[EM] direct democracy

[James Green-Armytage]

Dear election methods fans,

	I've totally rewritten my proxy/direct democracy paper. Whereas the old
paper advocated a very specific proposal, this new paper distinguishes
between what I consider to be essential elements and variable elements of
the system, leaving room for a wide range of choices.
	The new paper can now be found using the old link:
http://fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/vm/proxy.htm
	The old paper can now be found using this link:
http://fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/vm/altproxy.htm
	Your comments and questions are most welcome, as always. At some point I
would be interested in turning this into a publishable academic paper, so
I'm open to suggestions as to how to develop it in that direction. For one
thing, I will need some citations, which is somewhat difficult because I'm
not sure which of these ideas have been previously published (formally or
informally), and I'm not sure who published them or when. My earliest
proposal of many of these ideas was in October of 2003.

	The current text of my new paper follows.

Sincerely,
James Green-Armytage

______________________


 
Direct Democracy by Delegable Proxy
by James Green-Armytage

Contents:
INTRODUCTION
THE FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS
       Direct democracy / delegable proxy system
              Direct vote option
              Proxy option
              Delegable proxy
              Issue independence
       Ranked ballot, pairwise tally
VARIABLE ELEMENTS AND INTERESTING QUESTIONS
       Purpose
       Bindingness
       Frequency of votes
       Logistics
       Ranked proxy lists
       Standing proxies
       Resolving proxy loops
       Secret ballot
       Generation of issues
       Generation of options
       How technical should the options be?
       Proxy scores
       Remuneration
FURTHER COMMENTARY
       Virtues of beginning with a non-binding system
       Already-existing direct-issue voting systems
       Alternative political leaders
       Expressing and developing the nuance of public opinion
       Disclaimer
       Direct democracy versus privately conducted polls and focus groups
       Non-governmental applications
 

INTRODUCTION
         It seems axiomatic that in a democracy, all citizens should have
the opportunity to vote directly on the key decisions of the collective.
However, when such public decisions reach a certain level of complexity,
it becomes impractical for every citizen to become fully informed on every
issue. 
         In a traditional direct democracy system, every citizen has two
options with respect to a given issue: vote or abstain. If most citizens
do not take the time to become fully educated on the issues, but nearly
all of them choose to vote, then public decisions are likely to be
somewhat arbitrary, and easily manipulable by public relations campaigns.
If most citizens do not take the time to be fully educated on the issues,
and many of them do not vote, then the system may become a discriminatory
one, excluding the values held by people in particular sectors of society.
If nearly all citizens do take the time to become fully educated on the
issues, this may excessively remove some people’s attention from other
valuable endeavors. One could argue that there would be a certain amount
of wastefully redundant effort in this last scenario.
          Surprisingly, there is a satisfying resolution to this ancient
paradox of democracy: the delegable proxy system.

 
THE FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS
 
Direct democracy / delegable proxy system
         Assume that I am a voter, and there is a certain issue to be
decided via this system
• Direct vote option: I have the option of voting
directly on the issue (or formally abstaining).• Proxy option: I also have
the option of deferring my vote to a proxy of my choosing. If my proxy
votes directly on the issue, then the weight of my vote is added to his.
There is no minimum threshold of votes needed for anyone to serve as a
proxy.• Delegable proxy: If my proxy doesn’t vote directly on the issue,
but rather names another proxy in turn, then the weight of my vote and the
weight of my proxy’s vote are both carried by this second proxy. There is
no limit to the number of times that a vote can be transferred along a
proxy chain in this way.• Issue independence: Even when there are multiple
issues on the same ballot, I should have the option of indicating separate
proxies for separate issues, while still voting directly on other issues,
if I choose. 
         Comments: The proxy system combines some of the best features of
direct-issue voting and representative voting. People who have a definite
opinion on an issue retain the option of a direct vote. People who do not
have time to become fully educated on the issue may defer their vote to
someone who does, someone with whom they share common values and beliefs.
Proxies differ from traditional representatives in that voters always get
their first choice of proxy. To a much greater extent than traditional
representatives, it is reasonable to expect that my proxy will vote the
way I would vote if I had time to become fully informed on the issue.
         The importance of the delegable proxy feature should not be
underestimated. This allows me to choose as a proxy someone whom I know
and trust directly, without having to worry that my vote will be wasted if
he doesn’t have time to become educated on that particular issue. This
feature facilitates the accumulation of votes by people who are trusted by
people who are in turn trusted by others.
         Issue independence allows voters to indicate as proxies people
who are knowledgeable in the field that a specific issue relates to. For
example, if one issue is relevant to ecology, I might indicate an
ecologist as their proxy for that issue, a staff member at an NGO that
deals with the environment, or perhaps just someone who I know to have
researched all of the different options for that issue in particular.

Ranked ballot, pairwise tally
         Assume that there are more than two options for a given issue...
• Ranked ballots should be used, such that voters have the option of
assigning a distinct ranking to every option (although they should also be
able to indicate indifference between two or more options).• When majority
rule is appropriate (which is likely to be most of the time), a pairwise
comparison method should be used to tally the votes. A pairwise comparison
uses ranked ballots to simulate head-to-head contests between different
options. Given two candidates A and B, A has a pairwise defeat over B if
and only if A is ranked above B on more ballots than B is ranked above A.
(All candidates who are not ranked on a given ballot are considered to be
tied for last place on that ballot.)
         The majority rule method should always choose a winner from the
minimal dominant set. This is the smallest set of candidates such that
every candidate within the set has a pairwise victory over every candidate
outside the set. When the minimal dominant set has only one member, this
candidate is a Condorcet winner. A method that always chooses from the
minimal dominant set is by definition Condorcet-efficient. The majority
rule method should also be relatively resistant to strategic manipulation.
• When proportional representation is appropriate, some type of single
transferable vote tally method should be used. 
         Comments: There are many political issues that are too complex to
be reduced to a single up-or-down vote; in these cases voters should be
able to choose between multiple options. The minimal dominant set provides
the best definition of majority rule between multiple options.
Furthermore, Condorcet winners are the most likely options to serve as
compromise solutions.
         For example, imagine that there is a vote where the options are
as follows: (1) drastic change, (2) moderate change, (3) status quo. (The
moderate change is in the same direction as the drastic change, but it is
not as extreme.) The votes are cast as follows:
33%: drastic > moderate > status quo
16%: moderate > drastic > status quo
16%: moderate > status quo > drastic
35%: status quo > moderate > drastic
         In light of these votes, we can predict that a single up-down
vote on the drastic change would fail. 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, in this case the
“moderate” option. A Condorcet-efficient method is likely to pick the
median even with a large number of options, as long as they are arrayed
across a single spectrum. A Condorcet-efficient method is essential to
identifying centrist, non-polarized choices, provided of course that a
sufficient compromise option exists on the ballot. 
 
VARIABLE ELEMENTS AND INTERESTING QUESTIONS
 
Purpose
         Delegable proxy systems can be used for a very wide variety of
voting purposes. In this paper, I will focus mostly on their potential use
for direct-issue voting on government policy.
 
Bindingness
         Several degrees of bindingness are possible. One option would be
to have a non-binding system that allowed the citizens of a nation to
express their opinion without carrying any legal weight in itself. The
government would still fund the system and ensure its integrity, and there
should be some general pressure put on government officials to act in
accordance with its results.
         Another option would be to subject the public decision to veto by
other branches of government, e.g. the executive, a majority of the
legislature, a supreme court. A third option would be to allow other
branches of the government to postpone implementation of the public
decision, but not to reverse it. A fourth option would be to give the
public decision preeminent legal status.
 
Frequency of votes
         The number of issues decided by this system per year is a matter
of preference. It might even be possible to decide all issues that would
pass through the legislature this way, thus effectively supplanting the
legislative assembly. However, I suggest that this system should coexist
with, rather than supplant, the elected legislators. For example, one
could have three public votes per year, with ten issues on each ballot.
(Any other combination of numbers is possible here.) Thus, the proxy
system could serve as a guide for the legislative process rather than its
sole agent.
 
Logistics
         A question: Should the votes should take place over the internet,
or only at controlled polling stations? The internet poses problems of
security and problems of equal access, so I suggest that official polling
stations are a preferable venue. The voter interface should be electronic
(paper ballots would probably just be too clumsy for this system), and
every effort should be made to assure that the votes are being counted
accurately.
         Voters should be able to choose their proxies from a complete
list of people registered as proxies. This list should be kept on a secure
master file that is also a matter of public record, available on the
internet, etc. Aside from just their name, there should be a few distinct
keywords and some basic information about them so that people who want to
choose them as a proxy can distinguish them from others with the same
name. Proxy registrations should be filed some time in advance of the
vote, to give couriers a chance to bring secure copies of the proxy list
from the central file.
 
Ranked proxy lists
         One may allow the voters to indicate a ranked list of proxies,
rather than a single proxy.
 
Standing proxies 
         One may allow the voters to register for a “standing proxy”, so
that if a voter doesn’t show up to vote on a given issue, his vote is
delegated automatically to his standing proxy. Or, one could require
voters to show up in person, if only to indicate one proxy for all of the
issues on the ballot. If one does not allow standing proxies, then the
ranked proxy lists could be used to assure that votes are not wasted. That
is, if my first-ranked proxy doesn’t show up to vote, my vote could be
deferred to my second-ranked proxy instead. 
Resolving proxy loops
         It is possible that a proxy loop might arise, if for example
voter A indicates B as his first proxy, B indicates C as his first proxy,
and C indicates A as his first proxy. Ranked proxy lists can be used to
resolve loops. One possible rule is as follows: "A vote shouldn't travel
the same proxy path twice." Given the above case, A's vote has traveled
the path A-->B, then the path B-->C, and then the path C-->A. Therefore,
according to this rule, once A's vote returns to A, it should not once
again travel the path from A to B. Instead, it should travel to the next
proxy as ranked on A's proxy list. The proxy path rule is not very
important, since such loops are not an especially daunting problem. Other
rules are possible, for example "a vote shouldn't be assigned to the same
person twice," in which case A's vote would be transferred to C's second
proxy rather than being assigned to A once again.
         In some circumstances it might be possible to resolve proxy loops
without the use of ranked proxy lists, for example by informing the people
involved in the loop and requesting that they indicate another proxy.

Secret ballot
         A question: Should someone who serves as a proxy for other voters
still be entitled to keep their votes secret? It is theoretically possible
to keep their votes secret from the general public, but one cannot avoid
the fact that information will be stored in the computers responsible for
tallying the result. Also, it seems likely that most voters would like to
know for sure how their proxy voted.
 
Generation of issues
         I propose that some issues to be decided by the proxy system
could be generated by the legislature, while others are generated by the
public process itself. I suggest that we might want to set the agenda for
a few direct votes at a time. For example, let's say that there were three
direct votes per year, each with about ten issues on the ballot. At the
end of one year, we could decide which issues to vote on over the course
of the next year. Each time we went to the polls for a direct vote, there
could be a combination of congressionally generated and publicly generated
issues on the ballot.
         For issue-generation inside the legislature, I suggest a system
of single transferable vote (STV) proportional representation. For
example, the legislators could take an STV vote to fill a certain fixed
number of slots for issues in an upcoming direct vote. Perhaps the
legislature should also have the ability to add extra issues in case of
emergency.
         For issue-generation outside the legislature, I propose that
issues should first be nominated via a public process, and that nominated
issues should then be placed on a ballot for a direct agenda-setting vote.
(Of course, we do not need to drag voters to the polls just to do an
agenda-setting vote; it can be put on the ballot with other issues.) The
public agenda-setting vote can also be based on STV, filling a fixed
number of slots. 
         Question: How would issues qualify for the agenda-setting vote
itself? A certain number of petition signatures?
         Question: Should the legislature (or some other entity) maintain
the power to assert that two or more issues should be combined into one to
avoid redundancy and possible contradiction? What should the boundaries of
this power be?
         To sum up, we could do an agenda-setting vote about once a year,
with the legislature filling a preset number of issue slots, and the
public filling a preset number of issue slots. Once the
issues-to-be-voted-on had been decided, we would divvy them up onto
different ballotings (e.g. one balloting in February, one in June, etc.),
and we would get to work on generating the options for the issues. 
 
Generation of options
         Once it has been decided that there will be a direct vote on a
given issue, the next step is to generate the different options that
voters will choose from when voting that issue. The goal here is to make
sure that a less-than-ideal option doesn't win because a more effective
compromise option didn't make it onto the ballot.
         Option-generation inside the legislature: Again, an STV vote is
logical, but in this case, an option called "no additional option" should
be in competition with the other options that have been proposed. A
certain number of maximum slots would be available to be filled with
options, but if many legislators are satisfied with less than the maximum,
some of the extra slots could be filled with "no additional option", that
is to say, unfilled.
         Option-generation outside the legislature: There should also be a
public process for generating options. Question: should there be a
separate public STV vote for option selection as well as issue selection?
This might prove too cumbersome to be worthwhile, in which case any
proposed options meeting the given requirements (e.g. acquiring a certain
number of petition signatures) could be placed directly on the ballot
without further filtering or a hard limit as to the number of
possibilities.
 
How technical should the options be?
         Should options be written in the sort of dense legalese that
characterizes the handiwork of most professional legislators, or should
they be worded in a more general, approachable way? Where can the balance
be found between legal precision and common understandability?
 
Proxy scores 
         People who serve as proxies would be given a score, calculated
yearly, which would be based on how many votes they actually cast on
specific issues. That is, if there was a vote where many people named me
as a proxy, but I deferred the votes to someone else, it wouldn't count
toward my proxy score. However, if I applied the weight of those votes
toward a specific option, it would count. Proxy scores should be averaged
/ normalized so that a score of 300 basically means that on average during
the previous year, I executed direct votes on each issue for 300 people
including myself. Hence it would be meaningful to say that a single
proxy's score was equivalent to a specific fraction of the total number of
participants.
         Proxy scores could potentially be used to facilitate the process
of issue generation and option generation, in that the signatures of
proxies could carry the full weight of their normalized proxy score.
Hence, instead of having to get thousands of individual signatures, one
could achieve the same effect by getting the support of a few high-scoring
proxies.
 
Remuneration
         Question: Should those who serve as proxies for many other people
be given monetary compensation? If we do decide to compensate
super-proxies, what money-allocation formulas might we want to use? Here
is one possibility: There is a total preset budget for proxy remuneration,
which is divided among those who receive compensation. Each super-proxy's
share of this overall budget is proportional to a modified proxy score,
which is calculated as follows: The modification comes as a result of a
minimum threshold, such that those whose proxy scores are below the
minimum will not receive remuneration. Instead, their scores are added to
those whom they list as a standing proxy, and they continue up the proxy
chain until they coalesce into an above-threshold score somewhere along
the line.
         For example, if I am the proxy for about 10 people, and thus have
a proxy score of 10, that might not be enough to justify the paperwork of
having the government send me a check, etc. So the remuneration-weight of
my score should be passed along to my proxies, and perhaps their proxies,
and so on, until it gets to someone who crosses the minimum threshold. If
you like, you could do this in a series of successive rounds, such that
first you eliminate below-threshold people with the very lowest proxy
scores, and transfer their remuneration-weight before doing the next round
of eliminations.
         Another question: Should the government place regulations on what
proxies can do with their remuneration? For those who receive only a
moderate amount of money, this might not be worthwhile, but if someone’s
total remuneration exceeds a certain amount, it might make sense to
require them to invest funds in excess of that amount into policy research
ventures that meet certain standards. I imagine that these research groups
could help to further the democratic goals of the proxy system. 
         Comments: The argument in favor of proxy remuneration is that the
extra money could help them do good policy research, by allowing them to
reduce the hours they spend at other jobs, and in some cases by allowing
them to hire research staff and acquire research-facilitating capital. The
money may also serve as an incentive to do good research. The argument
against it, aside from the cost, is that it might produce ‘impure’
incentives for people to act as proxies, and to over-represent their
understanding of policy in an attempt to advertise themselves. 
 
FURTHER COMMENTARY
 
Virtues of beginning with a non-binding system
         (1) It is important for the system to build public participation
and trust before it begins to carry the weight of legal power.     
         (2) There should be more freedom in the design of a non-binding
system, in that there should be less pressure and more leeway for trial
and error. This will make it easier to incorporate innovative ideas such
as the delegable proxy option and the pairwise tally. It should be much
easier to apply advanced voting rules to an entirely new institution than
to an existing electoral institution, as existing institutions tend to get
mired in entrenched practices and interests.
         (3) It should be much easier to achieve than a binding system,
and it should greatly hasten the advent of a binding system.
 
Already-existing direct-issue voting systems
         For those locations that already use direct-issue voting systems
of one kind or another, there are at least two possible goals:
         (1) To try to make changes in the system so that it incorporates
some of the essential elements of a good direct-issue voting system, as
listed above. For example, one may try to introduce a delegable proxy
option. One may also try to encourage multiple-option issues with a ranked
ballot and pairwise tally. (Question: which Condorcet completion method
should be used in this situation?)
         (2) To create a non-binding system with the essential delegable
proxy elements, as a supplement to the existing system.
 
Alternative political leaders
         The proxy system acts as a perfectly ‘high resolution’ version of
proportional representation, in that voters always get their first choice
of representative. As such it may provide an increased political role for
third parties, nonprofit organizations, and community leaders. 

Expressing and developing the nuance of public opinion
         This system attempts to end the state of affairs where most
citizens have only a very diffuse and indirect impact on government
policy. In most plurality elections, the voters essentially have to choose
between two ready-made issue ‘packages’. Limiting the voters’ choices this
way totally glosses over even the slightest bit of nuance that might exist
in people's political beliefs. This oversimplification is so drastic that
it’s dangerous. It’s important to have separate votes on individual issues
for the sake of clarity. There are scores of important and controversial
issues which deserve better than to be lumped together into
winner-take-all packages, or worse yet, to be ignored by all major
parties. It is frustrating to know that there must be several good
solutions to pressing social problems that would be supported by a
majority if they were put to a public vote, but that for some convoluted
reason they are not implemented by the ruling party/parties.
         Furthermore, if ordinary people actually have an opportunity to
influence policy by expressing their views on key issues, I suggest that
it will help to clarify their positions on these issues, and to engage far
more people in the political process.

Disclaimer
         I don’t intend to imply that a good direct democracy system
eliminates the need for other electoral reform, campaign finance reform,
media reform, etc.

Direct democracy versus privately conducted polls and focus groups
         Opinion polls and focus groups have a lot of influence on
politics at present, but they are not an appropriate substitute for direct
democracy. Both are generally controlled by private entities who have a
good deal of power to influence the result, e.g. through suggestive
wording and through the omission of relevant options. Focus groups take
place behind closed doors, routinely have unpublished results, and in
general do very little to further political discourse. Both polls and
focus groups are participated in by only a small segment of the
population, leaving everyone else with their opinions unheard. Also, they
reduce the participants to a relatively passive role that does not foster
political organization, action, or education.
         This is why even a non-binding system would be a tremendous
improvement over the current system. It would allow the popular will to
come through as a result of direct political action in broad daylight
rather than through the dubious conduits mentioned above.  It engages
people to get involved, to discuss, and to act. It includes all adult
citizens who are willing to participate, rather than just a few people who
are randomly selected by a network news agency, or who strike a focus
group research firm as being representative of swing voters.
 
Non-governmental applications
         Application of the delegable proxy system is by no means limited
to governments. Almost any organization with a sufficiently large
membership can potentially benefit by using it. (E.g. unions, schools,
churches, etc.) The larger the organization, the more important the
delegability feature becomes. One particularly interesting application is
to publicly traded corporations. Many corporations allow shareholders to
vote by proxy, but in many cases, shareholders do not know much about the
proxies whom they designate. If corporations were required to allow for
delegable proxy voting, then I as a small stockholder could potentially
delegate my votes to nonprofit organizations that shared my values with
regard to corporate policy. (I should retain proxy vote rights even if my
ownership of stock is brokered by an intermediary agent.) This could help
corporate policy to conform more closely to the values of ordinary
citizens, just as the general proposal could help government policy to do
the same. Hence, the use of the delegable proxy system could bring us
closer to both political and economic democracy.