[EM] non-binding direct democracy system

[Ernest Prabhakar]

Hi James,

On Mar 25, 2004, at 8:46 PM, James Green-Armytage wrote:

> 	I suggest that the single-winner methods that might give us centrist
> leaders, specifically Condorcet-efficient methods, would also have the
> potential to give us centrist, compromise solutions to social problems.

Ah, thank you.   That was the key innovation that I appear to have 
completely missed. Sorry about that. "Rank-ordered Referendums".  Not 
bad.

Okay, I concede your point.  This is a very interesting new approach, 
and I agree that a multiple-choice Condorcet based polling system would 
be a very positive step towards improving the level of political 
discourse.   I'm less sure about the proxy stuff, though it sounds 
interesting, and I don't have strong opinions about it being 
non-binding and federal.   Frankly, if any large stage adopted this, 
and it was effective, I think it would reverberate nationally.

The one question that seems tricky is, how does one come up with such a 
ballot?   Usually in California, it is a partisan group that collects 
the signatures to put them on the ballot -- or the legislature, which 
is usually as bad. The hard part, IMHO, is coming up with well-defined 
centrist positions and then getting enough public support behind them 
to provide a public viewing, since the traditional organizations tend 
to be bi-polar.

Any bright thoughts?  You've surprised me before...

- Ernie P.



>
> For example, let's say that there was a vote on marijuana, where the
> options are as follows
> 1. make marijuana totally legal
> 2. reduce penalties for marijuana use to confiscation and fines
> 3. maintain current penalties for marijuana use
> and the votes are cast as follows:
>
> 33%: legalize > decrease > maintain	
> 16%: reduce > legalize > maintain
> 16%: reduce > maintain > legalize
> 35%: maintain > decrease > legalize
>
> 	In light of these votes, we can predict that a single up-down vote on
> legalizing marijuana would fail. Also, use of plurality or IRV to tally
> votes would also result in the status quo. A Condorcet tally, however,
> picks the compromise solution when there is one, the reduced penalty
> option above.
> 	To my knowledge there aren't any referenda systems which incorporate
> Condorcet tallies for multiple-option votes. So I'm saying that there
> should be. And I'm saying that they should incorporate a proxy system 
> for
> reasons already specified, viz. because it avoids the forced choice
> between effectively discriminatory low turnout and votes that lack
> knowledge of the issue. And I'm saying that they should be on the 
> federal
> level in the U.S. because the federal govenment has a lot of power and 
> a
> much higher profile than local and state. And I'm saying that they 
> should
> be non-binding to begin with because they will be less threatening and
> chaotic that way. This is my proposal in a small nutshell, along with 
> the
> fact that I added various logistical problem-solving elements on the 
> way
> to deal with security, etc. None of this seems insipid to me.