary, and therefore wrong. These
Re: [EM] Helping the Pirate Party to vanish
PS - Oh dear, I misquoted Alex's translation. I gave the Google one instead. Sorry about that. Here's Alex's real translation: Wir müssen uns darüber klar werden: Eine Plattform kann ohne Benutzer nicht erfolgreich sein. Es gibt nur zwei Wege Nutzer zu bekommen: (1) Den Netzeffekt zwischen Plattformen beseitigen, also gleiche Wettbewerbsbedingungen schaffen und Nutzern ermöglichen die Plattform jederzeit zu wechseln. Das ist der richtige Weg. (2) Sich auf Netzeffekte verlassen um alle Nutzer auf die eigene Plattform zu zwingen, also ein de facto Monopol zu errichten. Das ist schädlich und unnötig und deshalb falsch. Diese beiden Wege sind die einzigen Wege. Es gibt keine Kompromisse zwischen diesen beiden Alternativen. Wenn wir uns nicht für Weg (1) entscheiden, dann entscheiden wir uns für Weg (2) und kein verantwortungsvoller Ingenieur wird dann mit uns zusammenarbeiten. Statt dessen wird ein solcher uns auf die Gefahren hinweisen und uns davor warnen weiter zu machen. (1) oder (2)? Was sollten wir tun? Mike Michael Allan said: (cc AG Politik, Election Methods, apologies for cross-posting) Marc said: Sorry that I have put it this way. Unfortunately it is realy hard for me to express my thoughts in english language, because it's not my mother language and sometimes I feel like lost in translation... I appreciate the effort you're putting into this lengthy thread. You must have other important things to work on, too. But I assure you, your English is excellent. I understand your words. I don't think our misunderstanding is about words, but rather about larger concepts. I hope we can clear it up shortly. Please refer once more to the two choices we, as technicians, have for obtaining users: * ** (1) Eliminate the network effects between platforms, thus leveling the playing field and enabling the users to range freely from platform to platform. Beseitigen Sie die Netzwerk-Effekte zwischen den Plattformen, so Einebnung des Spielfeldes und ermöglicht den Benutzern, reichen frei von Plattform zu Plattform. (2) Rely on network effects to force all users onto our own platform, thus establishing it as a de-facto monopoly. auf Netzwerk-Effekte Vertrauen, um alle Benutzer auf die eigene Kraft Plattform und schafft so als einer de-facto-Monopol. I am fine with (1) and therefore (a). We are close to an understanding, then. We both want (1) and (a). Let's move on to discussing the solution. This is where it gets interesting for the Pirate Party. But thinking one step beyond, (b) and (c) are NOT conflicting with (a) from my point of view. . . . The SOLUTION should... a) ... enable free choice of the tooling for every users. b) ... cover all parts of the decision making process. c) ... make all discourse related data entered by any user available to others. You understand that user freedom (a) cannot be realized except by eliminating (1) the network effects that underpin toolset lock-in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netzwerkeffekt In obtaining users for our tools, therefore, how do you propose to eliminate those network effects? What is your solution for that? (And again the future of the Pirate Party is bound up in this, even if they don't see it yet. So altogether it's a very interesting topic.) Unfortunately from time to time it seems to me you are baked into old belief systems. The Pirate Party is just a vehicle to ride with for a while. It's necessary to speed up things. Not more. Not less. Things will go very fast indeed if we keep on talking, so much so that the party (as such) won't be able to handle the speed. But nor will the other parties, particularly the mainstream ones with members in the Bundestag and state assemblies. All will be shaken to pieces. Do you know why? My own thinking on this has improved in the last month, thanks to discussions in the Election Methods list. Last month, you said: What should I say? I have currently no crystal ball around to predict the future. The only thing I know about the future is that it never comes like I thought. Just look at the present for what it is *technically* and you will see the future. The future hinges on something you already understand in the present: position forming (Standpunktbildung), or primary voting as I call it. A political party is just a vehicle for position forming. Technically speaking, it is nothing but a toolset platform for that purpose. Here I don't mean just the Pirate Party and other online parties, but *all* parties. Look at them through a technicians eyes. All are toolset platforms. But mainly the process of changing democracy will take up to three generations of man. Today our
Re: [EM] convergence of possible discussion topics
Bruce and Dennis, (cc Votorola, Election Methods) About the over-complexity of the issue space in executive elections, I wanted to share something we discovered last month. Bruce Schuman said: ... dealing with this incredible simultaneity and complexity, that so totally overloads normal human thinking. ... Somehow, we need to “parse the issue space” – using methods ... that can break down huge complexity and simultaneity into bite-sized and regionally-focused chunks people can comprehend…. Dennis Boyer said: ... I'm wondering if [Americans Elect] might have had better results by utilizing some qualitative and quantitative tools that would mesh with their issue responses, overlay them with candidate responses, and produce a candidate or candidates via that type of approach? Last month, we came up with a new design for an open executive primary: http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring It enables the electors (i.e. voters) to form a prior consensus on a power structure of appointments. A power structure is still a complex thing, of course (all the indirect appointments of a president), but it seems to be the essential issue to be decided in the election. It probably ought to be discussed beforehand. A primary like this might offer the right supports for that kind of discussion. Note how the complex leaves of the primary reach out to the equally complex local electorate in an attempt to engage with them, as they say. Discussions on normative issues (gun control, say) could be moved to separate primaries. Those primaries would have a different structure befitting the different form of their issues (texts rather than offices). Presumeably a competent executive is going to act on any normative consensus that emerges, if it's at all possible. (That seems a good electoral platform, anyway.) So norms could probably be discussed separate of the election, even in parallel. Technically this is called rationalization (you may know); breaking a confused whole into separate pieces and bringing those pieces into new and (frankly) more complex relations with each other. But it might not be so much the complexity that people can't handle, as the confusion of issues that are irrationally glued together. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Bruce Schuman said: Just to add a couple of thoughts to a line of thinking that might not really fit in here -- I'm wondering, Dennis, whether you might have been talking about Americans Elect when you mention your deep disappointment? My own take -- was that they had a powerful website and they got a lot of participation and attention -- but their leadership had a very limited idea on what to do with that energy and motivation They collected over 19 million responses -- but the best they could come up with as output for the entire $20 million project was 10,000 votes for Buddy Romer. They had a really great web interface -- and I saved screen shots from my interaction with it. So I’ll enclose one below -- very reminiscent of what we are doing here -- trying to focus on a topic or issue. From my point of view, Americans Elect was powerful sign that very meaningful systems can be developed. People will show up, people will click, and the technology can handle it. Those “19 million responses” could/should be the basis for an amazing national dialogue. Those responses showed what “the American people” really wanted to talk about…. You say, Dennis, that considering the interdependencies tends to make your “head explode”. I am wondering whether the “exploding heads all over the American political landscape” are at least in part responding to the same kind of conceptual overload issue that you find difficult. The view from cognitive psychology might be: the complexity of our political situation is far too much for a normal human brain to consider – so what happens is, voters pick a few basic dimensions of issues they can comprehend, see other people picking other dimensions, and declare war on each other on that basis… Look how hard it has been for gun-control people to persuade millions of people that “common sense gun safety” does not mean that the Feds are coming in black helicopters to take away their guns. Politicians know that they have to keep it simple to stay in office – even if that simplicity is unrealistic. So for me – the tremendous power of the internet – and of data-processing systems like google – should be put to work dealing with this incredible simultaneity and complexity, that so totally overloads normal human thinking. “Dialogue” – that involves people sending each other email, or posting prose-based opinion statements – doesn’t seem to me to be a solution – and that seems clear from the huge volume of comments (maybe 5,000, impossible for anyone to read) posted about a major opinion piece on a major news site
[EM] Consensus threshold
The psychological value of this method is that it appeals to our natural community spirit which includes a willingness to go along with the group consensus when the consensus is strong enough, as long as there is no hope for a better consensus, and as long as it isn't a candidate that we would rate at zero. Comments? I think there is a general williness to *consider* a consensus, but not a general willingness to follow it blindly. The popularity of a candidate is a recommendation to look more closely at that candidate given the fact of his/her popularity. Here popularity directly serves only to arouse my curiosity, Why is this candidate more popular? What do others know that I don't know? On learning the answer, I decide whether to follow the consensus. The proposed method differs in asking me to make the same decision, but without knowing the reason for the candidate's popularity. It invites me to act irrationally and enshrines that action as normal human behaviour. As a counter-proposal, consider a broader rationalization of the electoral design. Rather than overloading a single election with expectations it cannot fulfil, factor it into two elections: (1) a continuous, advisory primary to flush out consensus and dissensus, to give people time to talk things over, and decide what to do; followed by (2) a decisive election in which they express the decision. This solves the problem of systematic irrationality by allowing for a real consensus in the primary, one with reasons behind it, the validity of which can be discussed and debated before making a decision. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Forest Simmons said: Jobst has suggested that ballots be used to elicit voter's consensus thresholds for the various candidates. If your consensus threshold for candidate X is 80 percent, that means that you would be willing to support candidate X if more than 80 percent of the other voters were also willing to support candidate X, but would forbid your vote from counting towards the election of X if the total support for X would end up short of 80 percent. The higher the threshold that you give to X the more reluctant you are to join in a consensus, but as long as your threshold t for X is less than than 100 percent, a sufficiently large consensus (i.e. larger than t percent) would garner your support, as long as it it is the largest consensus that qualifies for your support. A threshold of zero signifies that you are willing to support X no matter how small the consensus, as long as no larger consensus qualifies for your support. I suggest that we use score ballots on a scale of 0 to 100 with the convention that the score and the threshold for a candidate are related by s+t=100. So given the score ballots, here's how the method is counted: For each candidate X let p(X) be the largest number p between 0 and 100 such that p(X) ballots award a score strictly greater than 100-p to candidate X. The candidate X with the largest value of p(X) wins the election. If there are two or more candidates that share this maximum value of p, then choose from the tied set the candidate ranked the highest in the following order: Candidate X precedes candidate Y if X is scored above zero on more ballots than Y. If this doesn't break the tie, then X precedes Y if X is scored above one on more ballots than Y. If that still doesn't break the tie, then X precedes Y if X is scored above two on more ballots than Y, etc. In the unlikely event that the tie isn't broken before you get to 100, choose the winner from the remaining tied candidates by random ballot. The psychological value of this method is that it appeals to our natural community spirit which includes a willingness to go along with the group consensus when the consensus is strong enough, as long as there is no hope for a better consensus, and as long as it isn't a candidate that we would rate at zero. Comments? Forest Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] secret ballots and proxy voting
Hi Fred, (cc Votorola) Fred Gohlke said: Why does this site not address the travesty Fobes describes? We are engulfed in the corruption and destructiveness inherent in party politics. Surely the bright people on this site can come up with a better alternative. Instead, they seem committed to perpetuating it. Why is that? I used to think that pointing to a problem, or even better to a solution, would cause people to jump into action. But I've since learned that that's insufficient, and maybe even unnecessary. People simply are not motivated by ideas. As Max Weber says: Not ideas, but material and ideal interests directly govern men's conduct. Yet very frequently the world images created by ideas have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest. * Fortunately, there's an alternative. Rather than constructing world images (hardly feasible) we may instead construct the tracks. We may put the technology into practice and leave the world images to take care of themselves. After all, this is what the railroad pioneers like Richard Trevithick, George and Robert Stephenson did. If anyone wishes to help in putting the technology into practice, we have some want ads here: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.html * Max Weber. 1915. The social psychology of the world religions. *In* From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 1948. Oxford University Press. p. 280. http://books.google.ca/books?id=e6m4xrnnDPgC -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Fred Gohlke said: Richard Fobes wrote: In politics the power nodes are the political parties. They are much easier to control than the voters. Even the members of Congress are a bit too numerous to control, so special interests (the biggest campaign contributors) make their deals in backroom meetings with committee members. Then (under threat of withdrawal of money from election campaigns) the majority whip ensures that all Congressmen from that party vote the way the party arranged to vote. Why does this site not address the travesty Fobes describes? We are engulfed in the corruption and destructiveness inherent in party politics. Surely the bright people on this site can come up with a better alternative. Instead, they seem committed to perpetuating it. Why is that? Fred Gohlke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] secret ballots and proxy voting
Bayle, Abd and Kristofer, Bayle Shanks wrote: Give each person two ballots: a secret ballot and a public ballot. Or two kinds of election. Proxy voting is well suited to advisory elections, as Abd calls them. He's written eloquently on the secret ballot as a red herring in this context: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2013-March/031615.html In the same context, other, more rational mitigations against coercion and vote buying include continuous voting (votes are a poor investment), full disclosure (easy to get caught) and separation of advisory from decision systems (again, the two kinds of election). See: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#vote-buy Abd ul-Rahman Lomax said: You can make up complicated scenarios that bear no resemblance to what would actually happen, and scare yourself with them. Likewise one can imagine scenarios that bear no resemblance to what did actually happen in the past. Vote buying and coercion were not the primary motivations behind the introduction of the secret ballot. While the reasons put forward at the time ranged from the laudible (ending corruption) to the deplorable (disenfranchising the negro and other illiterate people), the real motivation, as with other electoral reforms of the 1800s, was to consolidate power in the newly organized political parties. They were gearing up for a newly enfranchised mass electorate and they wanted to centralize control over the selection of primary candidates. The secret ballot would help them in this regard by eliminating the local hustings where candidates were openly nominated and affirmed (Britain), and eroding the power of the local political machines such as Tammany Hall (US). See Frank O'Gorman. 2007. The secret ballot in nineteenth century Britain. *In* Cultures of voting: the hidden history of the secret ballot. pp. 16-42. The Mafia is just another interest group. Attempting to apply large-scale coercion tends to piss people off. They don't want that. No, classic corruption goes after a power node, a focus of substantial power. So ... does the Mafia in New York threaten City Council members? Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: Isn't that just what a protection racket is - large-scale coercion? It seems to work for the Mafia, inasmuch as they're still being involved in protection rackets... and the presence of organizations like Addiopizzo seems to show that they are. Usually a protection racket goes after business firms (equivalent to what Abd calls power nodes). It extorts money from those firms, not directly from their customers. The customers are too numerous, too mobile and generally too difficult to control (too large-scale as Abd says). For similar reasons, election racketeers wouldn't go chasing after individual voters. I think this is what Abd means. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] List of primary voting projects
Thanks for explaining, Richard. The algorithm does not attempt to identify when the negotiation process is done. If the participants have a genuine desire to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement, then the results will slowly converge on an optimum set of approved proposals. ... What drives this change (convergence) in the results? Do some of the existing participants change their minds and re-rank the proposals? Or do new participants enter the process and rank the proposals, with those rankings not subsequently modifiable? In your case, it might not matter. Clearly your use cases show an intention to inform decisions. And clearly the method tries to do so through consensus, even if it's not dynamic. Still I'm curious. Mike Richard Fobes said: On 3/25/2013 10:40 AM, Michael Allan wrote: Sorry if I'm asking a question that was already answered elsewhere. I haven't followed your postings about VoteFair, because it always seemed to me a static decision tool. Not a problem. All of us are too busy and we have to ignore some messages. In VoteFair _negotiation_ ranking, _participants_ rank _proposals_ . In the other kinds of VoteFair ranking, which are named using the words popularity, representation, party, and partial-proportional, _voters_ rank _candidates_ . Does the VoteFair tool allow vote shifts? Can you explain how the negotiation aspect works? I mean just briefly, People shift their votes, looking at the results, and trying to... Hopefully the following description of VoteFair _negotiation_ ranking answers your questions. If not, feel free to ask more questions. You can post the description on your wiki. Richard Fobes description below The purpose of VoteFair negotiation ranking is to calculate a negotiation outcome that comes close to what would arise if a consensus process -- with continuous feedback -- were used. This means that significant-sized minorities get a significant level of influence. This approach contrasts with methods that allow the majority to have full control. And it defeats the blocking tactics that work in full consensus negotiations. Using the VoteFair negotiation software at www.NegotiationTool.com , each participant ranks all the proposals. There are three general categories: liked, neutral, and disliked. Within the liked and disliked categories, each participant ranks the proposals, putting their favorite proposals at the top, and their most-disliked proposals at the bottom. When new proposals are added, they appear in the neutral category, and the most recent proposal appears at the top of that category. A participant can then move these new proposals into their liked and disliked categories, and rank them above the proposals they like less and below the proposals they like more. In addition to the need to rank proposals, the software needs to know which of the popular proposals are incompatible with which other popular proposals. To do so, either an administrator (such as an arbitration expert) can specify incompatibilities, or the participants can vote on incompatibilities (in which case a threshold is involved). Based on the rankings and the incompatibilities -- and nothing else -- the algorithm calculates which proposals can be combined into a document or agreement or law, such that the result is likely to be approved by most of the participants, or at least approved by a majority of participants. If the early results include proposals that are obviously incompatible with each other, then the incompatibility information needs to be corrected (either by the administrator or by participant voting). There is no need to exhaustively indicate all possible inconsistencies because lots of proposals will not be popular enough to get into the group of overall-accepted proposals. The www.NegotiationTool.com website currently does not support delegation, but the internal software allows for the possibility of specifying more than one vote for participants who are acting on behalf of other, non-voting participants. What might be called the liquid part of VoteFair negotiation ranking is that participants can add proposals at any time. If there are lots of participants, the added proposals can be vetted (approved for addition) by a neutral administrator, and the administrator can remove proposals that obviously will not be accepted in the calculated results. The goal here is to keep the number of proposals reasonable. The encouraged strategy is to split unpopular proposals into several separate new proposals. This allows the participants to highly rank the parts they like, and lowly rank the parts they dislike. The recommended result is designed to produce both gains and concessions for almost all the participants. The algorithm does not attempt to identify when the negotiation process
Re: [EM] List of primary voting projects
Thanks Richard, Does the VoteFair tool allow vote shifts? Can you explain how the negotiation aspect works? I mean just briefly, People shift their votes, looking at the results, and trying to... Sorry if I'm asking a question that was already answered elsewhere. I haven't followed your postings about VoteFair, because it always seemed to me a static decision tool. Mike Richard Fobes said: On 3/23/2013 4:17 AM, Michael Allan wrote: ... Please let me know if I missed any projects. ... You can add VoteFair negotiation ranking to the list. The website is: www.NegotiationTool.com Thanks. Richard Fobes On 3/23/2013 4:17 AM, Michael Allan wrote: As promised, here is my list of primary voting projects: http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:List_of_primary_voting_projects I define primary voting as a more-or-less continuous process of voting in which the results are not decisive. Its purpose is to build up a normative consensus or mutual understanding prior to a decision. The decision itself is usually expressed through a separate mechanism, as with an election, voting assembly or other authority. Please let me know if I missed any projects. Or just edit the list directly (it's in a wiki). Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] List of primary voting projects
As promised, here is my list of primary voting projects: http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:List_of_primary_voting_projects I define primary voting as a more-or-less continuous process of voting in which the results are not decisive. Its purpose is to build up a normative consensus or mutual understanding prior to a decision. The decision itself is usually expressed through a separate mechanism, as with an election, voting assembly or other authority. Please let me know if I missed any projects. Or just edit the list directly (it's in a wiki). -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Michael Allan said: Hello Katja, I am looking for studies of online public consultation processes, either in the context of e-democracy or in commercial contexts. Furthermore, are you aware of free/open source systems for that purposes? On the e-democracy side, there is Votorola. It's only a prototype. http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.html There are many others. I plan to compile a list of those that include a strong facility of voting, or opinion expression. I'll post a link in a week or two, in case it's helpful. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Katja Mayer said: Dear all, I am looking for studies of online public consultation processes, either in the context of e-democracy or in commercial contexts. Furthermore, are you aware of free/open source systems for that purposes? I will collect your answers and make them available to the list asap. Thank you very much for your help! Katja PS: A short remark to my last question: I still owe the list a collection of replies to the question of the terminology origins and usage of informatisation and I am still working on this, since there has been opening up a whole universe of literature that I was not aware of (e.g. teleworking in the 1980s.)... --- Dr. Katja Mayer Department of Social Studies of Science and Technology University of Vienna, Austria http://homepage.univie.ac.at/katja.mayer Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Parliamentary compromising strategy
Thank you Abd, Aside from you, and us at Votorola, the only others I know who routinely go out of their way to emphasize the distinction between normative guidance (continuous primaries, advice) and decisive power are the folks at AG Meinungsfindungstool. Unfortunately, I've had difficulty communicating with them from the start owing to the language barrier. Lately too I think there's been a misunderstanding, which I hope to clear up once I can pick up that thread again. Thus an advised person may use very sophisticated analysis, that includes such things as length of participation, whether or not a proxy is representing known persons, only only anonymous ones, and other measures that an advisee may freely choose. Yes. The voters themselves are advised too, and so everyone must be free to filter, translate, recount, and generally do as they please with the primary votes. This is crucial. Which reminds me that Mark Murphy was thinking on similar lines when he wrote this: Mark Murphy. 2008. The killer app of public participation. In Rebooting America. Edited by Allison Fine, Micah L. Sifrey, Andrew Rasiej and Joshua Levy. Personal Democracy Press. http://rebooting.personaldemocracy.com/node/5499 See also his later comments in the Metagov list. http://metagovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2009-February/001195.html It is possible, as an example, for advisees to consider cash donations, or, say, labor and political activity, ascribed to proxies. Whether that's a good idea or not depends on many details. Conseo and I had a similar idea in 2011. We sketched a design that's since been partially implemented: http://zelea.com/w/Category:Account The *advisory system* does not need to and should abstain from drawing organizational conclusions from polls, except as needed only for its own process. ... On that note, I notice a mistake here: http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring#In_a_parliamentary_system Each [open party] takes for its titular leader the root candidate who currently leads in the [open] primary. That could easily be an abuse of the primary, depending on how we implement it. Probably Kristofer has already noticed this weakness and will mention it, because it's similar to the one he mentioned in connection with extracting the other open-party decision (candidate list) from the other primary. So maybe the same solution of random, reviewed extractions is called for: I said: Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: ... It depends on how the lists are frozen before the election. ... There's a potential weakness here. Continuous primaries can't be bolted directly to decision systems, so the candidate list has to be extracted with care. Ideally we have a separate secret ballot to extract the decision, like in single winner: http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/assembly_election/single-winner But the secret ballot is unavailable here (goes to waste). So maybe a lottery every week. It chooses a random time from the previous week. The result snapshot at that time becomes the decision for the week. It's reviewed by a panel who strike it (reverting to the previous week's decision) if they see any wild gyrations, or other fishy stuff. So we have decisive candidtate lists at weekly intervals. (Later we vote to amend the constitution and do all this by secret ballot instead. That seems ideal, if we don't mind the added expense.) Thanks again gents for taking the time to comment. Mike Abd ul-Rahman Lomax said: At 01:03 AM 3/18/2013, Michael Allan wrote: I still want to salvage Kristofer's liquid democracy approach to the problem. My last post didn't properly describe the executive primary, however, and it seems to be crucial. I'm totally pleased to see that Michael Allen has grasped the concept of using Liquid Democracy for an advisory function. That's exactly what I see and predict. I will add that how to analyze delegable proxy polls is *up to the one who wants to be advised.* That's why I want the nuts and bolts of the canvassing process to be completely visible (excepting only a possible Asset Voting front-end, that establishes raw proxy representative power.) Thus an advised person may use very sophisticated analysis, that includes such things as length of participation, whether or not a proxy is representing known persons, only only anonymous ones, and other measures that an advisee may freely choose. It is possible, as an example, for advisees to consider cash donations, or, say, labor and political activity, ascribed to proxies. Whether that's a good idea or not depends on many details. The *advisory system* does not need to and should abstain from drawing organizational conclusions from polls, except as needed only for its own process. I.e., is there an official web site? Who are trustees? Or are there multiple sites which ordinarily cooperate
[EM] Knight News Challenge: Collaborators for free-range voting
I'm seeking collaborators for a Knight News Challenge proposal. This year's challenge is, How might we improve the way citizens and governments interact? https://www.newschallenge.org/ Below is a rough draft of the proposal. My own contribution to this would be to bring in Votorola as a technical provider for the mirroring network. We'd need at least one other such provider, plus some organizational support (in part because there's financing if we win). The submission deadline is March 18. Please let me know if you can help. My contact details are at: http://zelea.com/ PROJECT TITLE Free-range voting MAIN IMAGE http://zelea.com/project/outcast/vomir.png DESCRIPTION This is a proposal to apply the technology of vote mirroring in order to forestall a monopoly in the provision of online voting services. Online voting and its innovations are important to the field of participatory democracy. You might think that opening up the source code of a voting facility would be sufficient to ensure that the facility itself stays free and open, but that is not true. Voting is prone to network effects. It's like a telephone service in this regard. If I plug my telephone into a different network than everyone else is using, then it isn't going to work. Having a copy of the source code won't help. Unless something is done to tame the broader network effects, then online voters (like telephone customers before them) will become locked into the services of a dominant provider. The solution proposed here is vote mirroring. Votes cast at facility A are mirrored at facilities B, C, and so forth. This involves copying each vote and translating it from the format of the source facility (A) to that of the mirroring facility (B, C, etc.). Voting methods may differ hugely and the translation may therefore entail a degree of information loss, making for an imperfect image. Such imperfections cannot invalidate the overall technique, however, because a best effort at an image is always a better reflection of reality than no image at all. The upshot is that each facility now gets all the votes and can show the truest possible picture of the overall results. It no longer matters where I cast my own vote, because it shows up everywhere regardless. So I can range freely across all the available facilities and settle on whichever best suits my personal needs and preferences. Never again can I be trapped by a particular provider. We are [names of signatory providers and other supporting organizations]. Together we plan to build a lightweight mirroring network to loosely interconnect our various voting facilities. We'll begin with voting forms that are fully public; those are the simplest to handle and they allow for unrestricted technical freedom among providers. We'll work out the problems and gain experience with the technology. An immediate benefit will be to reduce the expectation of network effects that has long poisoned relations among technical providers and hampered their development work. Small projects will no longer be forced to devote scarce resources to attempts at tipping an unstable balance in their own favour. Instead, we may expect an improvement in the professional climate of the field and an increase in its attractiveness to talent, and other resources. WHAT IS YOUR PROJECT? (1 sentence max) To apply the technology of vote mirroring in order to forestall the formation of a monopoly in the provision of online voting services, improve the professional climate in the field of participatory democracy, and heighten its appeal as a career prospect for talented people. LINKS http://zelea.com/w/User:ThomasvonderElbe_GmxDe/Vote_mirroring http://zelea.com/w/User_talk:ThomasvonderElbe_GmxDe/Vote_mirroring http://zelea.com/w/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/Vote_mirroring_as_a_counter-monopoly_measure ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Vote mirroring is the invention of Thomas von der Elbe. See: http://mail.zelea.com/list/votorola/2009-December/000215.html The latest copy of this draft is at: http://metagovernment.org/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/Knight -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ attachment: vomir-45dpi.png Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Knight News Challenge: Pioneering the practice of public autonomy
I'm seeking collaborators with leadership skills for a second Knight News Challenge proposal. Again, this year's challenge is, How might we improve the way citizens and governments interact? https://www.newschallenge.org/ Below is a rough draft of the proposal. In addition to collaborators, we might also need organizational support (in part because there's financing if we win). The submission deadline is March 18. Please let me know if you can help. My contact details are at: http://zelea.com/ PROJECT TITLE Pioneering the practice of public autonomy MAIN IMAGE http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/2-grow/validity/seeking.png DESCRIPTION To be free in a social world that regulates itself by laws and other norms (to have public autonomy), we must be able to understand and reasonably agree with those norms that affect us. As the social theorist and philosopher Habermas puts it, Just those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in rational discourses. Taking this discourse principle as our guiding star, we aim to pioneer a practice of public autonomy based on the continual exposure of draft norms to the guidance of rational discourses. We'll simultaneously run electoral primaries based on open, transitive voting, to put our most qualified practitioners on the ballot and into office, where they'll continue to work with us, their un-elected peers. On the technical side, we'll use MediaWiki for the drafting medium; Semantic MediaWiki as an open database and voter registry (streetwiki); existing public forums as the discussion media; Votorola's prototype toolset for transitive voting and recombinant text; plus any other suitable tools and technical projects that we pick up along the way. Already we have enough to support a crude practice. Pioneering that practice is the topic of this proposal. There are two things to understand about this from the outset. The first is that, despite the proliferation of designs for participatory democracy that are fundamentally flawed in terms of legitimacy and efficacy, nobody has yet found such a flaw in the design of this particular practice. The acid test is to locate the single person who cannot reasonably assent to a law, then evolve that law in a direction to which all can assent. Second, the core of this practice can be developed and proven by a small group of pioneers. The core is the process of validity seeking (main figure). It is conducted by small leaf groups of typically 2-5 practitioners who continually join with the public in discourse. These discourses are structured not only to guide the would-be normative action in the direction of validity, but also to provide the human resources that are necessary to carry out that action. This implies that *if* a pioneering leaf group ever succeeds in getting the design and performance of this core process right, delivering on both its purposes, then the entire population will be led into freedom by that success. To achieve that success will require special skills. We're looking for people who have the capacity to critique the design of the practice and to expose any flaws, while also being resourceful enough to handle a toolset that is only partly finished, and that might even require a re-design. The technical designs cannot be allowed to harden into finished tools until we have a better understanding of the hands-on practice. We're also looking for people who have imagination. When your hands are in a nascent practice such as this, and your mind is equipped to make up for the missing parts, then it becomes like a lense into the future; you're out in front thinking for all the others who will follow. In short, we're looking for leaders. If you know of any who could be interested, please point them here. WHAT IS YOUR PROJECT? (1 sentence max) To pioneer a practice of public autonomy based on transitive voting, recombinant text, and the continual exposure of legislative bills and other draft norms to the guidance of rational discourses. LINKS http://www.mediawiki.org/ http://semantic-mediawiki.org/ http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.html http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/validity_seeking OTHER IMAGES http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/3-act/election/singleNominate.png http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/3-act/election/singleElect.png http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/3-act/law/prepare.png -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ attachment: seeking-28dpi.png Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] An artist's view on voting methods
Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: It's interesting that you mention Adam Curtis. In the third episode of his series, The Trap, he goes into the concept of negative and positive liberty. Negative liberty is freedom from something, while positive liberty is freedom to do or be something. Modern democracy has been associated with negative liberty, in that it provides for (more or less) the freedom for anyone to do what he wants as long as that doesn't interfere with the similar freedom of others. http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-trap/ (scroll down to 3rd part) In contrast, positive liberty might be seen as associated with your idea of a common myth or story. A positive liberty to fulfill one's potential as something (that may differ)... sounds a lot like having a shared concept of what something it is one should strive to reach. You mean in the shared content of the myth. Yes, that seems to fit. I haven't read Berlin, but his notion of negative liberty strikes me as a matter of a shared form, an empty vessel of freedom that the individual may fill with content of his/her own choosing, regardless of the choices of others. It is free content. By the same token, symmetry would be satisfied if the shared content of positive liberty (the something) were formless in itself. It might then become manifest in any and all forms, unbound by space and time. So it would be free form. Curtis paints a dismal picture of each: the meaningless empty vessel, and the dangerous escaped genie. Then he looks at a particular combination of the two, which he says Berlin had warned against: Curtis says that Isiah Berlin, who came up with the terms of positive and negative liberty, considered the former more dangerous than the latter. He (Curtis) then shows examples of positive liberty going wrong - but also, that the ideal of negative liberty itself becomes something to reach for in ways otherwise associated with positive liberty. Thus one gets logic like fighting for freedom or liberating authoritarian nations, where the myth becomes the story of having many stories, and the freedom to be something is the freedom to have freedom from. Right, he depicts positive liberty as tyrannical (faithful to Berlin), negative liberty as meaningless, and the US neoconservative combination to be the worst of each, a kind of tyranny of enforced meaninglessness. He ends, As this series has shown, the idea of freedom that we live with today is a narrow and limiting one that was born out of a specific and dangerous time, the cold war. It may have had meaning and purpose then as an alternative to communist tyranny, but now it's become a dangerous trap. Our government relies on a simplistic economic model of human beings that allows inequality to grow and offers nothing positive in the face of the reactionary forces they have helped to awake around the world. If we ever want to escape from this limited world view, we will have to rediscover the progressive, positive ideas of freedom and realize that Isiah Berlin was wrong; not all attempts to change the world for the better lead to tyranny. Compare that to his latest essay, part of which begins: This is a story about the rise of the machines, and why no one believes you can change the world for the better any more. How we decided that we were machines ourselves, played video games, and started Africa's world war. http://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/ (scroll down to 3rd part) If he's right, then it appears there's no real escaping having a greater narrative. If the society provides for extreme diversity, then the narrative simply becomes we have many stories. Yes, and how we came to be that way, and where it will take us. The crucial thing is that people formally agree to the narrative, e.g. by voting for it. Curtis and (maybe) Berlin are unaware of this particular combination of free form and content, bottle and genie. Berlin's two concepts of liberty might be roughly equivalent to the 'freedom of the ancients' (positive liberty) and the 'freedom of the moderns' (negative), or what Habermas calls 'public autonomy' and 'private autonomy'. ... political philosophy has never really been able to strike a balance between popular sovereignty and human rights, or between the 'freedom of the ancients' and the 'freedom of the moderns'. *Republicanism*, which goes back to Aristotle and the political humanism of the Renaissance, has always given the public autonomy of citizens priority over the prepolitical liberties of private persons. *Liberalism*, which goes back to John Locke, has invoked (at least since the 19th century) the danger of tyrannical majorities and postulated the priority of human rights. * I imagine that consensual myth making would require both public and private autonomy. Like the chicken and the egg, each would be necessary for the
Re: [EM] An artist's view on voting methods
Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: Could such a cultural election [of a narrative world view] happen in modern times, do you think? Or what might prevent it? In the most strict sense, I don't think so. Modernity has too many aspects to be made into a narrative world view. You might see it in groups within some given society, though: those who hold a certain identity might agree upon the direction of some aspects of modern life - enough to provide such a narrative - but only for the parts that are relevant to them. I agree, fragmentation is essential to modernity. We'd have to expand the question (in the strong sense) to contemporary times. Modernity might then hang in the balance; it might change, or give way to something else. In the weaker sense, it is everywhere. Sets of values are often woven into a narrative, and politicians refer to the narratives to compactly state their values. A conservative may talk about preserving the American dream, for example, while a liberal may tell the voters he can be part of a continuing change for the better. These seem to be two aspects of the Christian theme of salvation. Their competition as self-reliance vs. charity (or conservative vs. liberal) might be a consequence of Christianity's failure as a myth in the Reformation (strong sense), or America's failure as a myth in contemporary times (weaker sense). Adam Curtis says, When a nation is powerful it tells the world confident stories about the future. The stories can be frightening or enchanting, but they make sense of the world. But when that power begins to ebb, the stories fall apart. All that is left are fragments, which haunt you like half-forgotten dreams. http://thoughtmaybe.com/it-felt-like-a-kiss/ The world-views and associated stories compete. Thus there's no single thread (because the views of the people, or those said to represent them, may shift from one side to another), but each alternative is pretty well delineated. In the sense there are many stories, each story is pretty clear, but because there are many, and each period of governance may have a quite drastic shift from one to another, there's no single narrative to frame the whole culture. The Americans call this polarization. They look back to a time when (for whatever reason) they rode above it. (Maybe we permit many stories could itself be a story?) That seems a promising approach. So the story is not only diverse in form (like a compilation) but it also takes diversity as a theme. It's a story about our own diversity. There's a negative aspect to that story. We're at an all time low in terms of independent civilizations or traditions. All the fragments of the modern world are dissolved in a global singularity: \ | / past, spread out among continents \|/ | present, a single global civilization /|\ / | \ future, spread out again (among stars?) Perhaps the common property is that a group has to have members that feel that they're of that group to a sufficient degree before narrative election works. ... The singularity might do the job here. We feel it as a series of global crises that touch us locally, if only because we learn of them. Or we feel it as a common, existential threat. Rewatching that Curtis video, it now seems to me that he's grappling with many of the elements of such a story. His latest effort (if you haven't seen it) is All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace: http://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/ Mike Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: On 12/04/2012 07:31 AM, Michael Allan wrote: Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: One should be careful with election by story, though. The worst kind of modern-day dictatorial regimes have often been backed by stories or myths to lend the regime legitimacy. ... Yes, I agree. The events of the 20th century effectively innoculated a generation against this particular disease, but younger generations aren't necessarily immune. Under the right circumstances, propaganda can masquerade as a legitimate world view. It can fool people into making terrible mistakes. ... For instance, left-wing authoritarian rulers have claimed power to have been given to them by the workers or the people, and that the centralization of power through authoritarian measures is needed in order to protect the system from vast external enemies that would otherwise destroy it, and so that the rulers can direct the nation towards a glorious future. Similar mythology exists on the right: see, for instance, Gentile's description of the structure of Italian Fascism: http://www.oslo2000.uio.no/program/papers/s12/s12-gentile.pdf Among other things, he notes that totalitarianism provides a single narrative, then seeks to politicize all of life so as to pull it into that narrative. This trick depends on an un-elected narrative, of course. There are moments in history when people
Re: [EM] An artist's view on voting methods
Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: One should be careful with election by story, though. The worst kind of modern-day dictatorial regimes have often been backed by stories or myths to lend the regime legitimacy. ... Yes, I agree. The events of the 20th century effectively innoculated a generation against this particular disease, but younger generations aren't necessarily immune. Under the right circumstances, propaganda can masquerade as a legitimate world view. It can fool people into making terrible mistakes. ... For instance, left-wing authoritarian rulers have claimed power to have been given to them by the workers or the people, and that the centralization of power through authoritarian measures is needed in order to protect the system from vast external enemies that would otherwise destroy it, and so that the rulers can direct the nation towards a glorious future. Similar mythology exists on the right: see, for instance, Gentile's description of the structure of Italian Fascism: http://www.oslo2000.uio.no/program/papers/s12/s12-gentile.pdf Among other things, he notes that totalitarianism provides a single narrative, then seeks to politicize all of life so as to pull it into that narrative. This trick depends on an un-elected narrative, of course. There are moments in history when people make the wrong choices and are trapped by them, and come to regret them. Examples are post-Periclean Athens and Weimar Germany. But the basis of legitimacy for these mistakes is narrow (often a single vote) compared to the lengthy and elaborate election of a narrative world view. Examples again are compilations such as The Iliad, The Mahabharata, Ramayana, Old and New Testaments. These are traditionally the work of centuries, and they stand for a long time, if not forever. Could such a cultural election happen in modern times, do you think? Or what might prevent it? Mike Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: On 12/03/2012 05:35 AM, Michael Allan wrote: Jonathan Denn said: Someone is editing Kurt Vonnegut letters for publication. This was online today... I'm struck with editor meaning voter and stories as candidates ...I invite you to read the fifteen tales ... I believe whole civilizations have been voted into existence by this method, more or less. The candidate stories for the collection are myths of a cherished past (as in The Iliad), or utopias of a hopeful future (New Testament) or both (Mahabharata). The narrow method is one of cultural selection; but the larger process, which Vonnegut seems also to ask of his students, might more pointedly be called cultural *e*lection. Could such an election happen in modern times, do you think? One should be careful with election by story, though. The worst kind of modern-day dictatorial regimes have often been backed by stories or myths to lend the regime legitimacy. For instance, left-wing authoritarian rulers have claimed power to have been given to them by the workers or the people, and that the centralization of power through authoritarian measures is needed in order to protect the system from vast external enemies that would otherwise destroy it, and so that the rulers can direct the nation towards a glorious future. Similar mythology exists on the right: see, for instance, Gentile's description of the structure of Italian Fascism: http://www.oslo2000.uio.no/program/papers/s12/s12-gentile.pdf . Among other things, he notes that totalitarianism provides a single narrative, then seeks to politicize all of life so as to pull it into that narrative. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] An artist's view on voting methods
Jonathan Denn said: Someone is editing Kurt Vonnegut letters for publication. This was online today... I'm struck with editor meaning voter and stories as candidates ...I invite you to read the fifteen tales ... I believe whole civilizations have been voted into existence by this method, more or less. The candidate stories for the collection are myths of a cherished past (as in The Iliad), or utopias of a hopeful future (New Testament) or both (Mahabharata). The narrow method is one of cultural selection; but the larger process, which Vonnegut seems also to ask of his students, might more pointedly be called cultural *e*lection. Could such an election happen in modern times, do you think? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Jonathan Denn said: Someone is editing Kurt Vonnegut letters for publication. This was online today... I'm struck with editor meaning voter and stories as candidates ...I invite you to read the fifteen tales in Masters of the Modern Short Story (W. Havighurst, editor, 1955, Harcourt, Brace, $14.95 in paperback). Read them for pleasure and satisfaction, beginning each as though, only seven minutes before, you had swallowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as little children ...” Then reproduce on a single sheet of clean, white paper the table of contents of the book, omitting the page numbers, and substituting for each number a grade from A to F. The grades should be childishly selfish and impudent measures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some stories better than others. Proceed next to the hallucination that you are a minor but useful editor on a good literary magazine not connected with a university. Take three stories that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pretend that they have been offered for publication. Write a report on each to be submitted to a wise, respected, witty and world-weary superior. Do not do so as an academic critic, nor as a person drunk on art, nor as a barbarian in the literary market place. Do so as a sensitive person who has a few practical hunches about how stories can succeed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows... There are a few more delightful bits if you're interested. Oh, and an inside joke, KV was an atheist for most of his life, and when he wrote this. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/11/kurt_vonnegut_term_paper_assignment_from_the_iowa_writers_workshop.html?google_editors_picks=true Jon Denn Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] A Reformer's Lament
A Public Party I believe this is the meme that is circulating now in the US amongst reformers. Essentially my site, aGREATER.US is choice creation of the ax or best practice/idea on any particular topic. Some ideas are nonpartisan (almost everyone loves it) or tripartisan (a combination of love and no one hates it too much). I think you describe a facility of open, primary rule making (as I would call it), in which the drafting of recommended laws, plans, policies and other rules is opened up to the general public. I agree, that's crucial. But a public party (as I define it) would also need a facility of open, primary elections. The core components are: * Open primary elections * Open primary rule-making The idea of opening up rule-making is a common meme, as you say, that has yet to get off the ground. But the equal importance of opening up elections is rarely discussed, while the combination of the two is nearly unheard of. Yet it's this combination (the full memotype) that I mean when I speak of a public party. So it is mostly a technical construct. Indeed, we might even dispense with the superficial formality of the party form in Anglo-American and French states (where parties are not baked into the constitution) because all that matters is the opening of these primary processes to the public. It is only there that individuals can hope to have a real say (a real influence) over the outcome. (So it seems to me.) Michael Jonathan Denn said: Hello Michael, A Public Party I believe this is the meme that is circulating now in the US amongst reformers. Essentially my site, aGREATER.US is choice creation of the ax or best practice/idea on any particular topic. Some ideas are nonpartisan (almost everyone loves it) or tripartisan (a combination of love and no one hates it too much). Bipartisan Protectionism vs Public Party Groups like the Bipartisan Policy Center, and NoLabels are essentially working to protect the duopoly. These other groups forming are trying to bring in the 40% disenfranchised independent voters, and level the playing field so that No Political Party Shall Be Privileged. Whether NL can make the transition into real reform work remains to be seen. Policy Work is Really Hard The issue I see with getting this meme off the ground is no one, or almost no one, really wants to spend the time, effort, study, dialogue, scientific method, pain of changing positions necessary to do quality policy work. I'm a centrist, and have changed my mind in both directions (individual vs common responsibility) several times this year. Partisan politicians might call me a flip-flopper, but the difference is after doing considerable work in an area, and given a certain context, I don't mind admitting I was wrong or perhaps not fully informed. E.G. I am now not for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact because a 26% candidate in a four way race, that 74% of the public hates could become leader of the free world. (Nope not going there). Vice Versa; Decriminalizing Personal Drug Use is not best practice compared to a War on Chronic Drug Users' Behavior. Policy Work Doesn't Pay. Based on the work of your Canadian MacClean's People's Verdict, and subsequent work of Tom Atlee and Jim Rough, it really does take only about 12 diverse people to hear all sides of an argument and arrive at a solution the larger universe will embrace. BUT, who wants to employ 12 people to do this work? Maybe that should be in the Commons, but it isn't. My goal is to seat an editorial board at aGREATER.US to vet the policies and write new ones. That looks a lot like a public party. By writing content that can be used on multiple sites, it might be able to be done with true-believer volunteers. The Ship May be Sailing If over the next few months these left/right/center groups do coalesce into a network or movement there really does need to be a best practice in general elections to rally around. The Top Two red herring will not help this as it taints future departures away from single mark ballots. I hope you folks can help give us the answer that can be sound-bited and reduced to an easily given elevator speech. I had an almost perfect math score on my college A.C.Ts, and while I could understand the posts of the last couple days, it is way too esoteric for me to explain to let's say my conference center staff where I work (until we close forever in two weeks, but that's another story). Cheers, Jon Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] A Reformer's Lament
Welcome Jon, How would you folks handle primaries that would allow the 40% plus Independents to have a say? I'm an engineer, so I often approach such questions on lines that are unlike traditional electoral reform. I describe one possibility here: http://metagovernment.org/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/Public_parties That's atypical even for me. But among all the approaches I would recommend there is a common theme, which is to enable individuals (formally independent or not) to have a real vote, and a real say. Not only the independents are lacking there. Very best, -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ aGREATER.US said: Ok, so I get that there are a number of better solutions for a general election. My question is about primaries. E.g. In CT if I were allowed to vote in primaries, which I am not as an independent, I probably would have voted (Senate) for Brian K Hill (R), Susan B. (D) and Paul P (L). But we now have Linda McMahon and Murphy. I'm not happy. A plutocrat will certainly be elected. How would you folks handle primaries that would allow the 40% plus Independents to have a say? Cheers Jon Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Deliberation and voting
like in the user interface? [3] [1] Technically I label the two essential voting processes (a and b) as authoritative and normative: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#conclusion [2] C. Wright Mills. 1956. The power elite. Oxford University Press, New York. pp. 303-304. [3] Here are some mockups we've drawn: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/s/gwt/scene/vote/_/ http://whiletaker.homeip.net/mockups/ http://zelea.com/project/votorola/s/gwt/stage/_/mock/ Here's a precise problem (2) that needs solving: http://mail.zelea.com/list/votorola/2012-August/001402.html -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ fragro said: Ronald, Open Assembly employed a similar system with a phased system. First users could prepare information, comments, arguments, or solutions, and after a period of time voting begins. However this structure was not well appreciated in testing because users found that it was stifling. Implementing it correctly is the hardest problem, and a static time did not work. There needs to be a dynamic way to determine when the right amount of information or arguments has formed that does not stifle the ability to vote. For instance many of the concepts brought over to Open Assembly had a long history and users had a pre-defined notion of their opinion which often did not change, as they were already educated on that specific issue. So for such a structure to work it must be individual and personalized. This means that employing some level of machine learning is necessary, or else users will quickly become disengaged from the inability to actually express their preference. Frank Grove On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 6:12 AM, Ronald Grindle ron...@grindle.de wrote: Hello Henry, regarding your question about solutions to inform voters: in my concept, the Architecture for a Democracy 2.0http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Architecture_for_a_Democracy_2.0, (among other solutions) I am suggesting to extend the political process with a phase that precedes the voting, called Opinion Forming. In this phase Information is collected, statements are prepared and a first draft of the citizens' opinion is established. These results are then passed on to the actual voting. It allows comrade citizens to prepare information on an issue and offer a recommendation how to vote to the other citizens. The english translation of the concept should be available soon. Mit freundlichen Grüßen Ronald D. Grindle __ Tel: +49 (0)89-43573610 Mobil: +49 (0)177-3775162 E-Mail: ron...@grindle.de Am 22.08.2012 23:33, schrieb Michael Allan: -- Libertas et Patria Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Constantly improving, serving the community
Michael and Augustin, (cc Votorola) Michael Ossipoff said: Thanks for your suggestions. You're welcome. * Display live counts and other signs of activity. Otherwise newcomers will assume the site is dead or dying. As each new vote changes the candidates' totals and scores, that is immediately shown in the posted results. The results are shown directly above the ballot, when someone selects the link to one of the poll ballotings. I see a link above the ballot labeled Poll results. When I click, it says You must vote here before you can see the results. http://minguo.info/usa/node/105 Augustin said: If one clicks on the 'Recent Posts' link, one can see that there has been a lost of activity recently: http://minguo.info/usa/tracker This tracker is especially useful for registered members as they can see which polls have been updated, which content has been created and which blogs have had comments added since their last visit. What people say is attractive, I agree, especially in a social context (discussion) and especially where it concerns the issue being voted on *and* that issue hangs in the balance. I think the design problem is to show this complex of information immediately to the newcomer, because these are the goods. Little else matters. This is one of the problems I address here, specifically its visual aspects: http://mail.zelea.com/list/votorola/2012-August/001402.html Please help us hammer out a solution, -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Michael Ossipoff said: On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 10:49 AM, Michael Allan m...@zelea.com wrote: Michael and Augustin, some suggestions for improving the site: Michael Allan: Thanks for your suggestions. * Display live counts and other signs of activity. Otherwise newcomers will assume the site is dead or dying. As each new vote changes the candidates' totals and scores, that is immediately shown in the posted results. The results are shown directly above the ballot, when someone selects the link to one of the poll ballotings. * Show the contribution of each participant. Don't just take it and give nothing in return. (!) Ideally show the contribution in a social context, because people vote for social reasons. It's important that people can vote anonymously. But anyone can comment, in the various blog-spaces, and can sign their name if they wish (as I always do). But yes, the website could announce each new ballot (without in any way identifying the voter). That would be of interest. We'll see if Augustin likes that idea. As it is now, each new ballot does show up in the recent posts or latest posts list, to which there is a link at right end of the top edge of the Realm of the USA screen, and every screen in the Realm of the USA. * Restrict voting to real people. Bots and sock puppets ruin the social context and render the results meaningless. Certainly. But bots don't usually vote in polls. I suppose someone could write one that does, if they wanted to distort a poll result. That could be discouraged by only letting registered members vote, or by using something like a captcha image, in which a voter would have to identify characters in an image, or answer a verbally-expressed question. But, in order to get large participation, it's best for the poll to be open to the public, not just registered members. But those are just my answers. Augustin might reply as well. Mike Ossipoff Augustin said: Hello Michael Allan and all, First of all, thanks to both Michaels: M. Allan for his constructive remarks, and to M. Ossipoff for his answers by which I stand. Before I reply to M. Allan, allow me to make 2 general remarks. The first one is that the site is in constant evolution. No such site is ever complete and finished. I have myself thousands of ideas of features that could be added and things that could be improved. I try to prioritise my limited development time according to what's more urgent or what's easier to implement. I am currently working hard on improving the back end which in turn will allow me to improve the overall organisation of the site. The second remark is that although I have my own huge list of things I'd like to improve, I welcome user suggestions like Michael's. It gives me some insight on what users would like most. In that spirit, I just created a new poll where registered users can submit specific ideas and vote on them: http://minguo.info/usa/node/124 . Both Michaels are welcome to add their own ideas... I reply now on the specific suggestions made: On Friday, August 17, 2012 22:49:27 Michael Allan wrote: * Display live counts and other signs of activity. Otherwise newcomers will assume the site is dead or dying. If one clicks on the 'Recent Posts' link, one can see that there has been a lost of activity recently
Re: [EM] minguo presidential poll with direct links
Michael and Augustin, some suggestions for improving the site: * Display live counts and other signs of activity. Otherwise newcomers will assume the site is dead or dying. * Show the contribution of each participant. Don't just take it and give nothing in return. (!) Ideally show the contribution in a social context, because people vote for social reasons. * Restrict voting to real people. Bots and sock puppets ruin the social context and render the results meaningless. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Augustin said: Hello, As Michael said, we are running four polls for the 2012 presidential elections: Emocracy: http://minguo.info/usa/node/105 Approval voting: http://minguo.info/usa/node/107 0~10 Score voting: http://minguo.info/usa/node/108 and, for comparison purposes, the EM that everyone here loves to hate: plurality voting: http://minguo.info/usa/node/106 We are also drafting a poll on the issues: http://minguo.info/usa/node/122 Augustin. Friends: http://www.reuniting.info/ My projects: http://astralcity.org/ http://lesenjeux.fr/ http://linux.overshoot.tv/ http://overshoot.tv/ http://charityware.info/ http://masquilier.org/ http://openteacher.info/ http://minguo.info/ http://jacqueslemaire.fr/ http://www.wechange.org/ http://searching911.info/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [RangeVoting] A procedure for handling large numbers of candidates using scorevoting with primaries and runoffs.
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax said: Asset Voting blows the whole issue out of the water. Agreed. Transitive voting in general is an elegant solution. Some methods even allow for an informalized candidacy where anyone is eligible to receive votes without prior registration. Add the freedom to shift votes on the fly and even run-offs can be informalized. The election then becomes an extended (even intermin- able) process of consensus making and re-affirmation. This is more suitable for open primaries of course, than for official elections. For an overview, see the intro sections of Green-Armytage's 2010 paper here: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~armytage/proxy2010.pdf Also: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~armytage/voting/#proxy And: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#fn-1 -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process
Allow me to withdraw the question. Fred Gohlke said: Good Afternoon, Michael re: Let's sum up. You propose an electoral process to correct the evils of party politics. No. I'm proposing (or, actually, searching for) a democratic electoral process. Party politics is a side issue. ... Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process
Hi Fred, Let's sum up. You propose an electoral process to correct the evils of party politics. You hope that people somewhere will give it a try. However, if they do, you cannot foresee any sequence of events by which the promised benefits could be realized. Is that correct? I'm not sure what kind of elaboration you seek. All communities are different in the sense that the spark that initiates changes in one can be completely different from the spark that starts a flame in another. ... I'm looking for a way (any sequence of events) by which the proposed process could *possibly* deliver on its promised benefits. I have no doubt such a way exists, but I ask you to place it on the table (1, 2, 3) so we can all examine it. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Fred Gohlke said: Good Morning, Michael re: Could you elaborate here? I want to look at problems of feasibility. By what sequence of events (again 1, 2, 3) might the community transit from the status quo to that better future, as you envision it? I'm not sure what kind of elaboration you seek. All communities are different in the sense that the spark that initiates changes in one can be completely different from the spark that starts a flame in another. Perhaps it would help to mention a specific instance: A small community outside the United States with terrible living conditions, a community that was victimized with kidnapping and mass killings during a recent civil war, wants to find a new way to select their local officials. I've been asked, on behalf of the pastor of the community church, to discuss Practical Democracy ... http://participedia.net/methods/practical-democracy ... because it offers a rational way to identify the people best suited to work out local problems. The pastor is a person who wants the best for his people but has no personal political ambition. He is concerned that the community (indeed, the entire area) has a very long history of male dominance. Although women have political rights formally, it is difficult for them to influence community action because there are enough reactionaries to thwart their best efforts. Practical Democracy, if adopted, lets women form a feminist party that functions in parallel with any other groups in the village. This ensures that the most resourceful women are not excluded by thoughtlessness at the initial level(s) of the electoral process and are integrated with the decision makers at the upper levels. This is one of the reasons the pastor may encourage the community to adopt the Practical Democracy concept. If they do so and it succeeds, other communities in the area with similar problems are likely to adopt it, as well. Is that any help? Fred Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Public parties: a Trojan Horse in the party system
Hi Peter, Ok, so every citizen in every country in the world will be able to vote in the election of the municipal council where I live? I don't think I would like that and neither would the other people living in this municipality too, I believe. Ed already replied here, so I just want to add two things. First I remind you that I was speaking of votes cast in the primary elections of a public party, not in the official elections of the state. Second, people around the world are already free to express themselves on the issue of other people's local elections. Whether we like it or not, there is nothing we can do about it. Talking about history, I'll share what I learned about the secret ballot too: The use of a secret ballot in America was first deemed necessary to protect the voting rights of recently freed slaves ... (I already replied to this) ... Your claim that, that a little peer-to-peer coercion here and there, actually is not much to talk about, is unacceptable to me and not a statement supported by any argument - imagine how these isolated cases could look like in reality. ... Looking at reality, what I see is: (a) The existence of a secret ballot in official elections (b) The *absence* of a secret ballot in everyday communications Official elections employ a secret ballot that can serve as a barrier to inter-personal coercion, while everyday communications do not. I propose no change here. I propose only that the primary elections of a public party be conducted as everyday communications among ordinary people. As such, I claim they are unlikely to be skewed overall by instances of inter-personal coercion, as between family members. People tend broadly to express themselves with fidelity provided they are not systematically constrained, as in a police state. ... If all restrictions are lifted and public voters have complete freedom of expression, even then would coercion not disappear, as vote-buying will be absolutely legitimate, and vote-buying is a form of coercion which would be under the protection of the freedom of expression. ... Did you read my citation here? We discussed this previously in the lists: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#vote-buy You imply that people who are free to express themselves without restriction are going to sell that freedom to the highest bidder. This seems unlikely. Can you think of an actual example? It is impossible to generally enforce a secret ballot in primary elections, or to impose any other sweeping restriction on freedom of expression. It would require a power that does not exist in our societies. ... I didn't understand the sentence It would require a power that does not exist in our societies. Doesn't legislative power exist in our societies? To restrict the public sharing of opinions on who should run for office? Such a law would be unconstitutional. Even if it were not, to enforce it would require the security apparatus of a police state. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Peter Zbornik said: Hi Mike, answers in the text of your email below. Best regards Peter Zborník 2012/8/6 Michael Allan m...@zelea.com I guess there are three issues in this. I'll try to unravel them as they bear on the public party. * Party membership * Human expression * Vote counting The public party has no formal membership. Its actual membership is assumed to be identical to that of the public. Public membership is determined ad hoc by human expression *in* public. Speaker and audience are made members by the fact of their participation. In not assuming this mode of membership, Demoex is not a public party. The public depends on freedom of expression. Voting is a form of expression. Placing restrictions on who can vote and who cannot (or where they can vote, when, and how), Demoex is not a public party. Public votes may be tallied by anyone and the tallier alone decides which votes to count and which to discount. A public party may tally votes, too, and may publish a count restricted to the local electors, or to any other subset of the voters. Such a restricted count would not in itself disqualify Demoex from being a public party. [1] Ok, so every citizen in every country in the world will be able to vote in the election of the municipal council where I live? I don't think I would like that and neither would the other people living in this municipality too, I believe. I'll share what I've learned about the secret ballot. It's not what it seems to be. (a) The enabling motivation behind the secret ballot, as with other electoral reforms of the 19th century, was the consolidation of power in the newly organized political parties. Of particular concern was control over the selection of primary candidates, which could not be secured when the nominations
[EM] Public parties: a Trojan Horse in the party system
It's strange to think I once opposed Ed on some of these points... though that was years ago. Peter Zbornik said: Talking about history, I'll share what I learned about the secret ballot too: The use of a secret ballot in America was first deemed necessary to protect the voting rights of recently freed slaves after the Civil War. Voter intimidation during southern reconstruction was rampant, with African American first-time voters being threatened with physical violence, even lynching, based on how their publicly known ballots were cast. In 1892, Grover Cleveland became the first United State president elected by secret ballot. http://www.sosballot.org/frequently-asked-questions/ I'm afraid that's not a reliable source. Most of the freed slaves were unable to read. India takes special care in the design of its ballots to ensure the illiterate can vote, but the former Confederate states often had the opposite intention. There is no single reason why they adopted the secret ballot, but disenfranchising the newly emancipated slaves was one of them [1]. It was called the Australian ballot back then and this an exerpt of a Democratic campaign song of 1892: [3][4] The Australian ballot works like a charm It makes them think and scratch And when a Negro gets a ballot He has certainly met his match. They sang this in Arkansas where the secret ballot was enacted in 1891. Under the law, an illiterate man who needed help to vote was required to apply to two of the precinct judges, who would then have to order all other voters to vacate the polling place before the two judges could prepare the ballot for the voter. Of course, this process naturally discouraged most illiterate men from even going to the polls. [2] As a consequence, the percentage of black men who managed to vote dropped from 71 to 38. [4] So it happened that the secret ballot helped the ruling Democratic party tighten its grip on power in the south, the Republicans being the party of Lincoln and the Union during the war. Local details vary [1], but the general pattern around the world is one in which the secret ballot (as with other modern electoral reforms) serves to enhance the power of the political elite. [5] In fact, that power has no other basis than the restrictions imposed on electors, or would-be electors (the who, where, when and how of voting). Currently those restrictions are about as tight as can be, and the power of the elite is at a peak. They go into the booth alone Their ticket to prepare And as soon as five minutes are out They have got to git from there. [3] Yet it's all a house of cards. The restrictions are an illusion. Voting can never actually be restricted in a modern society. Maybe this is why the Germans are ahead of others in this field, because vote and voice are the same word in German (Stimme). It must be dawning on them that guarantees of free speech *also* apply to voting. I'll reply to your other points in a while, Peter. (Freedom of speech was enabled by technology and demonstrated in practice long before it was recognized as a human right. And I'm terribly late on delivering that beta we were speaking of.) Mike [1] There are four interpretations to explain why [Arkansas' secret ballot] election law was enacted in 1891: to quell the growing momentum of the agrarian third-party and Republican fusion movement, to eliminate the black vote (particularly in local contests in eastern Arkansas), to centralize political control of the state into the hands of a few elite Democrats, and to remove the need for federal election oversight (reform). Various historians of the Southern disfranchisement have tended to stress one of these explanations over the others depending on the historian’s particular ideology. Recent research of the Election Law of 1891 points to all four of the explanations working in different regions of Arkansas independently, based largely on population demographics and local political concerns in various sections of the state. [2] [2] http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=4033 [3] Paul M. Schwartz. 2002. Voting technology and democracy. N.Y.U. Law Review. *75*. pp. 625-698. (see p. 679) http://www.paulschwartz.net/pdf/votingtech.pdf [4] Jill Leport. 2011. The Whites of Their Eyes. The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History. Princeton University Press. (see pp. 111-2) books.google.ca/books?id=e4XQLrY9T3oC [5] Frank O'Gorman. 2007. The secret ballot in nineteenth century Britain. *In* Cultures of voting: the hidden history of the secret ballot. pp. 16-42. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Public parties: a Trojan Horse in the party system
/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#vote-buy [4] Mark Murphy was maybe the first to attempt the design of an open voting network. See his prize winning essay: Mark Murphy. 2008. The 'killer app' of public participation. *In* Rebooting America. Edited by Allison Fine, Micah L. Sifrey, Andrew Rasiej and Joshua Levy. Personal Democracy Press. http://rebooting.personaldemocracy.com/node/5499. See also his later post to the Metagov list: http://metagovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2009-February/001195.html [5] Past discussions of vote mirroring are indexed here: http://zelea.com/w/User_talk:ThomasvonderElbe_GmxDe/Vote_mirroring -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Peter Zbornik said: Dear all, some comments below 2012/7/21 Michael Allan m...@zelea.com Paul said, indeed Demoex voting was restricted to members but membership was not restricted. ... This is like a political party, but unlike a public party. A public party will not restrict voting to its members. To become a member, you actually have to be a citizen in the municipality where Demoex works (being from Sweden, I checked it out). This is a reasonable condition, and thus, unless we have a wold-wide public party, there needs to be some voter qualifications (except for being human, above 16/18/21 years of age, not seriously mentally impaired etc. Michael Allan wrote: Yes, that's correct. We cannot image anonymous votes. We must know the identity of the voter and the time at which the vote was cast. Only the latest vote is valid. If the identity of the voter will be public, then you open up for voter coercion - the employer, husband, political party, secret society, church etc. etc. might be tempted to buy your vote or threaten you to vote as they want (sticks and carrots). That is why voting is secret, except for the voting of elected representatives. I do not think we can dispose of voting secrecy today. Personally I thought, that in a delegative proxy system, only the voting of a person, which has more than, say 1000 votes will be public. If I give my vote to a candidate with less than 1000 votes, using a ranked ballot, he is eliminated and the candidate who is next in ranking gets my vote. I am not sure I make sense, here, as I am new to the discussion. In an ideal world with no coercion, all voting could be public, but now, we don't live in an ideal world. I think cryptography might give us a possibility to retain the secrecy of a vote, and allow the voter to reallocate his/her votes. After all, stock markets function the same way. The stock-owner knows what he owns, and can buy or sell assets anonymously. The buyer and seller however do not know to whom they sell. The same way, the voter could change vote allocation, but nobody would know to whom. I am not sure I have understood this vote-mirroring thing. Best regards Peter Zborník Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process
Fred Gohlke said: Are you saying that anyone considering such a concept would have difficulty implementing it? ... One aspect is impossible to implement. You cannot control the time at which candidates are announced, as you intend. http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-July/030836.html More generally, the means by which candidates make their way to the ballot cannot be controlled. re: Although a moderating/immoderating [primary] electoral process might be conceived, it could never be enforced. It would require a power that does not exist in our society. You are touching on an important aspect of political systems; the notion of externally enforcing an electoral process. If a process must be forced on the people, it is, by definition, undemocratic. More to the point, it cannot be done. The primary process (processes) cannot be enforced in a society where human rights are respected. If we are to have a stable, democratic process, it must be designed so that our natural tendencies strengthen rather than weaken the process. We know that the pursuit of self-interest is a natural human trait that, unchecked, can have a deleterious effect on the community. ... To check implies a force or constraint. Maybe you speak rhetorically here, but my overall impression is that you intend to remove the political parties from power by imposing some kind of reform. That is not feasible. I am an engineer, and my aim (far from opposing you) is to help shape your concept so it can be implemented in the real world. But leave all that, and please give me your own thoughts: By what sequence of historical events (1, 2, 3) might we transit from the status quo to a better future, as you envision it? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Fred Gohlke said: Good Morning, Michael re: It is here in these independent processes that you would confront 'strong opposition'. You would have no control over any except your own, contingent even there upon actually being able to implement it. Are you saying that anyone considering such a concept would have difficulty implementing it? I've no doubt that's true. In fact, it will be true of any concept that is 'different' than the status quo. Although implementation will undoubtedly be a matter of major concern, when considering concepts, the early steps are best devoted to finding the soundness of the precept. In this instance, I believe we agree the method we are discussing is passive in the sense that it does not actively seek the best of our people as our political leaders. Instead, it relies on members of the community assertive enough to make and/or accept nominations for public office. I consider this a vital flaw because attempts to achieve democratic outcomes fail when nothing in the process seeks the active participation of the individual members of the community. Whether or not this process can be implemented is less important than identifying this flaw because we can use the knowledge to ensure that it is addressed in whatever the final conception may be. For this reason, I'd like to add a goal to the list already offered ... 10) The electoral method must seek the active participation of the individual members of the community. re: Although a moderating/immoderating electoral process might be conceived, it could never be enforced. It would require a power that does not exist in our society. You are touching on an important aspect of political systems; the notion of externally enforcing an electoral process. If a process must be forced on the people, it is, by definition, undemocratic. If we are to have a stable, democratic process, it must be designed so that our natural tendencies strengthen rather than weaken the process. We know that the pursuit of self-interest is a natural human trait that, unchecked, can have a deleterious effect on the community. We also know that lack of integrity is a common failing among politicians. We can use this knowledge to conceive an electoral method that harnesses integrity to the pursuit of public office. This suggests another goal for our list: 11) The electoral method must make integrity a vital character trait in candidates for public office. Fred Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Public parties: a Trojan Horse in the party system
Ed and Peter, Ed Pastore said: I think what might help here is if you present an elevator pitch for the whole concept. ... In written form, that means something like a paragraph. Can you encapsulate the whole idea that way? ... and then perhaps the particulars will sort themselves out internally... Suppose we had an election-methods expert cornered on the elevator. I would pitch it as a technical challenge, like this: Consider that an open primary is like a political party in which the members are the general public. If such a public party were to succeed in building a primary turnout to rival that of the major political parties, then it would come thereafter to win all elections. Is this likely to prove true, or false? [1] If the experts in the EM list find no fault with the argument, then it might be worth pitching to a wider audience. Maybe as a slide show? But Thomas's idea of forcing open Facebook is equally promising, as is Mitch's offer to share/mirror votes at a technical level. [2][3] Peter Zbornik said: I think de-constructing the political party is a good idea. Your primary electoral system could work out after practicalities having been sorted out. Thanks Peter for looking at the argument. I like how you refer to it as de-constructing the political party. I think that's technically correct. However your proposal almost exclusively focused on the primary electoral system and not the primary legislative system. After the top candidates of the public party have been elected in all public elections, then what happens? I should add something about this to the wiki. Each public party has a primary legislative system and all the systems are interlinked by the vote mirroring network. Each person is thus free to choose a toolset and practices that meet his/her personal needs. Elected law makers may also participate if they wish. If a majority of them happen to agree to a primary bill at some point, they may floor it in the legislature and promulgate it. Their re-election prospects will be simultaneously revealed in the electoral primaries, which continue to run non-stop. [1] The detailed argument is here: http://metagovernment.org/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/Public_parties [2] http://metagovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2012-July/004898.html BTW, vote mirroring is also an original idea of Thomas's. [3] http://metagovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2012-August/004910.html -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Ed Pastore said: Responding to Michael's full response to me, below. I guess I don't get how the system then takes hold in the public consciousness. We know build-it-and-they-will-come doesn't really work most of the time for this sort of thing. We need a really compelling motivation. I think what might help here is if you present an elevator pitch for the whole concept. If you're not familiar, the idea is you are in an elevator with a significant person and have until you get to her floor to introduce yourself and sell your idea to her. In written form, that means something like a paragraph. Can you encapsulate the whole idea that way? That may make it easier for people to wrap their minds around the whole general concept, and then perhaps the particulars will sort themselves out internally... (Note, elevator pitches can be quite hard to develop. There's a famous Pascal line at the end of a long missive that translates basically to: I made this letter very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.) Peter Zbornik said: Hi Michael, Thank you for structuring up the discussion. I think de-constructing the political party is a good idea. Your primary electoral system could work out after practicalities having been sorted out. However your proposal almost exclusively focused on the primary electoral system and not the primary legislative system. After the top candidates of the public party have been elected in all public elections, then what happens? Peter Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process
In response to your question as to whether it is reasonable to expect that, at some point, there might be five concurrent processes involving five groups (or parties) with the turnout percentage that you described. Yes, I think it is. It is here in these independent processes that you would confront strong opposition. You would have no control over any except your own, contingent even there upon actually being able to implement it. But this is a practical matter, so maybe leave it for another thread. Is the approach Juho and I were looking at not passive in the sense that it does not seek candidates but accepts those nominated? Yes. In a method like this, do you think competition, first within the groups (parties), and then between the groups would tend to have a moderating effect on the final choices of candidates? I don't know. But if people do agree amongst themselves to elect an immoderate officer, or a moderate one, then I am confident nothing could systematically oppose them. Although a moderating/immoderating electoral process might be conceived, it could never be enforced. It would require a power that does not exist in our society. But again, this is a practical matter. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Fred Gohlke said: Good Afternoon, Michael Thanks for explaining. In response to your question as to whether it is reasonable to expect that, at some point, there might be five concurrent processes involving five groups (or parties) with the turnout percentage that you described. Yes, I think it is. Is the approach Juho and I were looking at not passive in the sense that it does not seek candidates but accepts those nominated? In a method like this, do you think competition, first within the groups (parties), and then between the groups would tend to have a moderating effect on the final choices of candidates? Fred Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process
Peter Zbornik said: Maybe a summary could be in place, in case you have agreed upon something, or someone has come up with some great idea. What I learned, I summarized in this proposal. http://metagovernment.org/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/Public_parties Please click on the discussion tab for an index to related discussions. What do you think? Is it a good idea? Maybe others can summarize what they themselves have learned? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Peter Zbornik said: Dear all, 86 emails in this discussion is quite a lot to read to catch up on the discussion on this topic. Maybe a summary could be in place, in case you have agreed upon something, or someone has come up with some great idea. Thx. Best regards Peter Zborník Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process
... Are P-Q-R-S-T separate groups (parties?), each with members making nominations? ... They are primary processes, i.e. for selecting candidates prior to the official election. So the unreformed ones are party primaries, yes. ... When you say at least two are reformed processes, are you speaking of groups with open nominations? ... One could be the process you and Juho were mooting, and another could feature open nominations, yes. ... Are the percentages the percent of the groups' membership or of the entire electorate? Of the entire electorate. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Fred Gohlke said: Good Afternoon, Michael In response to your July 29th post on a different thread: re: I guess we can safely assume that reforms (whatever they are) will not begin with the official electoral process. It is too difficult to change and too easy to circumvent. What matters is the selection of candidates, namely the primary electoral process. Right? Yes, we are discussing a possible method of selecting candidates. We arrived at this particular idea by assuming that parties still operate in more or less the same way they do today, but that everyone has the right to nominate candidates for public office - party members within parties and unrepresented people (in the 'party' sense) as a separate group. re: Consider a point in the future at which there are five main primary processes in operation at varying levels of turnout, with at least two being reformed processes (your choice which). Process Turnout --- --- P 20 % Q 15(at least two are R5reformed processes) S2 T1 Is this expectation more-or-less reasonable? Anyone? Please help me with this one. Are P-Q-R-S-T separate groups (parties?), each with members making nominations? When you say at least two are reformed processes, are you speaking of groups with open nominations? Are the percentages the percent of the groups' membership or of the entire electorate? re: When you speak (Fred) of controlling the time at which 'candidates are announced', do you mean only for the process that you and Juho are mooting, say one of P-T? Or all processes P-T? Your purpose would seem to require control of all the major primaries. The concept we were examining imagined a single nominating process in which partisans and non-partisans nominate candidates for public office. After being nominated, the nominees for each party (and the non-partisan nominees as a group) decide which of the nominees are the best advocates of the party's point of view. Then, the remaining partisan/non-partisan nominees examine each other to decide which of their number will be the candidates for public office. Then the people vote for their choice of the candidates. The question of how many candidates there would be for each office was not discussed, and, barring further discussion, would be left to those who implement the process. Fred Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Implementing a democratic electoral process (once it is conceived)
If it is not too early, then I have some questions about the practical problem of actually implementing a reformed electoral process. Fred Gohlke said on July 27: re [Juho]: If the second phase is a traditional election, traditional financing practices may apply. That is one of several reasons for having the [official] election on the day after the [selected] candidates are announced - it will limit the deception and obfuscations of campaigning. I guess we can safely assume that reforms (whatever they are) will not begin with the official electoral process. It is too difficult to change and too easy to circumvent. What matters is the selection of candidates, namely the primary electoral process. Right? * Assume that primary reform is at least possible. Consider a point in the future at which there are five main primary processes in operation at varying levels of turnout, with at least two being reformed processes (your choice which). Process Turnout --- --- P 20 % Q 15(at least two are R5reformed processes) S2 T1 Is this expectation more-or-less reasonable? Anyone? When you speak (Fred) of controlling the time at which candidates are announced, do you mean only for the process that you and Juho are mooting, say one of P-T? Or all processes P-T? Your purpose would seem to require control of all the major primaries. * Primary electoral reforms accompanied the historical rise of the modern party system. Selection of candidates used to be in local hands, but it was centralized it in the latter 1800s. The most important reform for this purpose was the secret ballot. It was promoted for laudible reasons (ending corruption) and less laudable (disenfranchising the negro), but the real motivation behind it was the concentration of power in political parties, which were then gearing up for a newly enfranchised mass electorate. The secret ballot helped them because it eliminated the local hustings in which candidates were openly nominated and affirmed (in Britain), and eroded the power of the local political machines such as Tammany Hall (US). Political power turns out to be based on control of primary elections and little else. So it happened that the parties (as we know them) rose to power. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Fred Gohlke said: Good Afternoon, Juho re: Ok, two phases then. One to elect the party candidates (by voters, by party members, or by nominees?) and then the final election. Although we've approached this idea from a party perspective, there's no reason we can't have nominees who don't identify with any of the existing parties. They will form a separate group. In terms of phases, we may have: 1) Nominations. 2) A filtering period of some length so the nominees can decide which of their number are the best able to proclaim the group's position and the best able to engage the other groups during the candidate selection phase. In short, those the nominees think the best advocates for their groups. 3) An open competition between the advocates of the various groups spanning several weeks during which the nominees for the groups advance their perspective and respond to challenges from the public, the media, and the other groups, while contending with each other for selection as candidates for specific public offices. 4) The public election. re: The proportions may be manageable if there are e.g. 1,000,000 voters, 10 parties, 1000 nominees per party, that elect 10 candidates per party. I wonder if you want some proportionality (e.g. betwee two wings of a party) or not. That would influence also the first phase. The number of parties and the number of nominees will depend on the public sentiment at the time of the election and the rules (if any) set by those who implement the process. Proportionality will occur naturally, depending on each party's ability to attract supporters, nominees, and, ultimately, candidates. The decision to form 'wings' rather than separate parties depends on the dynamics perceived by those who share the separate view. If they feel they can be more effective trying to influence the party, they'll form a wing; if they think they'll be more effective trying to influence the public, they'll form a party. re: If the second phase is a traditional election, traditional financing practices may apply. That is one of several reasons for having the election on the day after the candidates are announced - it will limit the deception and obfuscations of campaigning. The concept we are discussing assumes a public election in which the people vote for their choices among the candidates. The competition between
[EM] Public parties: a Trojan Horse in the party system
in the lack of party form and the placement of technical restrictions on the voters. These differences make the process more like a round 1 election, as Ed says. The restriction on the voters is especially indicative, because it means that the voters cannot be the public. As we know, the public can never be restricted in their expressions. [1] http://demoex.net/en [2] http://metagovernment.org/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/Public_parties [3] http://www.facebook.com/DemoexUK/info [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Political_Party_%28Norway%29 [5] http://www.facebook.com/DemoexUK https://twitter.com/DemoexUK [6] http://demoex.net/ [7] http://metagovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2012-July/004886.html -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Paul Nollen said: Sorry, demoex is active in Sweden (Stockholm) ;-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Demoex, an appellation short for democracy experiment, is a local Swedish political party and an experiment with direct democracy in Vallentuna, a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden.[1] It uses the Internet to make it possible for any member to participate in the local government. Demoex has a representative in the municipal council, who votes in the council according to a poll that is held beforehand on the website of the party. This is unlike traditional representatives, who vote according to their own views or their party's views. Every Vallentuna resident older than 16 years can register on the website to vote; anyone in the world can take part in the debates, if they can write in Swedish. Voters do not have to vote on all issues; the fewer votes on an issue, the more weight each vote carries. To boost participation, the party allows users to choose someone to advise them on a particular topic. Demoex started 10 years ago. Paul Fred Gohlke said: Good Afternoon, Michael I'm working my way through your proposal. It is not entirely clear how a group can have the form of a party without the substance. To the extent that people organize, they cannot escape Robert Michels' dictum: It is indisputable that the oligarchical and bureaucratic tendency of party organization is a matter of technical and practical necessity. It is the inevitable product of the very principle of organization. This may be a semantic problem; perhaps some word other than 'party' would better fit the case (public body?). In any event, acquiring the labour, money and other resources needed to make it happen is non-trivial. The argument of inevitable success may be a bit optimistic. Like all political ideas, this one bears the burden of persuading a large portion of the population to adopt the method. Perhaps some form of telephone application could go viral. That might gain adherents quickly but might also turn into a passing fad. There are two worrying aspects about the proposal. One is the lack of a way for the people to carefully examine candidates to determine their ability and integrity. The other is that the concept may be susceptible to media-induced frenzies. One thought that struck me while studying the proposal was the similarity to Michael Moore's We Want You (www.wewantyou.us). If a combination of that effort and your ideas is possible, it might be beneficial. Fred Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Public parties: a Trojan Horse in the party system
Subject: Public parties: a Trojan Horse in the party system Kristofer and Paul, Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: It might be of interest to know that a Norwegian joke party had a platform somewhat like this. While it would not put the selection of candidates in the hands of the public, all the candidates (both of them) pledged to follow the public's will. Now, that might sound like what any politician would say, but they had a very precise definition in mind: they would put up a web poll about each parliamentary decision-to-be and then follow the people's decision according to that poll. ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Political_Party_(Norway) ... I can see the joke - a parody of democracy hung on marionette strings. But there are no such strings in what I proposed. Aside from what they're already allowed by law (in elections), the public are given no mechanism to control the actions of legislators. Certainly the public *party* gives them none, because (unlike a political party) it exercises no control over nominees, candidates or elected officials. http://metagovernment.org/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/Public_parties#Substance But I value your opinion, Kristofer. Do you seriously find any fault in the proposal? Any reason why it should fail to work? Paul Nollen said: Demoex (Norway in Vallentuna a suburb of Stockholm) is indeed working that way. Which way? Norwegian joke party, or public party? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Public parties: a Trojan Horse in the party system
candidate! But this contributes no useful information to the election. The party *as such* has none to contribute. Putting it another way, the party has no vote. Only people can vote. When we say the public party wins the election, what we really mean, therefore, is that the outcome is decided by the public. This would be a significant change from the past. Plan We use the argument of inevitable success to leverage the labour, money and other resources needed to make it happen. We begin small and grow from there. I think this fits neatly with Metagov's prior goals and methods. The only real difference is in placing the effort within the party system. This is the Trojan Horse strategy, of course; but even if it had no other purpose, it would enable us to frame the argument in way that people can easily understand and identify with. Will this work, do you think? Can anyone foresee problems? [ACK] Underlying ideas for this proposal were previously mooted in a discussion with Fred Gohlke, Juho Laatu and Kristofer Munsterhjelm in the Election Methods list. See Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-June/thread.html#30601 http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-July/thread.html#30649 Also with Ed Pastore in the Start/Metagov list: http://metagovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2012-July/004873.html [VM] Vote mirroring is the translation of a vote between two sites or forms, where the original on the first is replicated as an equivalent image on the second. http://zelea.com/w/User:ThomasvonderElbe_GmxDe/Vote_mirroring Vote mirroring is arguably a sufficient measure in itself to dampen network effects and preclude the formation of a monopoly in online voting services. http://zelea.com/w/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/Vote_mirroring_as_a_counter-monopoly_measure [WIK] A copy of this proposal is also posted in the wiki: http://metagovernment.org/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/Public_parties -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process
Hi Fred, I posted my proposal separately. Let me know what you think. http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-July/030751.html It should be compatible with Practical Democracy/triads and all other methods, too. If it works, it should enable electoral innovation across the board. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Fred Gohlke said: Good Afternoon, Michael re: The public may include partisans, of course, but they would vote together with everyone else when it comes to public decisions. That's the crucial thing. I agree that it's a crucial issue, but, as far as this discussion has advanced, we've yet to suggest a method by which it can be done. One of the problems is that people motivated to political action are partisan, but they are a relatively small part of the electorate. The non-partisans, virtually by definition, tend to not be politically active. That does not mean they have no political interest or concern. They do, but there is no viable 'good government' party they can support. So, while they should be the greatest voice in the conduct of our government, they are forced to stand mute because parties dominate the political scene. That is the crux of the matter. I feel, like you, that our electoral method must embrace the entire electorate. Those who don't wish to participate must be allowed to drop out, but everyone else must have a way to provide meaningful input into the choice of the people's representatives in their legislature. Fred Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Public parties: a Trojan Horse in the party system
Paul and Ed, Paul Nollen said: I tried to start here in Belgium but choose to join the Pirate Party Belgium who is very close to what we try to accomplish. ... It would be very interesting to join forces if possible. ... But my understanding of E2D (correct me if I'm wrong) is that it lacks these essential ingredients of success: http://metagovernment.org/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/Public_parties#Substance * Never controls the nominees, candidates or elect * Never holds power * Voting is free of restrictions, as in free speech * Everyone is invited to participate The argument of success hinges on these, particularly on the last two in the context of primary elections, where the party decides who gets on the ballot or party list. Is there an E2D party that attempts to lift all restrictions on primary electoral voting (time, place, method) and voter eligibility? A *public* party must lift all such restrictions, of course. Its voters are the public who (by def'n) are not regulated or restricted. Ed Pastore said: I was considering tackling this process as an unofficial party, where there is a national organizing unit, but no official presence in the states. Instead, individuals run as individuals. I think that is consistent with your proposal, since you force individuals representing the other political parties to run in this party's primary, right? Yes, technically it might be the same. But it couldn't be explained in the same way (party guaranteed to win, but party is hollow, empty window onto public) if that matters. However, I do want to draw your attention to somewhat of a real-world criticism of this idea. The state of California radically changed its primary process for this year's primary. It opened its primaries so that all candidates ran against each other in the primary (sort of making a round 1 election, and turning the official election into a runoff). However, according to critics, the end result was basically the same as before: the big political parties dominated the process and ran it the same way as always: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/06/07/4549066/open-primary-business-as-usual.html Interesting! Here's a short memo explaining the new rules: http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/2012-elections/june-primary/pdf/new-open-primary-info.pdf I understand your proposal is substantially different. I'm just pointing out that there is a *lot* of inertia in the U.S. political system. Like you say, they turned the primary into a stage 1 election. In our case, we'd turn it into a free process of consensus building. (Also we'd do it in a party in a way that's easy to explain and copy.) P.S. What software would be up to the task of managing your proposed party? Any software with mirroring tacked on should work. Add a parallel party (or shell) running Votorola, and we could test the mirroring network. Basically we need software *other* than Votorola that we could wire up. I think the only serious hurdles are labour and money. Could we gain traction with the argument of inevitable success, do you think? We'd need to present it in different formats and degrees of sophistication, of course. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Paul Nollen said: Hi Alan, Per Norback of Demoex (democratic experiment) in Norway started something like your proposal ten years ago and is still active. Several parties all over the world are trying to follow his example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoex http://www.e2d-i.net/ http://participedia.net/organizations/demoex I tried to start here in Belgium but choose to join the Pirate Party Belgium who is very close to what we try to accomplish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party It would be very interesting to join forces if possible. In Germany the first landkreis is using liquid feedback in order to give the citizens the possibility to have a say (not decisive yet) in the decisionmaking proces. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/landkreis-friesland-fuehrt-liquid-feedback-ein-a-843873.html Kind regards Paul Ed Pastore said: I had been thinking of trying an initiative like this in the U.S. (after our November elections, since it is too late to start now anyway and since the day after yet-another-disappointing-election would be a good day to launch the process). In some states in the U.S., establishing a formal party is an extremely difficult task. The current parties have entrenched themselves so well that they have raised enormous barriers to the establishment of competing parties. I was considering tackling this process as an unofficial party, where there is a national organizing unit, but no official presence in the states. Instead, individuals run as individuals. I think that is consistent with your proposal, since you force individuals representing the other political parties to run in this party's primary, right? However, I do
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process (Primary Thoughts)
Hi Fred, It seems to me the point you're making (and, for goodness sake, correct me if I've bollixed it) is that, if we are to eliminate partisan control of government, we must first understand the source of party power. That would be wise, at least. For my part, I point to the absolute dependence of party power on the combination of a primary electoral system and an exclusive electorate. Parties are able to exercise control because only party members are allowed to vote on the selection of candidates for public office. To correct this state of affairs, we must use our imaginations to go beyond what we can see and imagine that it's possible to lift that restriction. If we can imagine that, if voting by non-partisans were allowed, the party would lose control. The implication is that, to eliminate the power of parties, we must find a way to remove that exclusivity. The last sentence says it best. There is no way to eliminate primary elections in a society where freedoms of speech and association are respected. They are too well armoured. That leaves exclusivity as the target for our sling stone. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Fred Gohlke said: Good Morning, Michael I think I understand your point. Before I comment on it, I'd like to mention that the example of an assertive, strong-willed non-partisan was probably of minor importance. The point was that, in any single primary election, if such an individual participated in conjunction with a party, it could only be with one party in any one election, and association with the group would affect both the person and the group. However, that may be, it is a digression from the line of thought you were suggesting. It seems to me the point you're making (and, for goodness sake, correct me if I've bollixed it) is that, if we are to eliminate partisan control of government, we must first understand the source of party power. Parties are able to exercise control because only party members are allowed to vote on the selection of candidates for public office. To correct this state of affairs, we must use our imaginations to go beyond what we can see and imagine that it's possible to lift that restriction. If we can imagine that, if voting by non-partisans were allowed, the party would lose control. The implication is that, to eliminate the power of parties, we must find a way to remove that exclusivity. I would like to comment on this, but want to be sure my understanding is correct before I do so. Please let me know. Fred Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process
Fred and Kristofer, Fred Gohlke said: I think you're right, the selection of candidates for public office must be opened to the entire electorate. Such an approach has eluded us so far because of the lack of organization among the non-partisans. This lets the parties maintain their control of the electoral process with the classic 'Divide and Conquer' strategy. Yes, or at least among the general public. The public may include partisans, of course, but they would vote together with everyone else when it comes to public decisions. That's the crucial thing. Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: We don't really have primaries here, at least not in the sense of patches to make Plurality work, because we don't use Plurality but party list PR. There are still internal elections (or appointments, depending on party) to determine the order of the list - those are probably the closest thing to primaries here. Imagine a PR party that invites all residents (even members of other parties) to participate in the primary election of its party list. It is not an ordinary party with an ideology, or platform. Its only concern is primary *inclusivity*. It calls itself the Public List and it strives to be just that, and nothing more. Hypothesis: the Public List will have a lower attrition rate than any other party. Unlike other parties, it cannot easily offend the voters because all it does is open its list to their participation. Nor can it easily offend the nominees and candidates, because it is equally open to them. It will therefore come to win all elections. Is this likely to be true? What could work against it? I imagine that the primary link is even weaker in STV countries. Say you have a multimember district with 5 seats. To cover all their bases, each party would run at least 5 candidates for that election, so that even if they get all the seats, they can fill them. But that means that people who want members of party X to get in power can choose which of the candidates they want. There's no predetermined list, and there's less of a take it or leave it problem than in single member districts. Wouldn't the Public List also have an opening here? But I digress. The way I see it, there are two approaches to changing the rules. The first is to do it from within - to have a party or other organization that implements those rules internally. The second is from without, by somehow inspiring the people to want this, so that they will push for it more strongly than the parties can. In the United States, the latter might be rather difficult (since money counts for so much). And perhaps in the US, primaries would be a good place to start. I don't know, as I don't live there :-) Suppose a Public List were made available without pushing. The parties would continue promoting themselves (and bashing each other) while the public list would quietly do its job. It might offer a kind of refuge to voters who were tired of the usual fights, or confused by the choices. Might this not be enough in itself? Don't some local elections over there have free-for-all primaries where anyone can vote, so the system turns into top-two runoff? I'm not sure. The parties in Canada (where I live) generally don't field candidates for municipal elections. Even at higher levels, the nomination mechanism for assembly members is obscure. Ordinary MPs have little power anyway. Power is concentrated in the leader's hands. The leadership convention is the only primary contest that gets much public attention. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process (Primary Thoughts)
Juho and Fred, (a) a *primary* electoral system (b) one that sponsors candidates for *public* office (c) where voting is restricted to *private* members Specifically (c) is no longer possible. ... In such a world, what *other* form of political domination could take hold? ... I would argue that domination is no longer possible. For better or worse, we would be free. Juho Laatu said: I agree that getting rid of the financial ties and getting rid of the party internal control on who can be elected would reduce oligarchy within the parties and power of money. But I'm afraid that humans are clever enough to find some new ways to find power and control the processes in ways that are not very beneficiial to the society. The threat will be present even if we would get rid of some of the key mechanisms that cause us problems today. Yes, and we should expect this. Even where freedom is a fact and takes center stage, domination remains in the wings as a possibility. Consider the choices: What is What might be -- --- 1. Domination Freedom 2. Freedom Domination If no obvious forms of domination remain after eliminating (c), then we might look at the possible forms of freedom. Especially interesting would be anything that undermined (c), since that would pave the way for a continuous transition from 1 to 2. I used the soviet example to point out that even in a system that, according to its idealistic supporters, was supposed to get rid of the evils of the past, people soon found ways to corrupt the system. Maybe the same applies to the U.S.A. too. It is known to be a leading fortress of democracy, but now I hear some complaints about how it works. No doubt, also new systems, especially if generated from scratch, would find some ways to corrupt themselves. Hopefully they are better than the previous systems, but not always. So we better be careful with them and too hgh doses of idealism. But maybe we can trust that, despite of all these risks, we are on our way from the laws of jungle to something better. Yes, I agree. Fred Gohlke said: I'm sorry, Michael, but I cannot make such an assumption. I can imagine universal equality but I cannot imagine a party where the primary decisions may no longer be restricted to members. Such an assumption defeats the party's reason for being. I am unable to imagine an entity that does not include its essential characteristics. Yes, I agree. The party could not exist. It follows that if (c) were eliminated, then the party would also be eliminated. Right? Is it necessary to imagine 'party' as existing before universal equality? Would it not be better to imagine 'party', and the exclusivity that is inherent in the concept of 'party', as a natural outgrowth of universal equality? (I try to explain my aim at bottom.) Moreover, since one non-party individual can only join one of the existing parties, the individual's influence on and reaction to the influence of the party is indeterminate. As an imaginary example, an assertive, strong-willed non-partisan may influence and be influenced by a liberal party to a completely different extent than the same person would influence and be influenced by a conservative party. I may misunderstand. To be sure, one needn't join a party. A single individual (member or not) may participate in the primaries of every party, or no party, or something in between. This is the assumption I cannot accept. It defies the party's reason for being. I can imagine a system where parties nominate candidates that advocate the party's position, and then subjects those candidates to the judgment of non-partisans, but I cannot imagine a party operating outside the dictates of its membership. Exactly. So the parties are gone. I agree we need to let the people impress their moral sense on their government. That is not possible when parties choose the candidates for public office. Is there a way we can pursue this line of inquiry without making assumptions that strip political parties of their essential nature? We agreed that parties are incompatible with a substansive democracy. One way or another, they had to go. So we aimed straight for the heart and now they are gone. Could we proceed otherwise in reality? Whatever else we do, we cannot avoid trespassing on the essence of the party system and displacing it *en passant*. But I wanted to be clear about the form we'd be displacing, the particular form of exclusivity that parties depend upon, because I think it tells us something about the practical means of moving forward. (Persuasion won't work. The parties cannot be beaten on that ground.) How exactly do we proceed? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process
Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: - Thus, it's not too hard for me to think there might be sets of rules that would make parties minor parts of politics. Those would not work by simply outlawing parties, totalitarian style. Instead, the rules would arrange the dynamics so that there's little benefit to organizing in parties. Such rules would be difficult to implement while the parties are still in power. They control the legislatures. I think we need to look at the primaries. A system of open primaries would be beyond the reach of the parties, and it might undermine their power. Has anyone tried this approach before? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process (Primary Thoughts)
Fred and Juho, Fred Gohlke said: re: ... given the assumption of equality, the party leader is formally on a level with any party member. Each has a single vote at each step of the primary, including nomination. Absolutely! This leads to the obvious question of How?, but asking it may be premature. Yes, I think we should postpone that till we look at the democratic context. We'll have to use our imaginations because democracy assumes an equality and universality that has yet to be realized. Meanwhile the party is a fact, and it seems to rest (at least in definition) on a contrary assumption, that of *non*-universality. I wish therefore to begin by imagining away that assumption. What happens to the party when its primary decisions may no longer be restricted to members, but must be opened to universal and equal participation? re: Each has the same primary electorate. It is therefore likely that each will make the same decision and sponsor the same candidate. Why is that likely? ... It would seem that each party would start with a different core and initially propose different candidates. Thereafter, the decisions of the party members would be influenced by the non-partisans. The influence would almost certainly be toward the center because each party can be expected to already harbor the most extreme advocates of the party's position. However, the degree of influence would change rapidly with time and circumstance, so the result cannot be certain. When you say start with a different core, I'm unsure whether you mean a core of deciders, or of decisions. Either (if enforced) would violate the assumptions of universality or equality. The parties may be different from each other (in their histories, if nothing else), but henceforth they may not make decisions about the sponsorship of candidates without opening each step of the process to anyone who wishes to participate. When voicing the first nomination for party P, the lowliest member of a competing party Q has an equal opportunity to that of P's leader. An ultra-left party would normally be expected to start with a left leaning nominee, but exactly this expectation no longer applies. All leanings from the center are now equally likely, where the center is defined collectively by those who choose to participate, and the effort they expend. re: The next step in its (democracy's) evolution could easily see their (political parties) elimination. Oh, my! Oh, my! I must question the use of 'easily'. There has been nothing 'easy' about your work over the past umpteen years - or my own - (he said with a smile). In that sense, my claim of easy come, easy go is woefully wrong. :-) As an engineer, however, I must say there are things worth salvaging in the party machine. This is maybe another reason to dismantle it with care. It sounds strange, but the party introduces an element of morality that is missing from the state electoral system. The state system tells us who *shall* be elected to office, but it fails to tell us who *ought* to be. This failing is something I know you already appreciate, but I want to emphasize that it's a moral failing. A power is exercised without a right. It is what we would expect from a tyrant, not from an institution of democracy. The party is the opposite of this. Rather than offering facts, the party offers norms. It says, You may elect anyone you wish, but here is who you *ought* to elect. This is a moral contribution (in form), which is exactly what we need. Mind you, the actual content is almost always wrong. So we still need to take the machine apart, if only to fix it. But it *was* aimed in the right direction, roughly speaking. Fred Gohlke said to Juho: ... As I've said before, parties always seek the power to impose their views on those who don't share them. They don't always succeed, but when they do it's catastrophic. The threat of domination is always present in a party-based system. Juho Laatu replied: As well as in a party-free system. But imagine for a moment that the following is no longer possible: (a) a *primary* electoral system (b) one that sponsors candidates for *public* office (c) where voting is restricted to *private* members Specifically (c) is no longer possible. Whenever a decision is made in support of a candidate for public office (or would be candidate), that decision is open to universal participation. Further those who do participate are treated equally. Their votes are not weighted, or anything like that. In such a world, what *other* form of political domination could take hold? I would argue that domination is no longer possible. For better or worse, we would be free. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process (Primary Thoughts)
Fred Gohlke said: The party leaders would choose candidates who could be relied upon to fulfill their obligation to the party for its support of their candidacy, but who would appeal to the broadest possible spectrum of voters. In other words, it would cause the party leaders to feign centrism while picking candidates that ensure the party leaders will maintain their power. Yet given the assumption of equality, the party leader is formally on a level with any party member. Each has a single vote at each step of the primary, including nomination. With the further assumption of universality (eliminating c), the members of the opposing parties are now given a vote, as are the members of no party (N). The primary electorate for party P is therefore: P + Q + R + ... + Z + N = everybody The same applies to each of the other parties Q, R, etc. Each has the same primary electorate. It is therefore likely that each will make the same decision and sponsor the same candidate. Given the assumptions (for which I still owe an answer), is this true? If true, what effect would it have on the parties? While the idea of opening primary voting to the public would almost certainly reduce the power of political extremists, it does not give the people a way to determine the character and integrity of the candidates. The process does not include careful examination of the candidates - except by the self-interested party leaders. The people have no choice but to use the (mis)information disseminated by the parties and the candidates to try to choose a trustworthy individual from the slate of candidates. Is that a reasonable assessment? Are there other possibilities? Yes to both. You look at the whole cloth which is always reasonable. Another possibility is to tug at a single thread. As you pointed out earlier, the parties have no clothing except what they wove for themselves. They have no support in Anglo-American constitutional law, nor in French. They remain unattached and external to the basic structure of modern democracy in those places where it first evolved. The next step in its evolution could easily see their elimination. Easy come, easy go. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process
Fred Gohlke said: Good Morning, Michael I'm glad to see you. I hoped this topic would attract thoughtful comment. I may have misunderstood your point, though. I think you are suggesting that party primaries be open to the public? Is that your intent? ... Yes, as a thought experiment. So even the members of competing parties may vote in the primary. Let's call this the assumption of universality. ... If so, would the attending non-partisans have to vote for one of the party's candidates? Let's assume not. Let's assume instead a purely democratic process in which all choices (including the initial nominations) are decided by voting. Call this the assumption of equality. (Later I'll explain why I think these assumptions are valid.) I'm anxious to examine your ideas, but want to be sure my understanding is correct. So what would be the effect on parties? Clearly they could no longer be parties by the following definition, since (c) is now eliminated. (a) a *primary* electoral system (b) one that sponsors candidates for *public* office (c) where voting is restricted to *private* members But maybe that's just a formality. What would be the *actual* effect of eliminating (c)? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ (brief comments and a question) Fred Gohlke said: re: Sponsoring is a separate topic. ... Absolutely not ... Sponsorship is the heart of party power. Their ability to choose and sponsor the candidates we are allowed to vote for gives them control of the entire political process. ... I agree. Maybe we could define the party as: (a) a *primary* electoral system (b) one that sponsors candidates for *public* office (c) where voting is restricted to *private* members We have the tools and the ability to conceive a non-partisan electoral method. Let's start. Juho Laatu said: Let's generate better methods. Are you sure that you don't want parties even in the sense that there would be ideological groupings that people could support? Or in the sense that there would always be an alternative to the current rulers. Imagine waving a wand and eliminating (c), the restriction of primary voting to private members. What effect would it have on the parties? What effect on the official elections? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process
(brief comments and a question) Fred Gohlke said: re: Sponsoring is a separate topic. ... Absolutely not ... Sponsorship is the heart of party power. Their ability to choose and sponsor the candidates we are allowed to vote for gives them control of the entire political process. ... I agree. Maybe we could define the party as: (a) a *primary* electoral system (b) one that sponsors candidates for *public* office (c) where voting is restricted to *private* members We have the tools and the ability to conceive a non-partisan electoral method. Let's start. Juho Laatu said: Let's generate better methods. Are you sure that you don't want parties even in the sense that there would be ideological groupings that people could support? Or in the sense that there would always be an alternative to the current rulers. Imagine waving a wand and eliminating (c), the restriction of primary voting to private members. What effect would it have on the parties? What effect on the official elections? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Cubicle-society. Withdrawing Intermediate FBC-2.
Michael Ossipoff said: In reply to a posting that just apeared, with its link to a website,, I suggest that we actually have what amounts very nearly to the cubicle-society described in that posting's website-reference. People rely on the mass-media to tell them how other people feel on issues, and how those other people will vote. I think you refer to the paragraph beginning One might counter: http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/fau/fau.xht#FAU-S -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Democracy Chronicles, introductions - Michael Allan
Hello Adrian and all, Here are my particulars: * BSc. Biological Sciences. University of Guelph, 1992. * Certificate in Computer Programming. Ryerson Polytechnic University. Toronto, 1995. * Independent sofware engineer, living in Toronto. * Working in collaborative and social media. Primarily on project Votorola since 2007, previously on project textbender. * Discussed 'the meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)' with Warren Smith. My critique of the proposed reforms was elaborated in that and subsequent discussions, all of which are indexed here: http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/fau/fau.xht#H Please let me know if you need additional information. Best to all, -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Richard Fobes said: Adrian Tawfik at Democracy Chronicles requested that I supply him with an introduction to myself for the article that contains my answers to his interview questions. I'm thinking that everyone else who also answered his interview questions will need to supply an introduction, and I figure that all of us will want to elaborate on the brief comment that appears next to our name on the Declaration. As long as we are writing introductions that will be published, we might as well also use the opportunity to learn more about each other, and share ideas about what to write. Plus, if any of us includes a statement that defies the principles of mathematics, such an error can be pointed out prior to publication. With that in mind, here is my suggestion for an introductory paragraph about me: begin intro Richard Fobes, who has a degree in physics (and whose last name rhymes with robes), became involved with election-method reform when he realized, while writing his book titled The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox [link], that most of the world's problems can be solved, but the current voting methods used throughout the world are so primitive that citizens are unable to elect the problem-solving leaders they want. That insight motivated him to spend time over the last two decades developing -- including writing open-source software for -- a system of voting methods that he calls VoteFair ranking. The core of the system is VoteFair popularity ranking, which is mathematically equivalent to the Condorcet-Kemeny method, which is one of the methods supported by the Declaration of Election-Method Reform Advocates. At his VoteFair.org [link] website, Fobes offers a free service of calculating VoteFair ranking results, and a number of organizations have used the service to elect their officers. The only people who have objected to the results have been incumbents who failed to get reelected. At that site Fobes also hosts an American Idol poll that allows fans of the TV show to rank the show's singers according to who is their favorite, who is their second favorite, and so on down to who they like the least, and the calculations reveal the overall ranking. Based on the results, Fobes writes commentaries that anticipate and explain so-called surprise results in terms of important voting concepts, especially vote splitting, vote concentration, and strategic voting. end intro Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Democracy Chronicles, answers to interview questions
Dear Richard and Adrian, Richard Fobes said: Below are the questions that editor Adrian Tawfik is inviting us to answer. Clarifications follow the questions. Question 1. Your name and the city and country you work in. Michael Allan, Toronto Question 2. What is your Company or Organization? independent software engineer Question 3. Any contact info you wish to give to be published with article for readers (for example your email or website.) (see sig below) Question 4. If you have signed the Declaration, is there any additional information, beyond what's in your signature, that you feel is important to mention? Question 5. If you have not signed the Declaration, why? Unfortunately the proposed reforms do not address what I consider the most important requirements, namely that (a) the elector must actually have a vote, and (b) the vote must have a meaningful effect. Question 6. Briefly explain what characteristics you think are most important for a voting method to have? (a) The elector must actually have a vote in the sense of its form and content being under the elector's control at all times, much as one's voice is under one's control, for example. Neither the traditional methods of voting nor the proposed reforms meet this requirement. In both cases the form of the vote is prescribed by force and the vote itself is witheld for long periods. Most crucially it is witheld during those periods in which electoral decisions are made, which is always well before the ballots are printed. (b) The vote must have some meaningful effect in the real world. In particular it ought to afford a reasonable possibility of influencing the outcome of the election. Again, neither the traditional methods nor the proposed reforms meet this requirement. In both cases one's vote has no effect whatsoever on the outcome of the election. Question 7. What do you think is the most important election reform needed where you live (either locally or nationally)? Why is this reform important? I think the most important requirement is (a). Gaining control of the vote would give our electors immediate influence over the elections; that's one thing. In due course, it would also open the possibility of voting on laws and other norms, which would entail efforts at reaching consensus or mutual understanding on the shape of society. With that, we would arrive at the possibility of political freedom. Question 8. What is your opinion on other aspects of election reform such as reforming money's role in politics or redistricting (particularly in the US but very interested as well concerning election reforms internationally)? In my opinion, if we each possess a vote (a) with an effect (b), then there is little opportunity for money and/or gerrymandering to fill that role. Those forces come into play only because the voter (as such) is absent from the decision process, which again is one that unfolds well before the ballots are printed. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] The Occupy Movement: A Ray of Hope -- in Politics
Dave Ketchum wrote: Write-ins can be effective. I hold up proof this year. For a supervisor race: 111 Rep - Joe - on the ballot from winning primary, though not campaigning. 346 Con - Darlene - running as Con though unable to run as Rep+Con. 540 Write-in - Bob - who gets the votes with his campaign starting 18 days before election day. We're floating the idea within Occupy of a primary voting network that might help by giving independents a leg up. It would extend not only across and beyond parties, but also across any number of voting methods and service providers: (see also the discussion tab here) https://wiki.occupy.net/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/RFC/Open_voting_network It's not easy to summarize, but maybe easier from the voter's POV: We won't endorse any single provider (monopoly) of primary voting and consensus making services. Instead we'll maintain an open voting network (counter-monopoly) in which: (1) no person is excluded from participating in the development of alternative technologies and methodologies of consensus making; (2) no toolset, platform or practice is excluded; and (3) each person may freely choose a provider, toolset and practices based on personal needs and preferences without thereby becoming isolated from participants who make different choices. None of this is especially difficult (not technically), but it's hard to imagine how it could ever get started without Occupy. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Dave Ketchum wrote: I read of too much happening, such as apparently unreasonable arrests or destruction of Occupiers' property, that Occupiers need to respond: . If Occupiers truly earned such, they need to behave more reasonably. . If there is truth in what I read, the US desperately needs better attention to public safety, including officers, and those directing them, behaving better. The Occupy Movement needs to see this as an important reason to see to such, along with the many other problems to improve on, getting improved via politics. Stephen Unger has thought seriously in the following email, plus the article referred to at its ending. I would not agree to all, but add to that: . 2012 is an important election year - now time to consider what is now doable. . Not clear whether a new party, working with the Greens or Libertarians, or working within the Republicans or Democrats, is best - studying all the possibilities is a proper beginning, and laws in various states affect what is practical. . Starting competing efforts makes sense but, when they start to compete in electing, time to drop the excess. . Write-ins can be effective. I hold up proof this year. For a supervisor race: 111 Rep - Joe - on the ballot from winning primary, though not campaigning. 346 Con - Darlene - running as Con though unable to run as Rep+Con. 540 Write-in - Bob - who gets the votes with his campaign starting 18 days before election day. On Dec 8, 2011, at 5:49 PM, Chris Telesca wrote: On 12/8/11 5:24 PM, Stephen Unger wrote: Forming a new party (or building up an existing third party, say the Greens or Libertarians) is easier because all your work is of a constructive nature, as opposed to having to devote great amounts of energy to combat or replace those currently in command. This is not made easier by the fact that the internal procedures of traditional political parties are not models of democracy. You can start up a party called the Left-Handed Back-Scratchers, but it doesn't mean you will be effective at gaining any political clout or winning office. ... Over my lifetime, I have seen efforts to make the major parties more responsive to the public fail repeatedly. In particular, liberals have been notoriously persistent in sticking with the Democratic Party. Most were convinced that their arms would whither if used to pull down any voting booth lever not labelled Democrat (only very recently have the old lever type machines been replaced). The results have been getting worse every election. Eisenhower, and even Nixon, look good compared to those now in the Democratic saddle. When an approach fails repeatedly, it makes no sense to stick with it. I am hopeful that the Occupy Movement will wake up enough people to turn things around. I hope so too - but I don't think that a third party is the way to do it. There is already so much momentum and mass behind a going-concern that you'd have to do so much work with a third-party to raise up to the same level. Given the same number of people with the will to make something work, it's always easier to take over a going concern than to start from scratch - just as in business. Steve On Wed, 7 Dec 2011, Chris
Re: [EM] hello from DLW of A New Kind of Party:long time electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
Welcome David, Richard Fobes wrote: An excellent summary of the collective view of most participants here is our recently created Declaration of Election-Method Reform Advocates. ... Mind you, most of us have yet to agree to this collective view. That doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong or anything, but it may yet prove to be! I just mention this to show that we're still, for the most part, open minded on the question. :-) -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Richard Fobes wrote: Welcome! An excellent summary of the collective view of most participants here is our recently created Declaration of Election-Method Reform Advocates. It doesn't yet have a permanent home; a temporary copy is here: http://www.votefair.org/declaration.html Your views overlap with many of ours, yet you will meet some resistance to some of your positions. The above Declaration will quickly convey which areas are which. Please ask any specific questions. Richard Fobes On 10/30/2011 6:33 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: I just joined the list. I'm a political economist turned electoral enthusiast. My views are: 1. All modern democracies are unstable mixtures of popular democracy and plutocracy. 2. Electoral Reform is meant to bolster the former. 3. There are two basic types of election rules: winner-take-all (all single-seat elections or non-proportional multi-seat) elections and winner-doesn't-take-all (proportional or quasi-proportional multi-seat) elections. We need to use both. Right now, in the US, we need most to push for more American forms of PR. 4. American forms of PR don't challenge the fact we have a two-party dominated system. They tend to have 3-5 seats. They increase proportionality and handicap the cut-throat competitive rivalry between the two major parties. They give third party dissenters more voice... 5. Most alternatives to FPTP are decent and the biases of FPTP tend to get reduced over time and place in elections. 6. I advocate for FairVote's IRV3. It's got a first-mover and marketing advantage in the US, over the infinite number of other single seat winner-take-all election rules out there. In a FPTP dominated system, there can only be one alternative to FPTP at a time locally. 6b. I think that IRV3 can be improved upon by treating the up to three ranked choices as approval votes in a first round to limit the number of candidates to three then the rankings of the three can be sorted into 10 categories and the number of votes in each category can be summarized at the precinct level. 7. Moreover, I believe that the number of political issues, their complexity, matters of character bound the rationality of voters and make choices among candidates inherently fuzzy options. So there's no cardinal or ordinal utility for any candidate out there and all effective rankings of candidates used to determine the Condorcet Candidate are ad hoc. 8. This is why I believe a lot of the debate over the best single seat election rule is unproductive. 9. What matters more is to get a better balance between the two basic types. 10. Winner-doesn't-take-all elections are preferable for more local elections that o.w. tend to be chronically non-competitive. I think that's probably enough for now. I look forward to dialogues with y'all (I lived in TX from 3-9 then moved to MN, where my father became a professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the private liberal arts college where he met my mother, Bethel University.). dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] (1) The fact of an objectively meaningless vote
Dear Fred, I've pondered your assertion that the effect of an individual vote is exactly zero for a considerable time and do not believe it is sound. Your 5 points assume that elections are static events. They're not. 1. Take the last election in which you voted, and look at its political outcome (P). Who got into office? 2. Subtract your vote from that election. 3. Recalculate the outcome without your vote (Q). 4. Look at the difference between P and Q. 5. Repeat for all the elections you ever participated in. Elections do not take place in a vacuum. Individuals are inspired to vote (or not vote) by the circumstances extant at the time of polling. You cannot subtract a vote from an election without considering the change in circumstances that caused the individual to not vote and accounting for the effect of the changed circumstances on the electorate. If the new circumstances caused an entire bloc of like-minded individuals to not vote, it would alter the election result. The only question is the extent of the alteration. It may, or may not, change the result. I think it's simpler than you suppose. In changing an experimental variable (to vote or not), science need not consider the circumstances that would have preceded such a change, because the hypothesis concerns only the circumstances that follow from it. The hypothesis is that *if* an individual vote is changed, then that change *in itself* will have no effect. The implicit qualifier in itself makes the experimental conclusion valid regardless of prior circumstances. Otherwise experimental science as a whole is called into question. The hypothesis about the vote is only about the vote, not about all the circumstances that might cause one to vote, or not to vote, or to vote in a certain way. The hypothesis of no effect is actually false under the circumstances that result in a tie breaker/maker election; but true in all others. This can be proven using actual electoral equipment if necessary, although the thought experiment alone is sufficient. I do not question the fact that the effect of a single vote is infinitesimal, but it is not zero. A single vote affects an election in the same way a single drop of sea-water affects the tides. I'm afraid it cannot have that effect, even in theory, because the effect is nullified once the fine-grained sum is rounded to a coarse-grained outcome (who gets into office). * The empirical evidence merely confirms this theory. Everything points to the fact that the vote has no effect whatsoever on the official outcome. * See end of http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/fau/fau.xht#fla I'm unclear about why you think the difference between infinitesimal and zero is significant. Perhaps your response to the questions about other sections will clarify the matter. I thought it was a premise; but it turns out the powerless vote is only an indicator that something is wrong. You see, it should hardly be possible to run an experiment like this. The effect of any given vote (and thus voter) should be incalculable and unbounded, just like all other effects of a person in the social world. Then again, it's fortunate we can measure the absolute powerlessness of individual votes so precisely. We know the sum of those votes is not powerless (quite the contrary) which allows us to conclude that *all* electoral power must exist in communications external to the electoral system itself. A design that enforces the formal isolation of voter from voter, as does ours by separating the ballot from the elector, is therefore inconsistent with its own purpose. If all power *must* be excercised in external communication networks, then the last thing we want is to erect communication barriers among voters that might exclude them from those networks, and thus exclude them from electoral power. Exactly such an exclusion appears to have resulted in the transfer of power to the mass parties in the late 19th century, and has perhaps contributed to other mass effects in the 20th century. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Proxy Direct Democracy
Dear Mike (and Kathy), Mike wrote: And a proxy needn't be a political figure, party leader, candidate, or anyone special. One's proxy could be _anyone_ whom one wants to vote for hir. (As designated for a particular issue-category, or a particular vote, or as pre-chosen default proxy). It could be a friend, family member, or any kind of public figure or advocate, etc. I see such flexibility as a step toward the more general facility of giving the elector hir own ballot to do with as s/he pleases. In that sense, proxy voting is a partial solution to the problems described here in my thesis, which I trace precisely to the lack of such a facility: http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/fau/fau.xht I do technical work with proxy voting myself for project Votorola. See the figure caption at bottom for links to the voting theory: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht As You [Kathy] suggested, you could designate a different proxy for various kinds of issues. But there could be different opinions on which issues are in which categories, unless vote issues are specifically designated by categories. For that reason, it might be necessary to designate such special proxies at the time of voting. But maybe not: Maybe, if vote issues are officially-designated by category, you could have pre-chosen proxies for different categories of votes. Of course, in addition, you could designate a special proxy (or a special ranking of proxies) for any particular vote too. We found it simpler to begin there, with the assumption that the voter would cast a separate vote on every issue. This is the general case for us. Category voting then becomes the special case; or actually cases, because we allow any number of category schemes to be layered atop the simple general system. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Mike Ossipoff wrote: Kathy-- You wrote: Why not make the idea better yet? Allow all voters to select a different representative for each issue of interest to the voter, so that one rep might be tasked to vote on environmental issues, another on education issues, and perhaps another on foreign trade treaty issues or on judicial appointments A voter could simply select a person to vote on all issues, or select separate persons for different issues. [endquote] Absolutely. I don't remember if that was in my earlier proposal, but of course it should be. One would have a pre-chosen default proxy designation, as I described, but one would also be able to designate a proxy on any particular vote. And a proxy needn't be a political figure, party leader, candidate, or anyone special. One's proxy could be _anyone_ whom one wants to vote for hir. (As designated for a particular issue-category, or a particular vote, or as pre-chosen default proxy). It could be a friend, family member, or any kind of public figure or advocate, etc. The Proxy Direct Democracy that I proposed could be voted by telephone or Internet. As I mentioned, the voter would have an anonymous voter ID number. That would make voting by telephone or website feasible. Here's one way that the voter could get that ID number: The person intending to register to vote writes a random 20 digit number on a piece of paper, and folds the paper. In the registration office, s/he drops it into a drum of other people's similarly-folded, identical-looking, voter ID number slips, and turns the drum, to obscure which paper s/he dropped in. That number now is an anonymous voter ID number. A voter can use it to vote by phone, or at a website. And, additionally, of course, the voter can designate a default proxy, for any vote in which that voter doesn't take part. As You suggested, you could designate a different proxy for various kinds of issues. But there could be different opinions on which issues are in which categories, unless vote issues are specifically designated by categories. For that reason, it might be necessary to designate such special proxies at the time of voting. But maybe not: Maybe, if vote issues are officially-designated by category, you could have pre-chosen proxies for different categories of votes. Of course, in addition, you could designate a special proxy (or a special ranking of proxies) for any particular vote too. So you can vote only on issues that interest you and that you're informed on, confident that you've designated someone else to vote on the others for you. Mike Ossipoff guess a potential problem with this is that some issues overlap and Congress would have to stop the horsetrading process of throwing dozens of unrelated things into the same bill. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] A structural fault in society owing to a design flaw in the electoral system
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. Technically it is always true I think, or at least in my terminology. The elector is technically a voter while in possession of the ballot (in the act of voting) and not at other times. The distinction is crucial to the thesis, because it can be difficult to behave like a voter and engage in social decision making without the support of a concrete ballot (abstract voting). You are speaking of an elector in my terms (one who has a right to vote) and not an actual voter. 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. I wasn't clear about this earlier, but the crucial period (for the thesis) is prior to election day. Then the electors are expected to inter-communicate and make a decision, thus behaving as voters. But the system offers no structural support for this - crucially no support for formal equality among electors - and consequently they lose all of their electoral power to the parties. Historically the loss began with the weaker majority of the electors, but it soon tipped over to everyone else. [T] Draft text: http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/fau/fau.xht [QCW] CW's steady insistence (Skype, 2011.9) that the economy has primacy over politics has led me to juxtapose (however clumsily) these two snippets of theory: * The individual labourer as such (as an artificer) being alienated from the product of her labour (artifact), is thereby disengaged from economic power and freedom. * The individual decider as such (elector cum voter) being alienated from the means and product of her decision (vote), is thereby disengaged from political power and freedom. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Juho Laatu wrote: On 22.10.2011, at 1.42, Michael Allan wrote: Here is my latest attempt at a brief summary with conclusions: [2] . . . This was a bit too difficult to comment. The meaning of separation and its impacts are not clear. (No flaws identified, mostly opinions.) I now ask you to accept these conclusions as apparent or provisional truths, provided you still see no flaws in the supporting argument. Too vague for me to be accepted as a provisional truth. The technical analysis of the methods part was the part where I had not identified any technical flaws. . . . Juho Fred Gohlke wrote: Good Morning, Michael . . . 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
[EM] (1) The fact of an objectively meaningless vote
to zero *even in theory*, except when it was exactly zero. [1] The reason is the rounding procedure that translates the vote count into the official outcome (who gets into office). In that rounding procedure, either the effect of each vote is nullified, or (once every 12,000 years or so) the effect of each is made decisive. I might be wrong, but I think the premise is strong. A friend warned me of the possibility that it might become a red herring, blinding people to the rest of the thesis, but fortunately that hasn't happened yet. You gents raise questions about other sections, and I'll reply to those separately. [1] For a more complete summary of the emprirical basis of the premise, please see this response to Juho: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2011-October/028732.html [2] http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/fau/fau.xht [3] Elsewhere, the unexpected contrast between individual electoral power (zero) and collective election power (non-zero) can be taken as another manifestation of the structural fault that extends through society. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Juho Laatu wrote: On 22.10.2011, at 1.42, Michael Allan wrote: Here is my latest attempt at a brief summary with conclusions: [2] An individual vote in a general election has no meaningful effect in the objective world, and no effect whatsoever on the political outcome of the election; whether the vote is cast or not, the outcome is the same regardless. True, if one considers only the formal output of the election and says with high probability no effect in large elections if changed. I don't agree with no effect whatsoever on the political outcome. Only the technical outcome is unlikely to change if one vote changes in large elections. Beneath this fact lies an extensive structural fault This is not a flaw, but I wouldn't say extensive structural fault but something milder. . . . - 1/N is maybe a better (although not perfect) estimate of the power that one voter holds than 0 The value 1/N appears to be erroneous. It is refuted by empirical evidence that measures the value at exactly zero. Again, the experimental method is: 1. Take the last election in which you voted, and look at its political outcome (P). Who got into office? 2. Subtract your vote from that election. 3. Recalculate the outcome without your vote (Q). 4. Look at the difference between P and Q. 5. Repeat for all the elections you ever participated in. Maybe we should make a difference between the technical analysis of the method and the real life impact of voting. Maybe terms technical outcome and political outcome could be used (although I note that you used the latter term in a different meaning few lines before this line). The first term refers to the method as a formally defined function. The latter terms may covers all aspects of the society, the impact of campaigns, impact of the numeric result of this election on the next election etc. Juho Fred Gohlke wrote: Good Morning, Michael . . . 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 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] A design flaw in the electoral system
Juho Laatu wrote: True. My vote has probably not made any difference in any of the (large) elections that I have ever participated. ... You are not really in doubt, are you? You would remember if your vote made a difference. I think I had my fair share of power (1 / number of voters). Well, if the vote makes no difference, then it has no power. Its power could not be 1/N, in any case; it is either zero (no effect) or something closer to N (decisive). But a decisive vote is exceedingly rare and you're unlikely to cast one in your lifetime. (One more possible explanation is that the politicians were at least afraid of me voting against them, and that's why they did what I wanted them to do.) Politicians won't be concerned about an individual vote, of course, because it makes no difference. I think you were generalizing here to other voters, but the argument hinges on the individual vote. That vote *ought* to have an effect, but it does not. The situation is rightly difficult to accept. Whatever political liberty you (or I) can salvage in the face of state power, it cannot come from that vote. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Juho Laatu wrote: True. My vote has probably not made any difference in any of the (large) elections that I have ever participated. But on the other hand, was that the intention of the election? Probably not. I guess the intention was to elect those alternatives that had wide support. Allowing me to change the winner (with any significant probability) would have violated the principles of democracy. If you (or I) have any political freedom in the face of state power and laws, then it cannot possibly come from voting in elections. I think I had my fair share of power (1 / number of voters). (One more possible explanation is that the politicians were at least afraid of me voting against them, and that's why they did what I wanted them to do.) Juho On 14.10.2011, at 20.39, Michael Allan wrote: Hi Juho, Yes, there are many additional factors. Already a vote without any discussions between voters can be seen as a part of a complex process. At lest the input that the voter got was complex, even if the voter did not produce any output in his environment. Also the margin of the victory will be meaningful like Andrew Myers said. ... Granted that a margin of victory has effects in the objective world, it does not follow that an individual vote also has effects. Or at least Andrew does not appear to be claiming this. ... And the voter himself could be already thinking about the next election. In order to win then, every single additional vote in this election may be important. Again, that does not seem to follow. We are still confronted with a measurable effect of zero, as empirical science can show: 1. Take the last election in which you voted, and look at its outcome (P). Who got into office? 2. Subtract your vote from that election. 3. Recalculate the outcome without your vote (Q). 4. Look at the difference between P and Q. 5. Repeat for all the elections you ever participated in. Your vote never made a difference. My vote never made a differerence. Others: did your vote ever make a difference? If you (or I) have any political freedom in the face of state power and laws, then it cannot possibly come from voting in elections. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Juho Laatu wrote: On 7.10.2011, at 12.19, Michael Allan wrote: Imagine one person is nodding in agreement to a proposal, while another is shaking her head. We could ask, What effect did this voter *as such* have on the decision that was reached, or anything that followed from it? In most cases, the answer would be incalculable, tied up in a web of cause and effect that plays out endlessly. We might say it was boundless, or that it hovered somewhere between zero and infinity. In further reply to Juho, I would offer this indeterminacy as an alternative to the apparent dilemma of no effect vs. decisive effect. Yes, there are many additional factors. Already a vote without any discussions between voters can be seen as a part of a complex process. At lest the input that the voter got was complex, even if the voter did not produce any output in his environment. Also the margin of the victory will be meaningful like Andrew Myers said. And the voter himself could be already thinking about the next election. In order to win then, every single additional vote in this election may be important. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] A design flaw in the electoral system
Hi Juho, Yes, there are many additional factors. Already a vote without any discussions between voters can be seen as a part of a complex process. At lest the input that the voter got was complex, even if the voter did not produce any output in his environment. Also the margin of the victory will be meaningful like Andrew Myers said. ... Granted that a margin of victory has effects in the objective world, it does not follow that an individual vote also has effects. Or at least Andrew does not appear to be claiming this. ... And the voter himself could be already thinking about the next election. In order to win then, every single additional vote in this election may be important. Again, that does not seem to follow. We are still confronted with a measurable effect of zero, as empirical science can show: 1. Take the last election in which you voted, and look at its outcome (P). Who got into office? 2. Subtract your vote from that election. 3. Recalculate the outcome without your vote (Q). 4. Look at the difference between P and Q. 5. Repeat for all the elections you ever participated in. Your vote never made a difference. My vote never made a differerence. Others: did your vote ever make a difference? If you (or I) have any political freedom in the face of state power and laws, then it cannot possibly come from voting in elections. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Juho Laatu wrote: On 7.10.2011, at 12.19, Michael Allan wrote: Imagine one person is nodding in agreement to a proposal, while another is shaking her head. We could ask, What effect did this voter *as such* have on the decision that was reached, or anything that followed from it? In most cases, the answer would be incalculable, tied up in a web of cause and effect that plays out endlessly. We might say it was boundless, or that it hovered somewhere between zero and infinity. In further reply to Juho, I would offer this indeterminacy as an alternative to the apparent dilemma of no effect vs. decisive effect. Yes, there are many additional factors. Already a vote without any discussions between voters can be seen as a part of a complex process. At lest the input that the voter got was complex, even if the voter did not produce any output in his environment. Also the margin of the victory will be meaningful like Andrew Myers said. And the voter himself could be already thinking about the next election. In order to win then, every single additional vote in this election may be important. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] A design flaw in the electoral system
Dear Juho and Fred, Your vote never made a difference. Most people feel uncomfortable or perplexed in this knowledge, and I think the feeling indicates that something's wrong. Juho Laatu wrote: I'm not sure that most people feel uncomfortable with this. Many have learned to live as part of the surrounding society, and they don't expect their vote to be the one that should decide between two alternatives. I certainly never expected my own vote to be decisive in an election. But knowing it has *no* effect on the outcome? This is unexpected and makes me uneasy. (more below) Fred Gohlke wrote: re: I say that electors are physically separated from their ballots ... This is the point I don't understand. What do you mean by physically separated from their ballots? I mean the ballot goes in the ballot box and the elector walks away without it. When there are candidates for an office and a voter expresses a preference by voting for one of them, how could the voter not be physically separated from the ballot - and why is it important? The importance lies in being able to trace the structural fault and other societal failures back to this physical separation. Here's an updated graph: http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/fau/fau.xht#REL Rounding procedure | (a) | |Objectively + meaningless vote + | | (e) | V (b) |(ab) Disconnect between elect-Structural fault between -or and ballot in flawed -- person and vote in electoral procedure society | | (f) V V (c) Flawed model of social Power vacuum world in count engine| | V (d) (g) 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, ab) appear to establish an indirect relation (h) between a formal failure of technical design and actual failures in society. Leaving aside the obvious physical relation (ab), consider how the separation is causing (e) the meaningless vote. ... 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 (e) be contributing to that meaninglessness; in fact, by separating the elector from the ballot and the voter from the voter, it closes off all possible avenues for the voter *as such* to overcome (a) the rounding procedure at election's end. This seals the vote's formal fate as a numerical nullity. [RP] How could a voter not be separated from the ballot? Consider how an informal process of decision plays out in a small group. The means of assent here is a semi-formal signal - an aye or nod of the head - that is equivalent to the ballot, but inseparable from the person. Consider the role played by such signals and the persons who *as signallers* remain in control of them. Imagine one person is nodding in agreement to a proposal, while another is shaking her head. Observe how the other participants respond to these signals, and the level of energy they put into trying to understand each other, and to helping the group as a whole reach a decision. These observations would go some way to answering your question, because the participant in such an informal decision group (or even a formal triad) is effectively an elector in possession and control of his/her ballot. Call him a voter. We could ask, What effect did this voter *as such* have on the decision that was reached, or anything that followed from it? In most cases, the answer would be incalculable, tied up in a web of cause and effect that plays out endlessly. We might say it was boundless, or that it hovered somewhere between zero and infinity. In further reply to Juho, I would offer this indeterminacy as an alternative to the apparent dilemma of no effect vs. decisive effect. [RP] Once separated from the voter, the effect of the individual vote is nullified by the rounding procedure that translates a fine-grained sum into a coarse-grained outcome (who gets into office). In that rounding, the effect of the fine grain is lost (originally discussed with TE, Skype 2011.10.1-3). -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods
Re: [EM] A design flaw in the electoral system
James, Juho and Fred, Thanks very much for looking at the argument. 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. James Gilmour wrote: These statements worry me - surely they contain a logical flaw? If these statements were true and every elector responded rationally, no-one would ever vote. Then the outcome would not be the same. It's an interesting distinction, and it might help in answering a question I have about how people respond to this information (more on that below). But here I think you're looking at the effect of knowing (if indeed it is true) that a vote has no effect, whereas I'm looking at the effect of that vote itself. Maybe the easiest way to understand it is in retrospect, by looking at past votes that you cast. I make a statement concerning each of those votes and its actual effect in the objective world. Juho Laatu wrote: I think it is incorrect or at least misleading to say that individual votes do not have any influence. They do, as a group. If it had no bearing on the argument, then I might agree it's misleading to say it. But it's actually the premise of the argument. Yesterday I wrote to another correspondent: A more direct answer [how is it possible?] is in the rounding procedure that translates a fine-grained sum into a coarse-grained outcome (who gets into office). In that rounding, the effect of the fine grain is lost. ... Or, we might stand on empirical grounds and state: the measureable effect of an individual vote on the outcome is zero. Which raises another question, Why are people surprised to learn this? James's observation that no-one would ever vote if they accepted the truth of it might figure into the answer. But I think the fact itself is indisputable, a matter of empirical science. A simple thought experiment will demonstrate this: 1. Take the last election in which you voted, and look at its outcome (P). 2. Subtract your vote from that election. 3. Recalculate the outcome without your vote (Q). 4. Look at the difference between P and Q. 5. Repeat for all the elections you ever participated in. Your vote never made a difference. Most people feel uncomfortable or perplexed in this knowledge, and I think the feeling indicates that something's wrong. Fred Gohlke wrote: I am not entirely clear on the flow of logic in your abstract, but I get the sense that you're saying voters should be able to cast their vote and have it, too ... Voters are not pieces of cake. The act of voting does not remove their needs and desires from the political system. They should be able to continue to influence the political process after they've voted. I say that electors are physically separated from their ballots, and I explain why this procedure is necessarily a design flaw. I trace other flaws, faults and failures back to this (including the meaningless vote). But I say nothing about how to deal with the situation. I think we lack an understanding of the overall problem, so I'm just trying to figure it out. If I am offered options that affect my life, options that I've had no voice in defining, the ability to choose one of them is neither free nor democratic. On the contrary, it expresses my status as a subject of those who defined the options. The right to vote in such circumstances is a farce. Yet, I believe this too can be traced to the design flaw in the electoral system. It's surprising a single flaw could propagate so many failures, in such different forms, but it appears to be the case. This draft section (design flaw) dealt only with the flaw itself, and how it renders the results of the election technically invalid. Other sections (not yet drafted) will attempt to uncover the paths by which the design flaw propagates through society at large. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ James Gilmour wrote: Michael Allan Sent: Monday, October 03, 2011 9:31 AM 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. These statements worry me - surely they contain a logical flaw? If these statements were true and every elector responded rationally, no-one would ever vote. Then the outcome would not be the same. I am not into logic, but I suspect the flaw is in some disconnection between the individual and the aggregate. When A with 100 votes wins over B with 99 votes, we cannot say which of the 100 individual votes for A was the winning vote, but it is clear that is any one of those 100 votes had not been for A, then A would not have won. At best, if one A-voter had stayed at home, there would have been a tie. If one of the A-voters had voted for B instead, the outcome would have been very different. Or am
[EM] A design flaw in the electoral system
- [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
Re: [EM] Deliberative polling
Speaking of which, he just posted this: http://lists.thataway.org/scripts/wa-THATAWAY.exe?A1=ind1109BL=NCDD-DISCUSSION#4 - Forwarded message from James Fishkin jfish...@stanford.edu - From: James Fishkin jfish...@stanford.edu Subject: video from broadcast about Ca citizen deliberations now available online To: ncdd-discuss...@lists.thataway.org Dear all: the Judy Woodruff moderated special is now online with sections on four topics for citizen deliberation: reforming the initiative reforming the legislature reforming state/local relations tax and fiscal issues. In each case, there were initiative proposals that were strongly endorsed by the deliberating microcosm. Some of these are likely to make it to the ballot next year. See: http://cdd.stanford.edu/mm/2011/ca-state-of-mind/ When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation James Fishkin Available now through all good bookshops, or direct from Oxford University Press at: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199572106.do (UK) Or http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/PoliticalTheory/?view=usaci=9780199572106 (USA) - End forwarded message - Michael Allan wrote: James Fishkin often invites discussion of his deliberative polls in the NCDD list. Here, on the California poll, for example: http://lists.thataway.org/scripts/wa-THATAWAY.exe?A1=ind1107CL=NCDD-DISCUSSION#1 -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Jameson Quinn wrote: This is an interesting attempt. I think that most of us would support more of this kind of thing. http://cdd.stanford.edu/polls/ Aside from the interest of the methodology, people here might be interested in the content. The California deliberative pollhttp://cdd.stanford.edu/polls/california/had two questions of interest: Allow voters to rank the candidates in order of preference, so that the winner can be decided without a second election. (61% support before, 58% after) Elect more than one representative from each Assembly and Senate district with the winners receiving seats proportional to votes (48% support before, 49% after) I'm personally disappointed that support did not significantly increase on either question. I suspect that there was not a lot of discussion of these issues. Still, it is interesting to see the raw results and demographic breakdowns on these questions. Jameson Quinn Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Length of declaration and prospects for consensus
Warren Smith wrote: It's very hard to get people to sign statements, and the difficulty increases with the length. My own experience points to a similar conclusion. I once formulated a laconic rule of thumb (ten words per signature/vote) and a process of consensus by erasure. http://mail.zelea.com/list/votorola/2011-May/001068.html We could always try again. The initial focus should be less on building up a text and more on uncovering agreement over the content. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Warren Smith wrote: this declaration is suffering from exactly what everybody most-complains about re the rangevoting.org website. I.e. it tried to cover everything and got large. In fact, enormous. That for a website is a flaw that is not necessarily an insurmountable obstacle since one can put short summary pages (or try...) and use of lots of hyperlinks, so it isn't just a flat document, it's easier to get to information. But for a consensus statement it is a major problem since (a) nobody is going to sign it and (b) nobody is going to read it. Well, nobody is an exaggeration. But not by much. This statement (4328 words) is now over 3 times the length of the USA's Declaration of Independence (1315 words) and also longer than the entire USA constitution (as un-amended) at 4318 words. Have you seen my attempt to study what election experts and/or Joe Public actually agree on? The total amount of true consensus out there, is extremely small. So you could have an extremely short statement, if you wished to summarize what is the current consensus. If you have the more ambitious goal of creating consensus by actually changing minds... well, I doubt you can do it with one single document. It's very hard to get people to sign statements, and the difficulty increases with the length. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Purpose of Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts
Fred Gohlke wrote: I think it's important for people proposing Electoral Methods to know (and agree upon) the prize they seek - and not lose sight of it. I fear I've failed to make that point. I have no problem with the 'Declaration'. I simply fear the purpose of reforming electoral methods is lost in the verbiage engulfing the reforms. ... Richard Fobes wrote: I don't know what that [last] sentence means. Fred is saying that the declaration does not state its purpose in terms of an ultimate goal, one that the non-expert reader might relate to and orient by. He was wondering if you think the goal is too lofty, as some think Heaven is. He quoted Bunyan: John Bunyan. The heavenly footman; or, a description of the man that gets to Heaven; together with the way he runs in, the marks he goes by; also, some directions how to run so as to obtain. 1698. The declaration speaks only of the technical means of electoral reform, the way, marks and directions. Fred is saying that the reader cannot see through this technical language to the unwritten goal, which is therefore lost to sight. Where the end is obscure, it is hard to judge the means and know that each step recommended ... is a move toward greater democracy. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Richard Fobes wrote: On 9/4/2011 1:26 PM, Fred Gohlke wrote: ... I'd like to know that each step recommended on the Electoral Methods site is a move toward greater democracy, but I'm not sure others agree. There seems to be greater interest in solidifying the role of political parties in the electoral infrastructure than in improving public participation in the political process. ... The Declaration loosens, rather than tightens, the grip that political parties now have on politics. Completely releasing that grip comes later. (One step at a time...) I agree that aspiring to lofty goals is, for lack of a better way to say it, a good goal. It's what I've always tried to do. As for promoting direct public participation in the political process, first we have to develop election-method tools that support such participation. I've done a prototype of an early kind of such a tool at www.NegotiationTool.com, although first the approach needs to be learned in smaller groups before it can be scaled up to reach the long-term goal of direct, citizen-based participation in government. Surely that's a lofty goal. ... I simply fear the purpose of reforming electoral methods is lost in the verbiage engulfing the reforms. ... I don't know what that sentence means. ... However much I'd like to see movement toward more democratic electoral systems, I recognize that progress must be slow and incremental. ... I disagree. We don't have to move slowly. And the Declaration will dramatically speed up movement toward more democratic electoral systems. Speeding things up is what will enable us to sooner reach our shared lofty goal of eventual direct-participation democracy -- without the currently necessary evil of political parties. We agree that we need to take one step at a time, yet I see no reason that we have to take those steps sssooo ssslllooowwwlllyyy. This is the year 2011 and we're still using plurality voting in U.S. elections? Richard Fobes On 9/4/2011 1:26 PM, Fred Gohlke wrote: Good Afternoon, Richard I absolutely agree - we must crawl before we can walk. However, since we are not babies, perhaps our position is more analogous to wriggling out of a cesspool. To do that, it's best to have an idea of where we want to go so we don't flounder around in it longer than necessary. In thinking about how to respond to your note, I kept coming back to a thought that seemed important, so I looked it up: Keep thine eye upon the prize; be sure that thy eyes be continually upon the profit thou art like to get. The reason why men are so apt to faint in their race for heaven, it lieth chiefly in either of these two things: 1. They do not seriously consider the worth of the prize; or else if they do, they are afraid it is too good for them; ... 2. And do not let the thoughts of the rareness of the place make thee say in thy heart, This is too good for me; ... John Bunyan, 1698 I was surprised to learn this thought's religious overtones (I would have guessed John Bunyan was Paul Bunyan's dad), so I must beg the indulgence of those whose minds close at the first hint of religiosity. The quality of an idea should be independent of its source. I must have thought this one worthy, for I kept it in the back of my mind long after I lost my awe of religion. I think it's important for people proposing Electoral Methods to know (and agree upon) the prize they seek - and not lose sight of it. I fear I've failed to make that point. I have no problem with the 'Declaration'. I simply fear
[EM] The meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
Kristofer, Fred and Jameson, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: This can also be used to validate Warren's proof. Say that we have one set of ballots X_a, where A is the unique winner, and another set of ballots X_b, where A is not the unique winner. Then by permuting X_a into X_b one vote at a time, there will be a set of adjacent ballot sets (differing only by a single vote). Call these X_a', and X_a'', where X_a' has A as the unique winner, but X_a'' does not. Then if there was an election, and the submitted ballots just happened to form X_a', then the alteration or addition of a single ballot could turn X_a' into X_a'', and then that would prove that a single ballot could alter the outcome. I think I see the intent of Warren's proof. This also generalizes on the tie-breaking situation proposed by Dave Ketchum. I agree this is correct. You might say that these voting situations are very rare indeed, so that a single vote *most of the time* does not affect the outcome. However, most of the time is not the same thing as always. This suggests that the critique in regard to the meaning of a vote must be a matter of probabilities, and not absolutes. I try to restate it in a more correct form: It is probable that the course and outcome of the election will affect the voter, yet improbable that the voter will affect the course and outcome of the election. This imbalance amounts to a fault in the electoral method, because the individual ought not to be subject to a power over which she (or he) has no corresponding influence. This fault bears upon the human rights of the individual and the moral legitimacy of state power. Fred Gohlke wrote: I believe (and I think Michael shares this view) an electoral method that embodies the concept of the former, giving every member of the electorate an opportunity to participate in the electoral process to the full extent of their desire and ability, is possible, practical and necessary. Jameson Quinn replied: ... I agree. But I do not think that you can thereby conclude that any method which does not reach all those goals is thereby useless. In fact, I think that such imperfect methods are necessary stepping stones to your vision. I agree too, it's necessary that we reach that goal. I also agree that imperfections can be useful as stepping stones. Consider a novel interpretation of this in the situation of a mainstream political party: (a) The party has a maximum of freedom and influence in the election of state officials without infringing on the equal freedom of other parties. (b) The party has a maximum of freedom and influence in the promulgation of state laws, again without infringing on the equal freedom of other parties. (c) The political power and laws of the state that bear upon the party are legitimized in the eyes of the party by corresponding political freedoms (a, b). Insofar as the sovereignty of the state depends upon the loyalty of the party, that sovereignty is secure. (d) The party employs a primary electoral method and system that has decisive effect within its scope. Where the winner of the general election is a party member, that member was previously the winner of the primary. (e) The political freedoms of the party (a, b) are enabled by the decisiveness of the primary electoral method (d), without which the party would have none of those freedoms. (f) The party chooses its own primary electoral method independently of other parties' choices. In freely and independently making this choice, the party is the author of its own liberty (a, b, d, e). The individual has the same goal. To reach this goal, it would be sufficient to follow in the footsteps of the party. Replace party by individual in the statements above, and then identify what is needed to make each statement true for the individual as it is true for the party. * The crucial thing to note is that (f) requires all electoral methods to be treated equally; the political liberty of the individual depends on the technical liberty of the experts who design, deploy and administer those electoral methods. Where a method is discovered to be imperfect, the experts need not petition or agitate in order to correct the problem; they need only deploy the solution. * Maybe the toughest thing is to reconcile the decisiveness of the primary electoral method (d) with the freedom of the individual to choose her own method (f). Thomas von der Elbe's invention of vote mirroring offers one possible solution. It is based on the translation of votes, a practice that depends upon a detailed knowledge of the differences among the various electoral methods. See: Vote mirroring as a counter-monopoly measure. http://listserv.aoir.org/pipermail/air-l-aoir.org/2011-July/024104.html -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1
Re: [EM] Deliberative polling
James Fishkin often invites discussion of his deliberative polls in the NCDD list. Here, on the California poll, for example: http://lists.thataway.org/scripts/wa-THATAWAY.exe?A1=ind1107CL=NCDD-DISCUSSION#1 -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Jameson Quinn wrote: This is an interesting attempt. I think that most of us would support more of this kind of thing. http://cdd.stanford.edu/polls/ Aside from the interest of the methodology, people here might be interested in the content. The California deliberative pollhttp://cdd.stanford.edu/polls/california/had two questions of interest: Allow voters to rank the candidates in order of preference, so that the winner can be decided without a second election. (61% support before, 58% after) Elect more than one representative from each Assembly and Senate district with the winners receiving seats proportional to votes (48% support before, 49% after) I'm personally disappointed that support did not significantly increase on either question. I suspect that there was not a lot of discussion of these issues. Still, it is interesting to see the raw results and demographic breakdowns on these questions. Jameson Quinn Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] The meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
. The social contract, or principles of political right. 1762. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/rousseau/jean_jacques/r864s/book1.html -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] The meaning of this discussion (or lack thereof)
matt welland wrote: Ah, yes I can see the error. Some poor and ambiguous English on my part. I intended to group the irrelevant and pointless and apply it to the word discuss. Sorry about that. I guess I understood that, no need to apologize. The meaning of an individual vote is mostly irrelevant and pointless to discuss. ... I still think you are wrong, and I put a question to you fair and square: Is it your intention to imply that the individual vote is irrelevant? Is that what you think, or not? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ matt welland wrote: On Mon, 2011-08-29 at 04:28 -0400, Michael Allan wrote: matt welland wrote: I did not say that a vote has little meaning, I said that it is meaningless to discuss the individual vote! Those are two vastly different things. Well, I think what you said is wrong. Here is the original version: The meaning of an individual vote is mostly irrelevant and pointless to discuss. ... This implies that the individual vote itself is irrelevant. I wish to clarify your intention on that point: are you saying that the individual vote is irrelevant Ah, yes I can see the error. Some poor and ambiguous English on my part. I intended to group the irrelevant and pointless and apply it to the word discuss. Sorry about that. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
Matt and Dave, Matt Welland wrote: The meaning of an individual vote is mostly irrelevant and pointless to discuss. ... The individual vote itself is irrelevant? We know that the vote is the formal expression of what a person thinks in regard to an electoral issue. Do you mean: (a) What the person thinks is irrelevant in reality? Or, (b) What the person thinks is irrelevant to the election method? ... If a barge can carry 10 tons of sand then of course at any point in time while loading the barge no single grain of sand matters ... (But an election is not a barge and a voter is not a grain of sand to be shipped around in bulk, or otherwise manipulated. A voter is a person, and that makes all the difference.) ... but will *you* get on that barge for a 300 mile journey across lake Superior if it is loaded with 10.1 tons of sand? Probably not. Votes in any election with millions of voters are like this, individually irrelevant, but very meaningful as an aggregate. If there are ten thousand people who share your values and will vote as you vote then together you have a shot at influencing the outcome of the election with 20 thousand voters. The election method cannot tell you, there are ten thousand people who share your values and will vote as you vote. The election method exposes no vote dispositions until after the election. By then it is woefully late for any attempt at mutual understanding, or rational reflection. ... An individual's vote can have no useful effect on the outcome of the election, or on anything else in the objective world. Again it follows: (a) What the individual voter thinks is of no importance; or (b) The election method is flawed. Which of these statements is true? I think it must be (b). Dave Ketchum wrote: Agreed that a is not true though, as you point out, one voter, alone, changing a vote cannot be certain of changing the results. To be sure, the point is stronger: the voter can be certain of having no effect on the results whatsoever. I do not see you proving that b is true. Flawed requires the method failing to provide the results it promises. Well, an election method rarely makes explicit promises. We can only judge by people's expectations of it. Your's for instance. You had the expectation that an individual voter might have some influence over the outcome of the election, at least under certain conditions. Maybe you still do? (You gave examples, but I don't understand the jargon.) Warren Smith and Fred Gohlke had similar expectations. Warren began with the hope of attaching some meaning to an individual vote based on its contribution to the outcome. That turns out to be impossible because the contribution is zero. You, Warren and Fred are all experts in one capacity or another, yet each of you had expectations of the election method that it could not meet. What about the expectations of the voter? Suppose we explained the alternatives to her (or him): (a) What you think is of no importance; or (b) The election method is flawed. She's going to pick (b). She expects her vote to matter in some small way. She expects it to *possibly* make a difference. These are reasonable expectations, and I think any election method that fails to meet them is flawed. Further, the flaw is deep and extensive. It may be working to systematically distort the results, even to the point of electing candidates who could not otherwise be elected. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Dave Ketchum wrote: On Aug 27, 2011, at 9:23 PM, Michael Allan wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: Conditions surrounding elections vary but, picking on a simple example, suppose that, without your vote, there are exactly nR and nD votes. If that is the total vote you get to decide the election by creating a majority with your vote. What do nR and nD stand for? ANY topic for which voters can choose among two goals. Or, suppose a count of nPoor, 1Fair, and nGood and thus Fair being the median before you and a twin vote. If such twins vote Poor, that and total count go up by 2, median goes up by 1 and is now Poor. If such twins vote Good, that and total count go up by 2, median goes up by 1 and is now Good. This example speaks of two votes, but the rules grant me only one. I am interested in the effects of that vote, and any meaning we can derive from them. I say there is none. Ok, so you vote alone. To work with that, whenever median is not an integer, subtract .5 to make it an integer. If you vote Poor, that and total count go up by 1, median is unchanged and is now Poor. If you vote Good, that and total count go up by 1, median is unchanged and remains Fair. Note that single voters get no useful power in an election for governor, but a majority voting together do have the power (by combining their votes) to decide the election. I
[EM] The meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
Matt, Dave and Fred, The meaning of an individual vote is mostly irrelevant ... The individual vote itself is irrelevant? We know that the vote is the formal expression of what a person thinks in regard to an electoral issue. Do you mean: (a) What the person thinks is irrelevant in reality? Or, (b) What the person thinks is irrelevant to the election method? Matt Welland wrote: (c) Discussing the meaning of an individual vote is mostly pointless I can understand why you might want to dodge the question. You've taken a position that is difficult to defend. The election method cannot tell you, there are ten thousand people who share your values and will vote as you vote ... Here in the US we have these things called polls which happen periodically prior to the real election. ... I know. Stuff happens outside of the election and beyond the reach of the formal method, even (sometimes) unexpected stuff that the original designers had no experience or understanding of. Maybe later we can say something about these. For now, if you agree, let's return to the topic and look at the meaning of a vote (or lack thereof). You claim that the vote has little meaning, and I claim it has none at all. In either case, I think we can show that the election method is consequently flawed. Once we recognize the flaw and understand its nature, then we can attempt to trace its consequences, including the work of the polsters. To be sure, the point is stronger: the voter can be certain of having no effect on the results whatsoever. Dave Ketchum wrote: NOT true, for the vote, without the voter's vote, could be a tie - and the voter's vote mattering. That notion of effect has several drawbacks: * All votes have exactly the same effect, not only the voter's. Each can cancel the other, even by ommission. * The effect is small, well below the margin of error for the count. * The effect is rare, occuring once every 10,000 years or so. We cannot offer this explanation to the voter, especially in regard to the meaning of her (or his) participation. She will be thinking, This election method is an insult to me. Fred Gohlke wrote: Good Afternoon, Michael re: Warren Smith and Fred Gohlke had similar expectations. I had no expectation that anyone's vote would be worth a tinker's dam. If anything I wrote gave a different impression, I erred and I apologize for it. Greetings Fred, Well, I was thinking of where you wrote in reply to Warren's proof, 'Since, as stated, A single ballot can change the outcome of an election.', and then followed up with observations on the meaning of the ballot from the voter's perspective. You concluded: If the object of changing the electoral method is to build a more just and democratic government, the proposed methods must give the people a way to influence the choice of candidates and the issues on which they vote. I agree. I believe that every voter has that right, but is forever cheated of it precisely because (this is my argument) the election method grants no electoral power whatsoever to the voter, but instead renders his or her vote entirely meaningless in any practical sense. As you say, it is not worth a tinker's dam. But if we (this is my hope) can cogently demonstrate this failing to the experts in this list, especially in terms of the voting mechanisms they understand so well, then they will be more open to drawing the larger conclusions that seem so obvious to you and me, and I daresay others in this list. To be sure, I should mention to others that election methods in which an individual vote is meaningful do exist. Fred has invented one of them, namely Practical Democracy. Abd ul-Rahman Lomax often touts another, namely Delegable Proxy (which I also work with). Even the more traditional forms of ballot, like those of Range or Approval, can be made meaningful by tweaking the method. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
Warren Smith wrote: --no. A single ballot can change the outcome of an election. This is true in any election method which is capable of having at least two outcomes. Proof: simply change ballots one by one until the outcome changes. At the moment it changes, that single ballot changed an election outcome. QED. Your proof is flawed, of course. It assumes the election method would allow one to change ballots one by one until the outcome changes. Such gross manipulations are not permitted by the rules of any election method. The rules grant to the voter a single vote, and that is all. The challenge is to describe how the use of that vote could affect the outcome of the election, or of anything else in the objective world. How exactly could it? You know that it cannot. Earlier you wrote, 'The only genuinely meaningful thing is who won the election?' I agree that matters. But if the election method grants to the individual voter no influence over that outcome, then either: a) What the voter thinks is of no importance; or b) The election method is flawed. We cannot dismiss both of these. One of them must be true. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Warren Smith wrote: Michael Allan: The effect however of a single ballot is exactly zero. It cannot change the outcome of the election, or anything else in the objective world. --no. A single ballot can change the outcome of an election. This is true in any election method which is capable of having at least two outcomes. Proof: simply change ballots one by one until the outcome changes. At the moment it changes, that single ballot changed an election outcome. QED. Also, even in elections which can only be changed by changing a set of (more than one) ballot, ballots still derive meaning from that. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org -- add your endorsement (by clicking endorse as 1st step) and math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Michael Allan wrote: Warren Smith wrote: Kenneth Arrow has worried that range-voting-type score votes might have no or unclear-to-Arrow meaning. In contrast, he considers rank-ordering-style votes to have a clear meaning. Nic Tideman has also expressed similar worries in email, but now about the lack of meaning of an approval-style vote. In contrast, I think Tideman regards a plurality-style name one candidate then shut up vote as having a clear meaning. E.g. what does a score of 6.5 mean, as opposed to a score of 6.1, on some ballot? But the Bayesian view is: whether or not Arrow or Tideman or somebody has a more-or-less muddled mental notion of the meaning of a ballot, is irrelevant. The only genuinely meaningful thing is who won the election? All meaning of any ballot therefore derives purely from the rules for mathematically obtaining the election-winner from the ballots. The effect however of a single ballot is exactly zero. It cannot change the outcome of the election, or anything else in the objective world. We might attach such meaning to the voting system as a whole, but not to the individual vote. On the effects of an individual vote, see also: How to fix the flawed Nash equilibrium concept for voting-theory purposes: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2010-April/thread.html#25803 http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2010-April/thread.html#25840 ... All this analysis really tells us is the Bayesian view is correct. And certainly that any dismissal of range- or approval-style voting on the grounds of their claimed inherent lack of meaning, is hogwash. From the vantage of the voter, however, the critique retains force. It impacts not only range/approval, but also the single bullet and ranked ballot. No such ballot has any effect on the election and its meaning is therefore called into question. Most of an individual's actions in life have *some* possibility of effect and we can attach meaning to this. I can take responsibility for my actions, for example, by weighing the consequences. I can discuss the rights and wrongs of the matter with others. But not for voting. The voting system guarantees that my vote will have no effect and I would look rather foolish to suppose otherwise. This presents a serious problem. Do you agree? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
But not for voting. The voting system guarantees that my vote will have no effect and I would look rather foolish to suppose otherwise. This presents a serious problem. Do you agree? Dave Ketchum wrote: TRULY, this demonstrates lack of understanding of cause and effect. IF the flask capacity is 32 oz then pouring in 1 oz will: . Do nothing above filling if the flask starts with less than 31 oz. . Cause overflow if flask already full. In voting there is often a limit at which time one more would have an effect. If the act were pouring sodas into the Atlantic the limit would be far away. Please relate this to an election. Take an election for a US state governor, for example. Suppose I am eligible to vote. I say my vote cannot possibly affect the outcome of the election. You say it can, under certain conditions. Under what conditions exactly? Note my critique of Warren's proof in the other sub-thread: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2011-August/028266.html -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Dave Ketchum wrote: A SAD weakness about what is being said. On Aug 24, 2011, at 12:55 PM, Fred Gohlke wrote: Michael Allan wrote: But not for voting. The voting system guarantees that my vote will have no effect and I would look rather foolish to suppose otherwise. This presents a serious problem. Do you agree? TRULY, this demonstrates lack of understanding of cause and effect. IF the flask capacity is 32 oz then pouring in 1 oz will: . Do nothing above filling if the flask starts with less than 31 oz. . Cause overflow if flask already full. In voting there is often a limit at which time one more would have an effect. If the act were pouring sodas into the Atlantic the limit would be far away. To which Warren Smith responded: --no. A single ballot can change the outcome of an election. This is true in any election method which is capable of having at least two outcomes. Proof: simply change ballots one by one until the outcome changes. At the moment it changes, that single ballot changed an election outcome. QED. BUT there could be many previous ballots of which none made any change. Since, as stated, A single ballot can change the outcome of an election. and This is true in any election method which is capable of having at least two outcomes., why would a voter prefer a new electoral method over the existing plurality method? From the voter's perspective, (s)he is already familiar with plurality, so , if the new method produces the same result, why change? Truly no reason PROVIDED the new method provides the same result, given the same input. Cui bono? Obviously, not the voter. When considering the 'meaning' of a vote, it is more important to examine the question of what the voter is voting for or against. Voting, of the type used in plurality contests, is profoundly undemocratic, not because of the vote-counting method, but because the people can only vote for or against candidates and issues chosen by those who control the political parties - the people Robert Michels' described as oligarchs. If the object of changing the electoral method is to build a more just and democratic government, the proposed methods must give the people a way to influence the choice of candidates and the issues on which they vote. Fred Gohlke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
Dave Ketchum wrote: Conditions surrounding elections vary but, picking on a simple example, suppose that, without your vote, there are exactly nR and nD votes. If that is the total vote you get to decide the election by creating a majority with your vote. What do nR and nD stand for? Or, suppose a count of nPoor, 1Fair, and nGood and thus Fair being the median before you and a twin vote. If such twins vote Poor, that and total count go up by 2, median goes up by 1 and is now Poor. If such twins vote Good, that and total count go up by 2, median goes up by 1 and is now Good. This example speaks of two votes, but the rules grant me only one. I am interested in the effects of that vote, and any meaning we can derive from them. I say there is none. Note that single voters get no useful power in an election for governor, but a majority voting together do have the power (by combining their votes) to decide the election. I believe that is true for all elections that are conducted by conventional methods, regardless of the ballot used - Plurality, Range, Condorcet or Approval. An individual's vote can have no useful effect on the outcome of the election, or on anything else in the objective world. Again it follows: (a) What the individual voter thinks is of no importance; or (b) The election method is flawed. Which of these statements is true? I think it must be (b). -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ On Aug 27, 2011, at 4:22 PM, Michael Allan wrote: But not for voting. The voting system guarantees that my vote will have no effect and I would look rather foolish to suppose otherwise. This presents a serious problem. Do you agree? Dave Ketchum wrote: TRULY, this demonstrates lack of understanding of cause and effect. IF the flask capacity is 32 oz then pouring in 1 oz will: . Do nothing above filling if the flask starts with less than 31 oz. . Cause overflow if flask already full. In voting there is often a limit at which time one more would have an effect. If the act were pouring sodas into the Atlantic the limit would be far away. Please relate this to an election. Take an election for a US state governor, for example. Suppose I am eligible to vote. I say my vote cannot possibly affect the outcome of the election. You say it can, under certain conditions. Under what conditions exactly? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
Warren Smith wrote: Kenneth Arrow has worried that range-voting-type score votes might have no or unclear-to-Arrow meaning. In contrast, he considers rank-ordering-style votes to have a clear meaning. Nic Tideman has also expressed similar worries in email, but now about the lack of meaning of an approval-style vote. In contrast, I think Tideman regards a plurality-style name one candidate then shut up vote as having a clear meaning. E.g. what does a score of 6.5 mean, as opposed to a score of 6.1, on some ballot? ... But the Bayesian view is: whether or not Arrow or Tideman or somebody has a more-or-less muddled mental notion of the meaning of a ballot, is irrelevant. The only genuinely meaningful thing is who won the election? All meaning of any ballot therefore derives purely from the rules for mathematically obtaining the election-winner from the ballots. The effect however of a single ballot is exactly zero. It cannot change the outcome of the election, or anything else in the objective world. We might attach such meaning to the voting system as a whole, but not to the individual vote. On the effects of an individual vote, see also: How to fix the flawed Nash equilibrium concept for voting-theory purposes: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2010-April/thread.html#25803 http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2010-April/thread.html#25840 ... All this analysis really tells us is the Bayesian view is correct. And certainly that any dismissal of range- or approval-style voting on the grounds of their claimed inherent lack of meaning, is hogwash. From the vantage of the voter, however, the critique retains force. It impacts not only range/approval, but also the single bullet and ranked ballot. No such ballot has any effect on the election and its meaning is therefore called into question. Most of an individual's actions in life have *some* possibility of effect and we can attach meaning to this. I can take responsibility for my actions, for example, by weighing the consequences. I can discuss the rights and wrongs of the matter with others. But not for voting. The voting system guarantees that my vote will have no effect and I would look rather foolish to suppose otherwise. This presents a serious problem. Do you agree? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting reform statement - new draft, please give opinions
One possible obstacle to participation (and to agreement) is the sheer size of the text. I once formulated a laconic rule of thumb to address this kind of problem. It states: [1] Limit the consensus draft to 10 words per voter [or signatory]. In our case, and depending on how we tallied the level of agreement, that would mean 20 or 30 words maximum. I recommend: [2] These are better than Plurality: * Approval * Bucklin * Condorcet * Range * SODA Approval is ideal as a first step in voting reform. That's 20 words. It leaves no room for elaboration or qualification. But if someone else wants to sign on, then he can bring up to 10 additional words along with his signature. What do you think? Is this a reasonable approach? [1] http://mail.zelea.com/list/votorola/2011-May/001068.html [2] I couldn't resist putting it in the wiki and generating the difference: http://zelea.com:8080/v/w/D?a=4639b=4638 -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Jameson Quinn wrote: At the suggestion of someone who wrote me privately, I have one thing to add to my message: 2011/8/17 Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com I have done a significant rewrite to the voting reform statement on Google Docshttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_US. The new draft is pasted below. Please, go to the dochttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_US, make any comments or suggestionshttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_US, and write your tentative signature (just name, spamproofed contact, and credentials for now) at the bottom. Even if you can't sign on to the statementhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_USin its current form, you can say what changes you'd wanthttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_USbefore signing. (Yes, all those links go to the same place. Subtle, no?) The significant changes to this draft are: * Does not talk about the EM list. I hope to get signatures from off-list academics, *and you can help*. * Does not discuss single-winner criteria, except to say that plurality generally does poorly on all of them. * Does not state that we agree that IRV is worse than the systems listed, simply that some find it better than plurality and some do not. * Includes a section on PR. The new draft is below *in my previous message*. Again, your direct edits and suggestions are welcomehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_US . The first three changes were not my ideas, but rather suggestions from someone else. My point is: you can participate in this effort. I will happily continue to push for a joint statement, even if it morphs into something very different from what I originally wrote. JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting reform statement - new draft, please give opinions
Jonathan Lundell wrote: And re the word count: I think it's important to list the criteria by which plurality has big problems and approval et al solve most of them, instead of making the naked claim. If you were to formally sign on, then we'd have an additional 10 words to qualify the claims. The fear otherwise is that adding to the text would only raise obstacles to participation and agreement; wheras omissions are more neutral in effect, or even attractive. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Jonathan Lundell wrote: On Aug 19, 2011, at 9:22 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote: Re: 10 words per signatory. I don't think I should be the one to judge. What do other people think? If people like things short, I've suggested an extra 15 or 20 words below. JQ 2011/8/19 Michael Allan m...@zelea.com One possible obstacle to participation (and to agreement) is the sheer size of the text. I once formulated a laconic rule of thumb to address this kind of problem. It states: [1] Limit the consensus draft to 10 words per voter [or signatory]. In our case, and depending on how we tallied the level of agreement, that would mean 20 or 30 words maximum. I recommend: [2] These are better than Plurality: Plurality has big problems. Any of these would solve most: * Approval * Bucklin / (Majority Judgment) * Condorcet * Range * SODA Approval is ideal as a first step in voting reform. Gerrymandering and safe seats are also problems. Proportional representation would solve it. There are many good options, including some with geographical aspects, but closed party list is not good. I'm not a fan of closed lists, but I wonder if their condemnation qualifies as an electoral-method topic. What drives closed lists is the desire for strong parties and party discipline. One might disagree philosophically, but that doesn't make it a bad electoral method if that's the goal. Seems to me the question then becomes how the list gets generated. Suppose, for example, that a party held a ranked-vote primary that used the Condorcet preference ranking of the candidates to create a list. And re the word count: I think it's important to list the criteria by which plurality has big problems and approval et al solve most of them, instead of making the naked claim. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Voting reform statement - method of consensus drafting
Jameson Quinn wrote: I've made this draft statement into a google doc ... Probably we should continue to discuss here for a while longer, but feel free to also make suggested changes over there... I want to suggest an alternative method of drafting, one that might integrate better with the discussion. Here's a brief demo: fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: Put Approval Voting here in alphabetical order... - Various *Bucklin* or median-based systems such as *Majority Judgment* - Various *Condorcet* systems, including *Condorcet//Approval, various Condorcet//IRV hybrids, Ranked Pairs, *and* Schulze*. - *Range Voting* (aka Score Voting) - *SODA voting* I agree with Forest and I made the recommended change. What do you think Jameson? http://zelea.com:8080/v/w/D?a=4637b=4627#_3.1 [demo off] Here I propose several modifications to Jameson's draft. These take the form of a composite text diff that shows the differences between his draft and mine, including the particular one I refer to (3.1). This method is based on multiple drafts, one per drafter. Some of the advantages: * Embedding a difference URL in the mailing list helps to focus the discussion. At every step the issue boils down to differences of text, so it can only help to make those differences concrete. * The discussion remains rooted in the mailing list. It need not be transplanted to another medium, such as Google Docs or wiki talk pages. * If the discussion leads to agreement, or if the difference happens to be trivial, then it can be eliminated by pressing the Patch button. This is pretty easy to do (and kind of fun). * Or, if agreement fails, then the difference remains standing. It never gets swept aside by the process or buried in the archives, but remains as a qualification of any consensus that emerges. The software isn't beta ready yet, so I doubt anyone will jump in and start using it full time. But I do hope a few intelligent people will play with it and get some ideas. Here's how to use it: 1. Visit one of the drafts, such as: http://zelea.com/w/User:Jameson.quinn-GmailCom/G/p/vrs 2. Click on My position. That gives you a draft of your own. Login under an alias if you prefer. It requires no account. 3. Go to anybody's draft and click Diff vs. mine. That gives you the full diff. Use the Patch button to get an initial text. 4. Edit the text, do another diff and post the URL for discussion. I had hoped to set this up in the Electorama wiki, but its API isn't functioning. I left some edits there, and will clean up later. Please let me know if you encounter any problems, or have questions. Overall, doesn't this approach make sense? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting reform statement - method of consensus drafting
Jameson Quinn wrote: I appreciate the idea, and I think it has promise. Having just logged in and patched my statement to equal yours, though, I think that the process is still too complicated for a not-explicitly- -techie audience. ... I agree, it's not beta ready and I wouldn't recommend using it. Unless participation in the drafting effort began to flag at some point. Then it might be helpful. It has a kind of viral visibility that can be difficult to ignore, if not resist. Let me know if Google Docs ever fails for you in that way, and we can look at staging a recovery bid. ... For instance, even I (a relatively savvy guy; for instance, a regular user of git and github) can't figure out how to vote for my own version. And besides the generally-easier interface, google docs has wysiwyg, and comments. Google Docs and MediaWiki have their pros and cons. Often it comes down to preference. We can support free-range drafting across all media in principle, including Google Docs. But currently we cover only MediaWiki. I should mention that the voting system behind this cannot be compared with those at issue in the reform statement. They have different purposes. Voting is optional too, unless you happen to have lots of participants. Then it becomes indispensible. You would vote for yourself here: http://zelea.com:8080/v/w/Votespace?u=Jameson.quinn-GmailComp=G!p!vrs But self voting is not allowed, because the purpose of these votes is to express agreement. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ So, I'm really sorry, I know that there's a lot of work there, and if it worked out, the idea of putting diffs into emails is a good one... but I'm going to have to say, I still consider the Google Docs version https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_US as the official one. I've put your suggested changes in there. We can also copy from the google docs view history to paste diffs here. For instance, the first of your suggested changes: The study of voting systems has made significant progress over the last decade , and our understanding is even farther beyond what it was 20 years ago. One important place where that has happened is on the election methods mailing list. I understand that that will not fully work for those with text-only email, and does not provide a url with patch buttons. So I still think that when you smooth out the interface, your system will be better than Google Docs in important ways. But... Sorry, Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] School of Election Science on Wikiversity
Thanks for the welcome Abd, and thanks for answering my question. Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Well, take a look around Wikiversity. If you are interested, participate. Or just watch, or just wait. As your proxy, I'll contact you if I think your participation might be needed in something. If you like, you can chat up delegable proxy. Or ask questions about the Assembly, etc. I'm especially interested in the actual practice of the Assembly. I'll wait to see how it unfolds. I see that you do have some MediaWiki and WikiMedia Foundation experience. That's great. Really only the former. We develop electoral/legislative software that incorporates MediaWiki. See pollwiki and streetwiki: http://zelea.com/project/outcast/_overview.xht I've formally welcomed you, so that put your Talk page on my Watchlist. You might consider putting my User Talk page on your Watchlist. Done, thank you. This is public, on the EM list, and that's fine, there is no secret here. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Vote mirroring as a counter-monopoly measure
] Java itself is open source. For Flash clients, there is Lightspark. http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/lightspark -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Election method simulator code - revision control
Yes, Git differs in the structure of its network. Git's network is distributed wheras Subversion's is centralized: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control#Distributed_revision_control The most interesting consequence is political. The authors in a distributed network require no permission from any authority in order to collaborate on the text (source code or whatever) that is under revision control. They can join the network without anybody's say-so, because it is maintained entirely by author-peers. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Michael Allan wrote: I don't know if it's helpful information, but Mercurial and Git are functionally very similar. There isn't much to choose between them. I never understood why Torvalds and crew bothered coding Git in the first place. I use Mercurial. There's a bunch of hosting sites for both tools, but you don't really need them. Distributed revision control is logically peer to peer. It doesn't depend on central sites. As long as you have upload access to an ordinary Web server, you can share your code with anyone (even on the hosting sites) just by posting your repo. Here are my own repos, for example: http://zelea.com/var/db/repo/ I think I'll keep the current setup for now, though. The hosting sites seem to give additional tools to make it easier to coordinate, report and fix bugs, document, and so on. If I grow out of the hosting site, I'll consider moving elsewhere, but there's no risk of that yet :-) As for Github vs Google, I haven't thought much about it. I pretty much just picked a reasonably well known hosting site. Is Git very different from svn? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Election method simulator code - revision control
I don't know if it's helpful information, but Mercurial and Git are functionally very similar. There isn't much to choose between them. I never understood why Torvalds and crew bothered coding Git in the first place. I use Mercurial. There's a bunch of hosting sites for both tools, but you don't really need them. Distributed revision control is logically peer to peer. It doesn't depend on central sites. As long as you have upload access to an ordinary Web server, you can share your code with anyone (even on the hosting sites) just by posting your repo. Here are my own repos, for example: http://zelea.com/var/db/repo/ -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Duane Johnson wrote: Git and GitHub has the largest mindshare among open source developers that I am aware of (I come from the open source dev community, not academia). If you want to be discovered or collaborate, I recommend that route. Brian Olson b...@bolson.org wrote: I counter-recommend git. I don't like it. If you like the new 'distributed version control' system style, I recommend Mercurial. code.google.com also supports mercurial. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
