[EM] Cumulative Voting with Elimination - idea for simple PR system...

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:37 PM 4/17/2007, Tim Hull wrote:
>In my research of voting systems, PR, etc, I've been trying to come 
>up with the most simple candidate-based PR system that I can 
>possibly devise that uses votes for candidates and no other factors 
>to determine the winners ( i.e. open list and asset voting don't 
>count for this purpose).

This is a restriction which is guaranteed to reduce the fairness and 
flexibility of the system. Asset, in particular, is actually a 
deliberative process. It *does* use the votes alone to determine the 
winners. But the votes get distributed intelligently, by trusted agents.

It's amazingly hard to get this very simple idea across: we already 
know how to hybridize direct and representative democracy, how to 
make it fully fair, it's been done for centuries.

In business.

Why we never think of doing it in politics is beyond me. Sure, you 
might argue that business is about property and politics is about ... 
what? ... but one would think that, at least, the analogous practices 
would be *considered* before being rejected. They aren't rejected. 
They aren't even considered.

Asset Voting is essentially proxy voting. Proxy voting is used in 
business because people with power and choices *insist* on it. That 
is, such people want to be able to name proxies. A proxy is a 
*chosen* personal representative, as distinct from an elected 
collective representative.

I think the reason it's difficult is history. Business *started* with 
individual rights, personal control of property, and then means 
needed to be developed for many people to make decisions 
cooperatively, *without* coercion. Coercion doesn't work when an 
investor can sell his or her shares and put their money elsewhere!

But governments started (or at least became, long ago) as centralized 
systems of authority, and representatives, where they existed at all, 
were agents of the sovereign, assigned to a jurisdiction by the 
sovereign. And then came the idea of electing them, so that they 
represented "the people."

In this, representatives were assigned and considered to represent 
districts. Not people. In a districted legislature, a representative 
supposedly represents all the people in their district, whether they 
love him or hate him, and whether he is fair to those who don't like 
him or not. As long as he represents the majority, his position is 
stable, and too bad about the minority. They do not get a voice. Period.

Now, STV-PR does move away from this toward something more like 
personal representation. But Asset does it directly. It *is* personal 
representation. Delegable Proxy does this without the restrictions 
imposed by a peer assembly, so Asset Voting can be considered a more 
traditional form of Delegable Proxy.

Asset Voting, by creating an elector class, makes it possible for 
something quite close to direct democracy to exist even with secret 
ballot. (To do this, it really becomes Delegable Proxy with a 
standardized distribution of votes so that the default voting power 
of each seat is the same, but when an elector directly casts votes, 
the elector's votes assigned to that seat reduce the voting power of 
the seat for that poll.)

I'm not suggesting that the direct democracy potential of Asset 
Voting be used, at least not at first. It should be understood that 
simply using Asset to elect traditional members of an assembly, a 
group would be pioneering a new and quite exciting political reform.

Asset Voting makes putting together an assembly a *cooperative* 
effort, quite distinct from it being a *competitive* one. Candidates 
who get enough votes are simply seated with no more fuss, but what is 
interesting with Asset is what happens with excess and other 
unassigned votes. Those who hold these "assets" *cooperate* to put 
together seats. (A few very popular candidates may be able to 
essentially appoint a seat or more, besides their own, but they still 
would generally have excess votes to distribute, less than a quota.)

So, my question to Mr. Hull is this:

Why would you prefer a deterministic, purely aggregative system, 
which must produce results with no further human input, over a 
deliberative one, which encourages and, indeed, requires voluntary cooperation?

Aggregative methods are inherently inferior, as far as anything that 
has ever been proposed. Such methods are used, not because they are 
superior to deliberative methods, but because they have been 
considered more practical, due to the need for secret ballot. It's 
been thought that secret ballot requires a pure aggregative method. 
However, what has been overlooked, generally, is that, in the end, 
the representative is going to exercise what would otherwise be the 
votes of those represented, were it a direct democracy.

Direct democracy is considered impractical because of the problems 
raised in deliberation in large groups. This, again, is based on an 
assumption that direct democracy requires the full right of 
deliberation on the part of all voters, i.e., every voter must be 
able to address the assembly and to enter motions. It is this that 
becomes impossible in large groups. Further, it is recognized that 
not all people have time to participate in the business of an 
assembly. If everyone can vote on assembly issues, what actually 
happens is that those who have more time to spare participate and 
those who don't have the time don't. And, one might notice, fanatics 
and ideologues always have the time. So representative democracy is 
considered essential to preserve the rights of the people in general.

Asset Voting, it might not be realized, creates an elector class, a 
group of people who have accepted the responsibility of voting in 
public, not secretly. This isn't new! -- for this is exactly what 
representatives in assemblies already do. When you accept office in 
an assembly, you generally become public in your political actions. 
But in Asset Voting this is generalized to the election process itself.

Under Asset Voting, we assume, anyone can declare as a candidate and 
becomes thereby eligible to receive votes. The votes aren't wasted, 
as they would be in many systems. The voting is far simpler. You 
don't have to rank a list. You can simply select the person you most 
trust. If you simply want to become an elector, you can vote for 
yourself, and it doesn't matter if you don't get any other votes.

In the simplest form of Asset Voting, the ballot is a standard 
ballot. It might have a lot more names on it, or there might be a 
document with the names of all registered candidates on it, should 
such be legion. (This is the same as write-in votes, really, but 
chosen from a list of those who have agreed to accept votes. It isn't 
necessary if the number of people who wish to serve in that way is limited.)

On that ballot, you vote for one or more candidates. It's like 
Approval Voting, with one critical difference. Approval Voting does 
not violate the one-person, one-vote rule because Approval is a 
single-winner system, and all votes for a candidate who does not win 
are moot. Only one vote has been effective, one cast for the winner, 
or no votes were effective. In no case is a voter able to cast more 
than one effective vote. But under Asset, *all* votes are effective, 
so, if a voter casts a vote for more than one candidate, the votes 
must be divided. It's easy to do with manual counting and trivial 
with computers. (I just described a manual method on the Range Voting 
list. It requires a ballot sort into piles with the same number of 
votes, before totalizing, that's all.)

I've seen a series of objections to Asset Voting, and the majority of 
them boil down to objections to the very process of representative 
democracy. Allegedly, for example, Asset Voting will encourage 
corrupt "deals" in order to assemble the votes for seats. Yet, in the 
legislature itself, motions require the cooperative assembly of 
votes. Logrolling is simply part of the political process, part of 
how people compromise with each other.

I'd suggest that if you don't trust a candidate enough to vote for 
him or her so that he or she can exercise your voting power in 
assembling seats in an assembly, you certainly shouldn't trust that 
candidate to exercise your voting power in the assembly itself! Where 
actual decisions are made, instead of merely deciding who makes the 
decisions....

There is, in fact, a deep cynicism that penetrates much of our 
thinking about politics.... it is part of the problem of reform, many 
or most people don't really believe that true reform is possible. 
This is actually the largest obstacle to improving political systems, 
an entrenched belief that it can't be done.... whatever we do, *they* 
will find a way to corrupt it....