[Election-Methods] Measuring power in a multi winner election

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 04:22 PM 9/25/2007, Juho wrote:
>One more approach would be to give the parties some "veto votes" that
>they can use as they wish during the period between elections. If
>some party in on the losing side in some vote by 5% margin it could
>still veto and use 5 of its veto votes to do that (maybe all losing
>parties would use some of their veto votes).

Look, it's possible to have direct/representative democracy, such 
that no votes are lost or wasted. The system we generally propose for 
this, in public use, is Asset.

Warren Smith proposed Asset, originally, in a fairly complex form, 
and was not considering at all the implications for direct democracy. 
I noticed these, however, since forms of direct democracy, made 
practical on a large scale, are my primary interest, and I realized 
that Asset was a form of delegable proxy. The key to understanding 
this is the freedom of the holders of the "assets." They are free 
agents, chosen and entrusted with a power that really belongs to the 
voters, which they can exercise according to their own best judgement.

Now, you can imagine Candidate List asset, which forces vote 
reassignments according to lists supplied by candidates, but this 
loses the real power of Asset, which is this:

Voters in Asset, if write-ins are allowed (and that could be made 
easy) can actually vote for *anyone*. And, most specifically, they 
can vote for a personal representative to all the subsequent process 
that might ensue, till the next election! Asset really chooses 
*electors* who then represent the public in further process, and, 
because there is no competition, voters can freely choose any 
eligible person (normally they could choose themselves, for example), 
the subsequent process can be direct democracy. Any combination of 
electors resulting in enough votes can create a seat in the assembly, 
but the voting power of that seat is only a default vote, counted in 
the absence of any votes from electors. Electors are, necessarily, 
public voters, their votes are public record. That's what it takes to 
be an elector, a willingness to vote in public, just as is the case 
with current elected representatives. But there can be far more 
electors than we currently choose representatives, and, indeed, 
anyone can become an elector.

It is very much like Delegable Proxy, actually, and DP might be used 
by electors -- voluntarily! -- to coordinate the assignment of votes 
to seats, allowing electors with very small votes to still 
collectively wield their proper proportional vote strength.

In such a system, measures of voting power become a bit silly. 
Everyone at the base level has one vote, period. And then the 
electors have exactly the voting power given to them by voters, and 
there need be no compromises at all with this, if it is a system that 
allows direct voting by the electors. (Because it is public, there 
are far fewer security issues....)