[EM] Reply to Abd about asset voting

[Adam Tarr]

The comment on asset voting seems separate from the thread it started in, so 
I'll respond here.

In general, I don't like the negotiation aspect of asset voting. It seems 
like an inherently chaotic system, where negotiations could result in 
somewhat off-center results if the percentages work out right (or wrong, 
depending on your point of view). There's actually a good empirical example 
of this in politics already - the negotiations between parties trying to 
form coalition governments in parliamentary democracies. Sometimes this 
results in nice centrist governments. Sometimes this results in one side 
shutting out the other side. Other times a small fringe party ends up 
exerting undue influence by playing the "king-maker" role. (One arguable 
example of this would be when orthodox parties have been part of ruling 
coalitions in Israel.)

In general, I'd be more comfortable with one of three options:

1) True proxy voting - my vote for a candidate gives them one vote in the 
assembly. Depending on the system, this vote may be given in turn to someone 
else, and/or I may be able to give it to different candidates at different 
times depending on the issue. There may be a minimum number of votes in 
order to vote in the assembly, or possibly just to speak in the assembly.

Basically, true proxy voting is as close as we can practically get to actual 
direct democracy. Depending on what rules it uses, it is closer or farther 
from that ideal. It has many advantages; its disadvantage is that it can't 
be used without changing the entire system (a non starter for congressional 
elections, for instance).

2) Something like asset voting, only some multi-winner voting method (STV, 
for instance) is used in stead of a negotiating process, and the candidates 
must publish their ballot in advance of the election. This way, I know for 
sure how my vote is going to be used.

3) Just let me vote for real in a legitimate PR system, like STV or PAV or 
the range variant of PAV I mentioned earlier.

I have one specific quibble below about something Abd said.

On 8/30/05, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> wrote:

For full PR, Asset Voting is the king of the heap as far as I am
> concerned. Not a vote is wasted. 


Not true. Once there are N+1 candidates left in an N-winner election, all of 
the assets held by the candidate with the least assets (who is then 
eliminated) are "wasted". Furthermore, a candidate is not required to 
distribute his surplus votes, so these are also in some sense wasted.

Now, IF the candidates have the exact same preferences as all of their 
voters, and IF optimal strategy is used, then the number of wasted votes is 
minimized (at most 49% in single winner, 33% in two-winner, 24% in 
three-winner, et cetera). But it is not zero, even with those VERY generous 
assumptions.

In fairness it's not zero in any multi-winner method, of course, but the 
claim is still false.

Since I changed the thread title, I'll leave the remainder of Abd's comments 
here for completeness, although I do not comment on anything below.

I've suggested the simpler form of
> Fractional Approval Asset Voting to use for this. It is Asset Voting
> because those who receive votes may consider them as Assets, used to
> elect themselves directly, or in combination with votes from others
> to elect themselves or others. It is Approval because the ballot is a
> standard ballot, one marking position per candidate. It is Fractional
> Approval because, in this scheme, votes are not lost (as they are in
> regular approval), so dividing the votes is appropriate and,
> actually, necessary. But votes are divided automatically, not, as in
> regular Asset, by voters assigning fractions. This system produces a
> maximally representative assembly with exact proportional
> representation (where it fails to do this, it fails by the acts or
> failures to act of specific and publicly identified persons, who can
> thus be held responsible by those who voted for them.)
> 
> (The "Fractional Approval" aspect is not essential, it is only used
> where a voter wants to delegate the votes to more than one person. In
> Delegable Proxy, which is quite similar, the implementations I've
> been working on require a single assignment, and this is quite
> important because DP is not only an election method, it is also a
> communication system that works in both direction....)
> 
> To use a form of Asset voting for district-based semi-PR, where every
> district has a representative who has been chosen by majority vote
> *within the district*, tiny subdistricts are used, perhaps elementary
> school districts. Each subdistrict elects a subdistrict
> representative. Approval voting would serve quite well for this. Then
> the subdistrict representative has the authority to use votes equal
> to the district population to elect a member of the assembly. Those
> subdistricts whose votes contributed to the election of that member
> are effectively merged. This is districting by a form of deliberate,
> benign gerrymandering. It would allow any party which can win a
> majority in even the tiniest subdistrict to exercise political power,
> and if they can win a majority in enough of these subdistricts, they
> can gain a seat.
> 
> This scheme might pass muster for congressional districts, unless
> federal law requires such districts to be contiguous. (I think that
> there are districts which are "contiguous" only by virtue of weird
> patterns drawn through bodies of water.... so I think this might
> indeed be a matter of state law, not federal. And maybe not.) A
> similar scheme could be used with a contiguity requirement, but it
> would be less advantageous to third parties.
> 
> However, full PR must allow parties with scattered membership to
> still have representation, as long as they can muster enough total
> votes to reach the quota. Asset Voting allows this to happen
> *without* being party-list. The individuals who receive the votes
> might be party representatives, indeed, but they might also be
> independent. And, big secret: if write-in votes are allowed (and they
> should be), *anyone* could serve as an elector in such a system. If
> everyone wrote in their own name, how would this be different from
> what we have now? Well, votes would be reassigned in Asset
> *publicly*, which means that quid pro quo can be involved. It is a
> deliberative process. (Some political scientists list bargaining
> separately from deliberation, but to me that are aspects of the same
> thing, and both are quite different from aggregation, i.e., voting.)
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