Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
Andrew Myers wrote: On 7/22/64 2:59 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: However, I strongly urge people who attempt to analyze the situation and to propose reforms to: 1. Keep it simple. An extraordinarily powerful system for fully proportional representation consisting of a seemingly-simple tweak on Single Transferable Vote was proposed in 1883 or so by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). If a simple system that is *obviously* far more democratic doesn't attract notice for more than a hundred years, what chance does something more complicated and dodgier (i.e., involving lots of unknowns) have? This description is misleading. It omits that there are no known good algorithms for implementing this method: the computational complexity of Dodgson's voting method is prohibitive. In fact, it was not even known until a few years ago, when the problem was shown to be complete for parallel access to an NP oracle (class Theta_2^p). http://www.springerlink.com/content/wg040716q8261222/ This result means it is extremely far from being usable in practice. Unless P=NP, there are no polynomial-time algorithms for deciding elections with Dodgson's method. Not the same Dodgson's method :) Yeah, naming methods after their inventors can get confusing when the inventor thought of more than one. In the case of Asset, however, I don't think it's actually called Dodgson's method -- it's just that Abd likes to mention that Dodgson did think of it, and so that the idea is not new. (Incidentally, while Dodgson's Condorcet method is very difficult to calculate in the worst case, it may still be possible to get somewhere in the average case. Consider TSP solvers, or integer programming through branch and bound.) Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
About a century ago, a proposal was made in a major western U.S. city to have a city council where each member exercised, in the council, the number of votes they got in the election. Which city? When? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
At 10:56 AM 4/23/2010, Jameson Quinn wrote: [I'd written:} About a century ago, a proposal was made in a major western U.S. city to have a city council where each member exercised, in the council, the number of votes they got in the election. Which city? When? Well, I couldn't find it. Portland comes to mind, but that might not be it. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
At 09:07 PM 4/21/2010, Duane Johnson wrote: This sounds quite interesting, Abd ul-Rahman. Where can I learn about your FA/DP idea? Your discussion here is helpful, but I feel like I am missing out the important prerequisite pieces in order to make sense of it. (I know about delegable proxy, but haven't heard about FA/DP specifically). My recent comments assumed some undertanding of the background. FA = Free Association. The short of it is that FAs are organizations that follow a generalization of the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Traditions, and the AA Twelve Concepts for World Service, as they apply to general-purpose organizations designed for stability and success without creating central control, as AA was designed. FAs are, roughly, how many informal peer associations start, but, particularly as they become successful, they normally move away from these informal traditions and take on common structures that seem to be necessary for success when the scale is larger. AA formalized the principles, based on study by Bill Wilson of what made prior temperance organizations eventually fail. DP is, of course, delegable proxy, which isn't strictly necessary in the beginning, but the earlier it is implemented, the safer the organization is, in the sense of being protected from the Iron Law of Oligarchy, and in becoming persistent even when many members drift away due to the rising of other interests. Those members become permanent through proxy representation, remaining connected to the organization through a filter, a proxy left behind. There is a wiki linked from http://beyondpolitics.org. There was an older wiki that still has files, but that is not directly accessible, I need to port the material from the old wiki. There isn't much at the new wiki yet. You can find a lot of stuff by googling FA/DP. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
Duane Johnson wrote: This sounds quite interesting, Abd ul-Rahman. Where can I learn about your FA/DP idea? ... (I know about delegable proxy, but haven't heard about FA/DP specifically). DP may have other applications, too, aside from FA. Here's a proposal for primary elections and primary legislatures based on DP (aka delegate cascade), together with some grounding in social theory: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 647-436-4521 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
Good Morning, Duane Johnson I plan to study your proposal but have not had time to do so. I expect to have questions for you and will post them as soon as I've had time to think about what you've written. That may not be for a week or so. Fred Gohlke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
At 04:42 PM 4/19/2010, Duane Johnson wrote: Hi Everyone, I am new to this forum, thanks to James Green-Armytage who sent me the address. I am a software engineer in Chicago who also happens to be interested in voting methods. I'd like to propose a voting method that may be of interest here. It has also been cross-posted to the ideas group at forums.e-democracy.org. This system seems almost too simple when you understand it, but the implications are deep and, I believe, profound. I am interested in your feedback. I'm glad to see more people thinking about process and voting as involving communication. Which leads to considering communication as the foundation of democracy, not voting per se. Functional democracy is deliberative democracy; democracy without communication is easily manipulated and if power is directly exercised, there is a tendency to mob rule, where the intelligence of crowds is dumbed down instead of amplified. Wikipedia, for those who study it, is a great example of how not to do it. However, I strongly urge people who attempt to analyze the situation and to propose reforms to: 1. Keep it simple. An extraordinarily powerful system for fully proportional representation consisting of a seemingly-simple tweak on Single Transferable Vote was proposed in 1883 or so by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). If a simple system that is *obviously* far more democratic doesn't attract notice for more than a hundred years, what chance does something more complicated and dodgier (i.e., involving lots of unknowns) have? 2. Don't propose chickens without eggs or vice versa. Imagine that there is some ideal political system, that allows good ideas to be efficiently considered, with the necessary depth. If such a system existed, it would be easy to suggest and propose and agree upon it, and if people agree on just about anything, they can do it, as long as the actual already-existing system is reasonably democratic. I invented FA/DP (Free Associations with Delegable Proxy) as a method for considering and forming consensus on ideas like FA/DP. 3. FA/DP is terminally simple, but, in reality, it's like pulling teeth to even get people to consider it. Sure, lots of people will say, What a great idea, if they don't get stuck in the knee-jerk objections, like, *They* will corrupt anything. or, more sophisticated, Iron law of oligarchy (see the Wikipedia article), etc. 4. Notice: the method by which one would develop consensus and implement better political systems is a political system. Revolutions tend to empower the revolutionaries, or those who inherit power from them. If we want a true democratic revolution, we must want something different from the norm of revolution, which tends to follow the same traditional power structures, thus, in effect, simply changing faces. Traditional power structures boil down to two kinds: oligarchical and distributed. Oligarchical power developed and prospered because it was more efficient when the scale became large -- even though it is, from an ideal perspective, very inefficient -- due to the involvement in process normally required for distributed power to function, which expands exponentially with the number of active participants. 5. FA principles are natural for humans, most peer organizations, in their infancy, are roughly FAs. But if the FA principles aren't understood and solidly maintained, and as organizations grow, they naturally develop oligarchical structure, it is what people know how to do, and they are not aware that there are alternatives. When the organization is small, implementing something like DP seems too complicated. Can't we just discuss things like we always have? When the scale becomes large enough that DP is truly needed, it's too late. De-facto oligarchies have already developed, and the Iron Law of Oligarchy begins to function and resist change back to distributed power. The oligarchy believes that it knows best, and, indeed, it often does. It's the exceptions that are killers, that reduce long-term efficiency and support, that allow originally wonderful nonprofit organizations, for example, to become divided and weakened, to be co-opted by corruption, to become no longer truly representative of the aspirations of their members, but because the organization has been successful, and comes to dominate its field, it is very difficult to start anew and such efforts will be considered divisive and disruptive. 6. So: consider delegable proxy, how simple it can be when applied within a Free Association, which does not concentrate power *at all*. In the Montesqueuian sense, it is pure judgment, which I think of as advice. In theory, if the executive and judicial power are fully separated, the judicial system has no direct power, it only advises but cannot coerce the executive system. A wise executive, though, wants good advice! In an FA/DP system, the system functions
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
At 07:55 AM 4/20/2010, Raph Frank wrote: Btw, you should look into the delegable proxy system. This is also designed to allow effective communication without overloading the voters. Asset Voting was invented when Dodgson realized that most voters were people busy with their lives. They were not experts on politics. We see constant efforts to get ordinary people involved, to get them to vote, as if more people voting was necessarily better. It's not, unless the system collects good information from them, and when most people don't have adequate information, but vote based on media impressions (on what else would they vote?) STV -- Dodgson was an early analyst of STV -- depends on voters having more information than just their favorite candidate, which effectively disempowers those with only that much information. Unless party affiliation is on the ballot, voters can make assumptions based on being a party nominee, but this, then, raises the power of parties and defers the exercise of power to them and their nominating process. (Party affiliation is, in fact, a solution to the problem of voter ignorance, but ... begs the question. How, then, do parties choose nominees? If their own process is no better ) With Asset, proposed by Dodgson as an STV tweak to deal with exhausted ballots, the voter who only knows who their favorite is can empower that favorite with one vote. I have no evidence that he realized the probable effect of this: a multiplication of candidates, even a vast multiplication if the rules permit it. The number of candidates could grow so large, and votes so broadly distributed, that I'd expect the practice of printed candidate names on a ballot would disappear. All votes would be write-in, though it might be a code from a booklet. (For practical reasons, the name has to be unique and assigned to the candidate through a registration process. San Francisco, I'll note, allows write-in votes, supposedly, but to be eligible for election, write-in candidates must be registered. What San Francisco did that was actually quite offensive was to, then, pass a law that write-ins could not be registered for a runoff election, basing this on the promise of the reform that implemented runoff voting that the winner would have a majority. In other words, we will guarantee a majority by excluding candidates. Great. No wonder they were suckers for RCV. The law was actually tested, once, in the last election before RCV was implemented. It's quite possible that the write-in would have won. Consider this: if a write-in candidate came in third place in the primary, this was actually a very strong candidate, if the margin was not very large. Voting systems reformers missed a huge opportunity when this was being litigated before the California Supreme Court, probably because everyone knew that runoff voting was worse than IRV. But IRV with a true majority requirement (as Robert's Rules actually recommends, not what FairVote has claimed over and over), and a runoff with write-ins allowed, is not a bad system at all, though Bucklin is better (avoiding far more unnecessary runoffs). In a place like Burlington, a dropped candidate, being the Condorcet winner, could win in a runoff. It gets even better if an advanced method is used in the runoff, allowing voters to cast ranked votes, or other forms of alternative vote, just in case. (Range methods, including Approval, are variations on alternative vote; it is just that the alternatives are simultaneously considered, with full vote values in Approval -- full votes sequentially added in with ordinary Bucklin -- and fractional alternative votes in Range, or the variations on Bucklin that assigned fractional vote values to lower-ranked votes.) Asset, though, can make for a very simple voting system, it works fine with vote-for-one or Approval or Bucklin or IRV, even. Consider what Asset would have done for single-winner in Burlington, assuming that the Progressive didn't get a true majority. (I forget if that actually happened there). The canvassing would have completed, with the Progressive and Democrat being the leaders. The Republican would hold a large number of exhausted ballots, and could decided the election. Almost certainly the Democrat would win, and would be, more or less, forced to govern from the center (as would be more or less expected anyway), representing, to some degree, a Democrat/Republican coalition. The Republican, if not sufficiently appeased, could say, Screw it! I'm leaving these votes uncast, to make a point. Another option with Asset could be that the Progressive and the Democrat, say, come to an agreement and with Asset, they could even agree on another winner than themselves. We have this idea that candidates are purely selfish. Some are, some aren't. Asset would make purely selfish candidates far more visible! Asset would make for really great news stories.
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
On 7/22/64 2:59 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: However, I strongly urge people who attempt to analyze the situation and to propose reforms to: 1. Keep it simple. An extraordinarily powerful system for fully proportional representation consisting of a seemingly-simple tweak on Single Transferable Vote was proposed in 1883 or so by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). If a simple system that is*obviously* far more democratic doesn't attract notice for more than a hundred years, what chance does something more complicated and dodgier (i.e., involving lots of unknowns) have? This description is misleading. It omits that there are no known good algorithms for implementing this method: the computational complexity of Dodgson's voting method is prohibitive. In fact, it was not even known until a few years ago, when the problem was shown to be complete for parallel access to an NP oracle (class Theta_2^p). http://www.springerlink.com/content/wg040716q8261222/ This result means it is extremely far from being usable in practice. Unless P=NP, there are no polynomial-time algorithms for deciding elections with Dodgson's method. -- Andrew Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
2010/4/21 Andrew Myers an...@cs.cornell.edu On 7/22/64 2:59 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: However, I strongly urge people who attempt to analyze the situation and to propose reforms to: 1. Keep it simple. An extraordinarily powerful system for fully proportional representation consisting of a seemingly-simple tweak on Single Transferable Vote was proposed in 1883 or so by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). If a simple system that is **obviously** far more democratic doesn't attract notice for more than a hundred years, what chance does something more complicated and dodgier (i.e., involving lots of unknowns) have? This description is misleading. It omits that there are no known good algorithms for implementing this method: the computational complexity of Dodgson's voting method is prohibitive. In fact, it was not even known until a few years ago, when the problem was shown to be complete for parallel access to an NP oracle (class Theta_2^p). http://www.springerlink.com/content/wg040716q8261222/ This result means it is extremely far from being usable in practice. Unless P=NP, there are no polynomial-time algorithms for deciding elections with Dodgson's method. -- Andrew Huh? Dodgson's method is asset voting. If I'm not mistaken, he did not put any time limit on the convention - vote holders could refuse to delegate their votes. Other Asset systems mandate vote transfers under certain circumstances (elimination-style, to prevent games of chicken of you endorse me, no, you endorse me). However, in either case, it's still a decidable process. If you want tweaks to Asset to promote dialog: you can mandate some form of accessibility to communication, either vertically (between a voter/proxy and their proxy/metaproxy) and/or horizontally (between the voters/direct subproxies for a given proxy). I think that vertical accessibility to communication should be mandatory, and all vertical communication should be accessible (though perhaps anonymized) horizontally. This would mean that every level could function as a deliberative body. Jameson Quinn Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal Listening Democracy
Dodgson came up with Asset Voting, and I'm sure that is what Lomax was referring to, but Asset Voting is not the method commonly called Dodgson's Method, hence the confusion. 2010/4/21 Andrew Myers On 7/22/64 2:59 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: However, I strongly urge people who attempt to analyze the situation and to propose reforms to: 1. Keep it simple. An extraordinarily powerful system for fully proportional representation consisting of a seemingly-simple tweak on Single Transferable Vote was proposed in 1883 or so by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). If a simple system that is **obviously** far more democratic doesn't attract notice for more than a hundred years, what chance does something more complicated and dodgier (i.e., involving lots of unknowns) have? This description is misleading. It omits that there are no known good algorithms for implementing this method: the computational complexity of Dodgson's voting method is prohibitive. In fact, it was not even known until a few years ago, when the problem was shown to be complete for parallel access to an NP oracle (class Theta_2^p). http://www.springerlink.com/content/wg040716q8261222/ This result means it is extremely far from being usable in practice. Unless P=NP, there are no polynomial-time algorithms for deciding elections with Dodgson's method. -- Andrew Huh? Dodgson's method is asset voting. If I'm not mistaken, he did not put any time limit on the convention - vote holders could refuse to delegatetheir votes. Other Asset systems mandate vote transfers under certain circumstances (elimination-style, to prevent games of chicken of you endorse me, no, you endorse me). However, in either case, it's still a decidable process. If you want tweaks to Asset to promote dialog: you can mandate some form of accessibility to communication, either vertically (between a voter/proxy and their proxy/metaproxy) and/or horizontally (between the voters/direct subproxies for a given proxy). I think that vertical accessibility to communication should be mandatory, and all vertical communication should be accessible (though perhaps anonymized) horizontally. This would mean that every level could function as a deliberative body. Jameson Quinn -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: electorama.com/attachments/20100421/31bcc585/attachment.html -- ___ Election-Methods mailing list Election-Methods@lists.electorama.com http://lists.electorama.com/listinfo.cgi/election-methods- electorama.com End of Election-Methods Digest, Vol 70, Issue 44 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
Jameson, Abd has made much of a proposal of Charles Dodgson tweaking STV by allowing candidates to assign exhausted ballots...but that is NOT the system that Dodgson's name is normally attached to. His name is attached to a Condorcet method (but not knowing of Condorcet's prior invention) using a matrix in which each cell was a fraction with a numerator was the number of voters who ranked the row option ahead of the column option, and the denominator was the number of voters whose column option ahead of the row option. He proposed that cycles not be settled, but rather that this would result in no election. Terry - Original Message - From: Jameson Quinn To: Andrew Myers Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 2:44 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy 2010/4/21 Andrew Myers an...@cs.cornell.edu On 7/22/64 2:59 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: However, I strongly urge people who attempt to analyze the situation and to propose reforms to: 1. Keep it simple. An extraordinarily powerful system for fully proportional representation consisting of a seemingly-simple tweak on Single Transferable Vote was proposed in 1883 or so by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). If a simple system that is *obviously* far more democratic doesn't attract notice for more than a hundred years, what chance does something more complicated and dodgier (i.e., involving lots of unknowns) have? This description is misleading. It omits that there are no known good algorithms for implementing this method: the computational complexity of Dodgson's voting method is prohibitive. In fact, it was not even known until a few years ago, when the problem was shown to be complete for parallel access to an NP oracle (class Theta_2^p). http://www.springerlink.com/content/wg040716q8261222/ This result means it is extremely far from being usable in practice. Unless P=NP, there are no polynomial-time algorithms for deciding elections with Dodgson's method. -- Andrew Huh? Dodgson's method is asset voting. If I'm not mistaken, he did not put any time limit on the convention - vote holders could refuse to delegate their votes. Other Asset systems mandate vote transfers under certain circumstances (elimination-style, to prevent games of chicken of you endorse me, no, you endorse me). However, in either case, it's still a decidable process. If you want tweaks to Asset to promote dialog: you can mandate some form of accessibility to communication, either vertically (between a voter/proxy and their proxy/metaproxy) and/or horizontally (between the voters/direct subproxies for a given proxy). I think that vertical accessibility to communication should be mandatory, and all vertical communication should be accessible (though perhaps anonymized) horizontally. This would mean that every level could function as a deliberative body. Jameson Quinn -- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
This sounds quite interesting, Abd ul-Rahman. Where can I learn about your FA/DP idea? Your discussion here is helpful, but I feel like I am missing out the important prerequisite pieces in order to make sense of it. (I know about delegable proxy, but haven't heard about FA/DP specifically). Thanks, Duane Johnson On Apr 21, 2010, at 9:57 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 04:42 PM 4/19/2010, Duane Johnson wrote: Hi Everyone, I am new to this forum, thanks to James Green-Armytage who sent me the address. I am a software engineer in Chicago who also happens to be interested in voting methods. I'd like to propose a voting method that may be of interest here. It has also been cross-posted to the ideas group at forums.e- democracy.org. This system seems almost too simple when you understand it, but the implications are deep and, I believe, profound. I am interested in your feedback. I'm glad to see more people thinking about process and voting as involving communication. Which leads to considering communication as the foundation of democracy, not voting per se. Functional democracy is deliberative democracy; democracy without communication is easily manipulated and if power is directly exercised, there is a tendency to mob rule, where the intelligence of crowds is dumbed down instead of amplified. Wikipedia, for those who study it, is a great example of how not to do it. However, I strongly urge people who attempt to analyze the situation and to propose reforms to: 1. Keep it simple. An extraordinarily powerful system for fully proportional representation consisting of a seemingly-simple tweak on Single Transferable Vote was proposed in 1883 or so by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). If a simple system that is *obviously* far more democratic doesn't attract notice for more than a hundred years, what chance does something more complicated and dodgier (i.e., involving lots of unknowns) have? 2. Don't propose chickens without eggs or vice versa. Imagine that there is some ideal political system, that allows good ideas to be efficiently considered, with the necessary depth. If such a system existed, it would be easy to suggest and propose and agree upon it, and if people agree on just about anything, they can do it, as long as the actual already-existing system is reasonably democratic. I invented FA/DP (Free Associations with Delegable Proxy) as a method for considering and forming consensus on ideas like FA/DP. 3. FA/DP is terminally simple, but, in reality, it's like pulling teeth to even get people to consider it. Sure, lots of people will say, What a great idea, if they don't get stuck in the knee-jerk objections, like, *They* will corrupt anything. or, more sophisticated, Iron law of oligarchy (see the Wikipedia article), etc. 4. Notice: the method by which one would develop consensus and implement better political systems is a political system. Revolutions tend to empower the revolutionaries, or those who inherit power from them. If we want a true democratic revolution, we must want something different from the norm of revolution, which tends to follow the same traditional power structures, thus, in effect, simply changing faces. Traditional power structures boil down to two kinds: oligarchical and distributed. Oligarchical power developed and prospered because it was more efficient when the scale became large -- even though it is, from an ideal perspective, very inefficient -- due to the involvement in process normally required for distributed power to function, which expands exponentially with the number of active participants. 5. FA principles are natural for humans, most peer organizations, in their infancy, are roughly FAs. But if the FA principles aren't understood and solidly maintained, and as organizations grow, they naturally develop oligarchical structure, it is what people know how to do, and they are not aware that there are alternatives. When the organization is small, implementing something like DP seems too complicated. Can't we just discuss things like we always have? When the scale becomes large enough that DP is truly needed, it's too late. De-facto oligarchies have already developed, and the Iron Law of Oligarchy begins to function and resist change back to distributed power. The oligarchy believes that it knows best, and, indeed, it often does. It's the exceptions that are killers, that reduce long-term efficiency and support, that allow originally wonderful nonprofit organizations, for example, to become divided and weakened, to be co-opted by corruption, to become no longer truly representative of the aspirations of their members, but because the organization has been successful, and comes to dominate its field, it is very difficult to start anew and such efforts will be considered divisive and disruptive. 6. So: consider
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
There is no rush, of course. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Thanks, Duane Johnson On Apr 21, 2010, at 8:13 AM, Fred Gohlke wrote: Good Morning, Duane Johnson I plan to study your proposal but have not had time to do so. I expect to have questions for you and will post them as soon as I've had time to think about what you've written. That may not be for a week or so. Fred Gohlke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
On Apr 20, 2010, at 6:55 AM, Raph Frank wrote: On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 9:42 PM, Duane Johnson duane.john...@gmail.com wrote: The voting process would go like this: 1. (By some process outside the scope of this proposal), it is determined that an issue needs to be voted on This could be an issue, as controlling what people get to vote on represents considerable power. Indeed. But thoughts evolve, and Listening Democracy is more the beginning of a thought than an end. Thank you for participating in its growth :) 2. The issue is publicized and some citizens become aware of the issue 3. Of those who are aware, some citizens are concerned and want to vote on the issue. Each engages in the following process: a. The citizen registers as a voter and receives a voter ID b. The voter approaches a potential endorser (e.g. friend or relative) and asks to hear their point of view for the vote c. The endorser tells their point of view d. The voter summarizes their point of view in writing e. The endorser agrees that the summary is a correct representation, endorses the writ, and registers the endorsement f. The voter repeats steps (b) through (e) for a SECOND endorser g. The voter is now qualified to vote, and votes. This seems pretty open to abuse. You just need to get 2 people to sign that you listened to them. Since the objective is to improve communication in order to generate more informed decisions among people, the worst that can happen is people lie to each other and no listening occurs. The voter is ultimately going to vote how they want (just like the present system), but the Listening Democracy system encourages them to listen to two other people's opinions first. But you are right that it's easier to forge a signature than actually listen to someone. My original thought was to include the summary of the endorser's opinion on the public record. Then it could be cross- checked and challenged if it appears to be fraudulent. But requiring opinions to be public has its own pros and cons. The Listening Democracy system emphasizes, formalizes, and rewards listening in the decision-making process. The system is an improvement over direct voting because it ensures that each voter synthesizes information external to them. It assumes that decisions reached through discourse are generally better than those reached by merely counting isolated opionions. One of the reasons representative democracy is used is because people don't have the time to consider the issue. Well organised groups (often called special interests) have a big advantage over dispersed interests (the general interest). The point of democracy is to give the general interest a voice. Ofc, with current systems, special interests (as always) still have an advantage. However, with your proposal, these groups could enhance their voting power further by ensuring that their members have a much higher percentage registered to vote. Remember, however, that registering to vote does not guarantee that you can vote: if there is a scarcity of endorsers on your side of the issue divide, you will have to go to the other side, or, as you pointed out above, do something illegal. Also, if you make it harder to vote, less people will bother. Do we want the difficulty of voting to be evenly distributed? I tend to think that if we want to optimize good decision making, we want to make it harder for people who are less informed to vote (i.e. not all information in a system is equal). Requiring discussion as a baseline for qualifying to participate in the decision-making process seems like a fair requirement. Crucially, however, it does not exclude people who do not reach that bar from significantly influencing the system. Huh? If they don't reach the bar, they don't get to vote. I guess they could just refuse to endorse anyone who they disagree with. Correct. And problems that people are facing will rise faster as information in the system, since voters have to be a little more informed than in the present system. An important element of a Listening Democracy is the ranked ballot (and subsequent pairwise tally, see Condorcet Method on Wikipedia). The voting method used is separate from the voting rights component. As mentioned earlier, the system is viral in the sense that it systematically involves more and more of the population. Well, viral normally means choice. It would be more accurately described as excluding everyone from voting and then re-grant the right back in a viral way. Also, viral means starting small and getting bigger. It is like how a spark can create a fire. Was the viral nature of my proposal weakly conveyed? Viruses are not normally chosen (I tend to think of viral things as choice-neutral), but I can see where you are coming from with regard to the connotation
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
At 05:23 PM 4/21/2010, Terry Bouricius wrote: Abd has made much of a proposal of Charles Dodgson tweaking STV by allowing candidates to assign exhausted ballots...but that is NOT the system that Dodgson's name is normally attached to. His name is attached to a Condorcet method (but not knowing of Condorcet's prior invention) using a matrix in which each cell was a fraction with a numerator was the number of voters who ranked the row option ahead of the column option, and the denominator was the number of voters whose column option ahead of the row option. He proposed that cycles not be settled, but rather that this would result in no election. Thanks, Terry. This would explain the discrepancy between Mr. Myers' comments and mine and Mr. Quinn's. I'm not familiar with Dodgson's Condorcet method, which is obviously a single-winner method. It's interesting that he considered no election a possible outcome, that would be in line with what he would know of standard deliberative process. It is not Asset which is computationally infeasible, but, perhaps, this particular Condorcet method. Asset, of course, is a device for reducing the number of voters in an election to a set of public voters, who handle electing any seats not directly elected by the voters through vote transfers without eliminations (strictly, eliminations can be used, until all ballots are exhausted while not having been completely used for election, these exhausted ballots then become the property, at their unspent value, of the candidate in first position, I presume, whether or not this candidate has been elected). If all one wants is to finish an election, it is possible that the Droop quota could be used, but I prefer the simplicity of the Hare quota in terms of what it means for the voting power of members and how that relates to the number of voters who supported, directly or indirectly, a candidate. If the Droop quota is used, and the number of electors is relatively small, then an extra seat might be elected, should the electors with remaining votes end up agreeing on someone to carry this voting power in the elected assembly. I prefer to aim for the higher number as a limit, and then there is no question of the value of each elector's vote. This becomes important if, for later process, direct voting is to be allowed by electors. Asset makes that possible. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 9:42 PM, Duane Johnson duane.john...@gmail.com wrote: The voting process would go like this: 1. (By some process outside the scope of this proposal), it is determined that an issue needs to be voted on This could be an issue, as controlling what people get to vote on represents considerable power. 2. The issue is publicized and some citizens become aware of the issue 3. Of those who are aware, some citizens are concerned and want to vote on the issue. Each engages in the following process: a. The citizen registers as a voter and receives a voter ID b. The voter approaches a potential endorser (e.g. friend or relative) and asks to hear their point of view for the vote c. The endorser tells their point of view d. The voter summarizes their point of view in writing e. The endorser agrees that the summary is a correct representation, endorses the writ, and registers the endorsement f. The voter repeats steps (b) through (e) for a SECOND endorser g. The voter is now qualified to vote, and votes. This seems pretty open to abuse. You just need to get 2 people to sign that you listened to them. The Listening Democracy system emphasizes, formalizes, and rewards listening in the decision-making process. The system is an improvement over direct voting because it ensures that each voter synthesizes information external to them. It assumes that decisions reached through discourse are generally better than those reached by merely counting isolated opionions. One of the reasons representative democracy is used is because people don't have the time to consider the issue. Well organised groups (often called special interests) have a big advantage over dispersed interests (the general interest). The point of democracy is to give the general interest a voice. Ofc, with current systems, special interests (as always) still have an advantage. However, with your proposal, these groups could enhance their voting power further by ensuring that their members have a much higher percentage registered to vote. Also, if you make it harder to vote, less people will bother. Crucially, however, it does not exclude people who do not reach that bar from significantly influencing the system. Huh? If they don't reach the bar, they don't get to vote. I guess they could just refuse to endorse anyone who they disagree with. An important element of a Listening Democracy is the ranked ballot (and subsequent pairwise tally, see Condorcet Method on Wikipedia). The voting method used is separate from the voting rights component. As mentioned earlier, the system is viral in the sense that it systematically involves more and more of the population. Well, viral normally means choice. It would be more accurately described as excluding everyone from voting and then re-grant the right back in a viral way. Also, viral means starting small and getting bigger. It is like how a spark can create a fire. By evenly (i.e. without discrimination) applying a restriction on the number of people who can vote, the value of a vote increases, just like currency. Individual votes are effectively (almost) worthless now, but people vote for social reasons. When endorsements are hard to find, more discussion will be required across tribe-like boundaries. I think tribes would be well advised to conserve their endorsements. Each person outside the tribe who is endorsed is half an additional vote for the tribe's enemies and half a vote lost for the tribe. What about vote buying or endorsement buying? Vote buying would actually be much harder in a system of Listening Democracy. Consider first of all that an unscrupulous citizen would have to buy out 3 people to get 1 vote: a voter and his or her two endorsers. An unscrupulous citizen might try to buy the voter after he or she has achieved endorsement, but then a voter would feel doubly guilty for using or possibly even backstabbing close friends or relatives. It seems that Listening Democracry would promote honesty in society better than any law could enforce it. Vote buying is already illegal. However, since the endorsement system is public, you do run the risk of voter intimidation, so there is more risk of it. If a mob-boss recommends that you endorse members of his party, then it would be public if you did it. The problem is that the people who are elected then are the ones who enforce the law. This was the purpose of the secret ballot. Btw, you should look into the delegable proxy system. This is also designed to allow effective communication without overloading the voters. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy
Hi Everyone, I am new to this forum, thanks to James Green-Armytage who sent me the address. I am a software engineer in Chicago who also happens to be interested in voting methods. I'd like to propose a voting method that may be of interest here. It has also been cross-posted to the ideas group at forums.e- democracy.org. This system seems almost too simple when you understand it, but the implications are deep and, I believe, profound. I am interested in your feedback. Thank you, Duane Johnson (note: also posted at http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/ideas3) A Listening Democracy Proposal by Duane Johnson April 19, 2010 Synopsis The way our system of democracy is currently implemented suffers from opinion isolation and lack of engagement. Both problems can be solved using a viral system of democracy called Listening Democracy. In this system, participating citizens play one (or both) of two roles: endorser and voter. A voter earns the right to vote by listening to two endorsers. An endorser can endorse one and only one voter. An endorsement occurs if and only if the voter produces a written summary of the endorser's point of view, and the endorser is satisfied with it by publicly endorsing it. A voter then ranks his or her choices in order of preference on the final ballot. When knit together across an entire society, these two roles form chains of communication that build a (binary) tree-like relationship structure on the group. It gently restructures self-insulated groups within the connections of natural human relationships to form a hierarchy. This restructuring encourages society to discuss difficult issues across tribe-like boundaries. In addition, it provides a real and pressing incentive for citizens who are concerned about an issue to use information from others to form a final registered opinion (vote), which in turn informs and possibly motivates yet other citizens to become involved. Simple Summary from a Citizen's Perspective You can vote, but you have to listen to two other people's opinion about the issue first. You don't have to agree with their point of view, you only have to summarize their opinion in writing. If the two people each agree that your summary is accurate, then you've earned the right to vote! Roles Endorser: - explains their point of view to a voter - can give their public endorsement to at most ONE voter - endorses a voter ONLY IF the voter has produced in writing an accurate summary of the endorser's point of view - submits a WRIT OF ENDORSEMENT via mail or the internet, with their name, the date, the summarized text, and the voter's ID. Voter: - registers as a potential voter and receives a voter ID - records an endorser's point of view in writing - votes on an issue ONLY IF they receive an endorsement from TWO endorsers - has no legal obligation to vote as the endorsers would vote if given a chance - can also be an endorser to endorse someone else Voting Process The voting process would go like this: 1. (By some process outside the scope of this proposal), it is determined that an issue needs to be voted on 2. The issue is publicized and some citizens become aware of the issue 3. Of those who are aware, some citizens are concerned and want to vote on the issue. Each engages in the following process: a. The citizen registers as a voter and receives a voter ID b. The voter approaches a potential endorser (e.g. friend or relative) and asks to hear their point of view for the vote c. The endorser tells their point of view d. The voter summarizes their point of view in writing e. The endorser agrees that the summary is a correct representation, endorses the writ, and registers the endorsement f. The voter repeats steps (b) through (e) for a SECOND endorser g. The voter is now qualified to vote, and votes. 4. Some endorsers are citizens who were not previously aware of the issue, or perhaps unaware of their own concern for the issue. 5. Concerned endorsers then become voters by following steps (a) through (g) above. Analysis The Listening Democracy system emphasizes, formalizes, and rewards listening in the decision-making process. The system is an improvement over direct voting because it ensures that each voter synthesizes information external to them. It assumes that decisions reached through discourse are generally better than those reached by merely counting isolated opionions. While it is true that the present system of democracy does not prohibit discussion (in fact, it is neutral to discussion), there are currently no significant rewards built into the system for thoughtful voters. A Listening Democracy sets a minimum bar of thoughtfulness, thus excluding people who are unable or unwilling to explain how others see things. Crucially, however, it does not exclude
