[EM] New election system proposed - Larger votes for poorer people.

[Joe Weinstein]

Steve, as presented in your EM message, your ideas sound interesting.

Life is short, and your website is so full of irrelevant time-consuming 
front matter, that I'm not sure when I will find time to go back to it for 
long enough to get to your full set of essential ideas.  I wasn't sure where 
on the site they lurk.  The math by itself is not self-explanatory, and 
anyhow for an applied mathematician of my ilk the fun and interest and 
understanding must start with the proposed "non"-technical ideas and 
application.

I appreciate your honest admission that your ideas call for keeping the 
present oligarchic setup of having a few long-term-serving officers (elected 
"leaders") make our policy decisions.

In our present setup, since wealth is already rather concentrated in a small 
fraction of the electorate, their electoral and post-election influence is 
scarcely through their own vote but rather through use of their wealth not 
only to hire lobbyists but also - directly (Tammany Hall style) or 
indirectly (through mass-media messages) - to buy the votes of the middle 
and poor classes.  So in essence we already have a system where rich trade 
wealth to the poor in return for voting power.

Maybe you have a succinct direct summary of your ideas, which indicates just 
how their effect would be materially different to the above mechanisms, in 
ways we really would care about.  Looking forward to reading it.

Joe Weinstein
Long Beach CA USA

----Original Message Follows----
From: Steve Glickman <SteveG at Pali.Ca>
Reply-To: election-methods-list at eskimo.com
To: election-methods-list at eskimo.com
Subject: [EM] New election system proposed - Larger votes for poorer people.
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 10:26:19 -0700

Hey group,

My name is Steve Glickman. I'm the president and founder of a new movement
called the Fair Choice Party. The FCP promotes the idea of curving the size
of vote size so that poorer people get larger votes. The basic principle is
to establish a system where each of us is permitted to choose fairly between
how much participation (vote) and insulation (wealth) we want. It's a
radical new step in the direction of social justice; brought into focus
recently by our technology.

The website is http://FairChoice.org, and for those of you who want to skip
right to the mathematics try
http://fairchoice.org/text/VoteScalingTechniques.html.

I know that this idea is a little out of the ordinary; but I'm interested in
hearing your thoughts on it. Please refrain from blaming poor people for
their own problems; perhaps they are, perhaps they are not - but I think
that it's become appear ant the it's not healthy to ignore their plight nor
continue to look to the privileged to come up with solutions. What the Fair
Choice proposes is a long-term system which is realistic, flexible, and yet
maintains the aspect of both free trade and elected leaders.


- Steve


 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: matt at tidalwave.net [mailto:matt at tidalwave.net]
 > Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2002 8:31 AM
 > To: Election-methods-list at eskimo.com
 > Subject: Re: [EM] Alphabetical ballot
 >
 >
 > On 20 Sep 2002 at 19:49, Elisabeth Varin/Stephane Rouillon wrote:
 > >  ....
 > > An example of completed ballot:
 > > Shade at Most One Grade per Candidate
 > > And Indicate your Limit (|) Between Acceptable and Undesirable
 > Candidates:
 > > |
 > > Amy Jones AB C D# | F GH I
 > > Barbara Smith A BC D E |F G #I
 > > Charles Jones #B C DE | F GH I
 > > Daniel Smith AB C DE | F GH I
 > > Eve JonesA # CD E | FG H I
 > > Fibbie Smith AB # DE | F GH I
 > > Georges Jones AB C DE | F GH I
 > > Harry Smith A# C DE | F GH I
 > > Isabel JonesA B CD E | #G H I
 > > |
 > > that we would translate as:
 > > Charles(yes) > Eve(yes) = Harry(yes) > Fibbie(yes) > Amy(yes) >
 > Isabel(no) > Barbara(no) >
 > > Daniel(no) ? Georges(no)
 >
 > Your translation loses the extra information made available by
 > grading that is useful
 > for accurately summing ballots.  There are at least two
 > alternatives: Use a dummy
 > place holder candidate (an underline character) or place the grade in the
 > paranthesis.  And since we have the approval cutoff (which is
 > indicated by the bar
 > after the last approved candidate in the ballot) we may as the
 > well place the
 > unranked candidates just after the cutoff in the ballot:
 > C>E=H>F>_>A|>D?G>_>I>_>B>_
 > C(A)>E(B)=H(B)>F(C)>A(E)|>D?G>I(F)>B(H)
 >
 > The place holder method is more compact and easier to read.
 > Ballots with unlike
 > rankings (different grade sets) can now be fairly combined which is my
 > understanding of the primary benefit of using grades.  Some
 > tallying methods may
 > want to count '=' differently than '?', for example count as '='
 > 1/2 vote each but '?' as
 > zero vote each, so it may be useful even if negative votes is not
 > a good idea.
 >
 > > I know some would prefer to put unranked Candidates as neutral but
 > > how could we attribute them a (yes/no) index?
 > > It does not bother me because I treat the no indicator
 > > not as a negative vote. Using negative votes is like giving someone
 > > the opportunity to deny someone else any representation.
 > > In other words a 45 - 23 result is very different and shall not
 > > have the same consequences as a 25 - 3 result. It produces
 > > the same outcome for single-winner contests, but it should not
 > > for fair (proportional) multiple winners methods.
 >
 > > Steph.
 >
 > ----
 > For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc),
 > please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
 >

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