[EM] Arrow's axioms & an alternative to elections

[Dave Ketchum]

I see hope in what Phillippe writes below.  Perhps what I wrote in 1998 
will encourge more effort:
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Something is needed to strengthen "by the people". An alternative method 
of representation is offered for thought:

     * Everyone retains present right to be a voter, but may assign that 
right to a proxy who, by soliciting the job of representing voters with 
one set of interests, accepts responsibility for using the voters' rights 
to further those interests and for keeping the voters informed. The voter 
may recall such assignment at any time. There is no limit on the number of 
voters directly served by a single proxy, but it is in each voter's 
interest to choose a proxy personally known to be responsible, with an 
appropriate platform, and willing and able to keep the voter informed. 
However, since the proxies discussed above would be too numerous to meet 
effectively for tasks such as electing or recalling a senator, proxies may 
follow the above rules in assigning their voters' rights to other proxies. 
Candidates must start at the bottom and get recommended to the next level 
by at least one proxy at each level - this is a simple formality for 
well-known politicians, but is needed as a mechanism for controlling 
introduction of newcomers.
     * Reasonable stability is needed. Recall should always be possible, 
but require a super majority such as 2/3 or 3/4 (easier to achieve via 
proxies than via individual voters). The recalled political office or 
voter rights should automatically be voted against any activity for a 
fixed period of time (the idea is for recall to always be possible, but to 
be done only to recover from serious problems).
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A big advantage to the voter CHOOSING a proxy is that likeminded voters 
can choose an agreeable proxy, rather than having to share a 
representative with their neighbors.

Proxies should have voting power according to how many voters have chosen 
them.

On Sat, 6 Mar 2004 05:03:47 +0100 Philippe Errembault wrote:

> Hi Ernest,
> 
> 
> 
> I hope we understand each other's. Since English is not my mother tongue, I could pass over some misunderstanding without realising
> it. I will try to be clearer.
> 
> 
> 
> My point is that if you want to rank multi-dimensional information, you will have to project your space to a one-dimensional space.
> This will be done using a function that, especially for human beings, will depends on your mood, on context, on... I do not know
> what else... the fact is that this will not be stable data. Even more: the space of this information could even be non Euclidian,
> because it's probably easy to determine preferences between two things, but if you try to establish the graph of all your
> preferences, I'm not sure you will easily obtain an acyclic graph. Just try to rank all your friends on the basis: which you prefer
> most... not quite easy, isn't it !?
> 
> 
> 
> So the problem is the same: If you ask people to rank a few quite simple choices, well, most of them will probably be able to do it.
> However, if you then try consolidating the choices for a large group of people, the problem will become as complex as the one of
> ranking all your friends. (In fact, this is not really a good example because here I have many dimensions instead of many points to
> rank, but the idea is that human being is not a logical machine which easily sort things. Human brain works more like the
> collaboration of conflicting tendencies; and a group works is, exactly in the same way, the collaboration of conflicting persons, so
> you could not ask a group to have a simple decision process, when it is not even easy for one single person.)
> 
> 
> 
> This is why I came to think that a voting system is not the right way for implementing democracy, and why I tried to imagine a good
> alternative process.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ok, I will try to explain my idea: (I hoped I would try to write it down in French first... now it's to late ;-) )
> 
> 
> 
> First of all, about your non-deterministic argument:
> 
> I understand your point of view, and, especially for an election process, I agree that you should have a deterministic result, at
> least for reasons of verification/validation, BUT this is only true if you go through an election process.
> 
> 
> 
> Since you agree to say that human being is *NOT* deterministic, I feel that a deterministic democratic process is quite an illusion,
> which probably gives you a warm feeling of security, but that's all. The opposition between the need of deterministic results in an
> election model, and the non-deterministic nature of human and human society, comforts me in the idea that the election model is a
> wrong choice.
> 
> 
> 
> Finally, we do not really need a deterministic process. The important point is that we need to make something efficient; which tries
> to take intelligently the best possible decisions; which make people happy to use it and respects the minorities; and which makes
> the best use of every one without favouring someone for bad reasons. (I mean we could not favour any one more than "the number of
> persons that would agree to favour him")
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So, what else could we do, then?
> 
> My idea is a multiple steps proposal, which gradually goes from our current systems, to much more neural systems
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> First step: try to find a system that suppresses the inconveniences of both freedom to vote and obligation to vote
> 
> I do not know what happens in other countries, but here in Belgium, we are obliged to vote. In comparison, French, our neighbours,
> are not obliged to vote. What are the consequences?
> 
> 
> 
> In Belgium, most people are obliged to vote, but are not interested. Therefore, they will vote easy. They will vote for well-known
> people, they will vote for people the press presented, etc. So, supposing that only 20% (I have no idea how far this is from
> reality) of population are really interested, the result of the vote will be 20% an interesting vote, 80% the vote of the press,
> which is mostly the vote of the big influence groups already governing. Therefore, we have a system, which is quite stable, but
> which is not very democratic, even if it looks it is. In reality, most votes have been manipulated (1).
> 
> 
> 
> In France, the last presidential elections have shown what happens when people are not obliged to vote. They have a two turns
> election process, so at the first turn, many people were too lazy to vote, and one of the winners was extreme right. So, many people
> went to vote to block him from becoming president at the second turn, which renewed president Chirac for a second mandate with an
> exceptional score, which was absolutely not representative of what people really thought of him. As a conclusion, the French system
> is probably not that easy to manipulate by press, but it is much more instable and random than the Belgian system.
> 
> 
> 
> So, what I suggest, is to have people chose one, let's say: "level one" representative, which will eventually be themselves, the
> obligation they have is to give this representative, proxy to vote for them. "Level one" representatives and only them will have to
> vote (and be obliged to) when there is something to vote for. Let us put restrictions on this: 1/It is strictly forbidden to chose
> as representative, someone that could have a power on you. 2/ a representative can only represent, let us say, at most (e.g.) 19
> persons. To be a representative, you at least need to represent yourself.
> 
> 
> 
> This first step would solve the problems presented above. 1/ you are sure that most representative know what the do better than
> persons not interested in the voting process, 2/ the will have a weight according to the number of persons which gave them their
> confidence. (First reason to have this be kind of neural), 3/ the system stability will be guaranteed by the fact that this process
> keeps the relation one citizen = one vote
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Second step: multi-level representation
> 
> Now that we have our "level one" representatives, we could imagine that they would themselves choose to give their representation to
> "level two" representative, which would give their representation to "level three" etc. until one last level where people would have
> more or less the same number as in a parliament. Let us say that a "level n" representative can represent at most 19^n peoples, and
> probably there could also be a minimum number, but I'm not sure this would be a need.
> 
> 
> 
> The point is that now, you have multiple tiers of representation, the higher are at the level of a parliament, the lower are at the
> level of a referendum, but at all levels, people are interested in the decision process. At higher level, you could ask for frequent
> questions like in the actual parliament, at lower level, you could ask questions to people like in a referendum. By the way, you
> would also have the possibility to ask a question at any intermediate level, which is a great improvement in the tuning of the
> decision process.
> 
> One of the most important advantages of such a process, is that having more intermediate levels, gives more hindsight (not sure
> about the use of this word...) to the decision process, which could make it smarter. We could also compare this principle to a multi
> layer neural network.
> 
> 
> 
> On this should be added good criterions for choosing the level at which a question should be asked. This might be done by having the
> level n decide that they want to ask one to level n-1.
> 
> 
> 
> I imagine we could have representatives be paid according to a logarithm of the consolidated number of people they would
> represent... this is just an idea. I don't know if it's good.
> 
> 
> 
> Up to here, things could be done with the classical means.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> Step three: where things got complicated and really neural. For this we will need the support of communication tools, like a
> computer network, so then we need a secured system to avoid fraud.
> 
> 
> 
> Now that we have our multi layers system, we could decide to have various decision paths according to the subject. Let us say that
> we would have the political topics divided like an outlined document. At the higher level you would have the whole decision process,
> then you would have different ways of having it divided, by topics (education, economy, security, etc.) and subtopics, and/or by
> zone (your town, your region, your community, your country, etc.). (At the finest level, you would find the laws propositions). Then
> you would have to select for each topic or subtopic, to whom you would give your representation. (E.g. you could decide that you
> would give your representation to someone, except for one specific subject you know well, for which you would like to represent
> yourself. So then, you would have different persons/specialists/neurons implicated for each question and we could hope to have the
> human society work like a huge brain. Like in a true brain where some neurons have an inhibitor role, it would be necessary to have
> moderators, which would be non-specialists of a specific subject, participating with the specialists, to make the side implications
> appear, and avoid decisions taken with bad side effects.
> 
> 
> 
> It could happen that at that level, that it would be difficult to have assemblies talking like now, just because of the difficulty
> to have people, all be available at the same time, and it could happen that many discussions would go through forum tools or things
> like that...
> 
> 
> 
> I hope this answered to your questions
> 
> 
> 
> Philippe
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> (1) In Belgium, this is especially true, since:
> 
> - Government have decided to put an electoral threshold of 5% under which a list cannot have representatives, which is a very
> efficient way to block new lists and new ideas from growing.
> 
> - They installed an electronic voting system which, despite the fact that it could more easily be invisibly manipulated, also make
> people feel less secure in front of a machine they do not know, so they tend to make themselves feel more secure by voting for
> someone they know, which reinforce the power of press manipulation. It happened that really strange behaviours where detected, and
> that the parliament decided according to the official experts report, that since the problem had a probability of occurring near to
> zero it should not have happened anywhere else, and since it had been detected and corrected, there was no problem.
> 
> - They obliged the lists to have the same number of women and men, which for small lists makes quite difficult to find the right
> amount of women, who are quite often not interested or do not dare to present themselves for an election. And by the way, if a small
> list managed to put enough women on the list, they will probably be younger and with less experience (since the first they find will
> be put on the list), so, if they manage to be elected, they will eventually be easier to manipulate by the other parties.
> 
> 
> 
> Therefore, my country is quite a good example of the democratic power to citizen ;-)

-- 
  davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
            Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
                  If you want peace, work for justice.