[EM] Re: rank/approval cutoff ballot

[Abd ulRahman Lomax]

At 03:45 PM 7/21/2005, Araucaria Araucana wrote:
>This now sounds like a primary and general election.  That might be
>one way to spin it.  Consider, for example, that Washington State's
>top-two runoff was declared unconstitutional last Sunday:
>
> 
>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002384176_webstateprimary15.html

Interesting. I think the judge was right.

One of the nasty consequences of a two-party system is that the conduct of 
the parties themselves come to be of great public concern, there are 
pressures to regulate, for example, how the parties nominate candidates. 
Without that, it would seem to be nobody's business but party members how a 
party makes its decisions....

Were it not for the two-party system, there would be a natural consequence 
for parties that do not respect the right of decision of their members: the 
members would simply leave, or, maybe even worse, remain members but vote 
outside the party. (If not for the two-party system, there would be another 
party with congenial ideas for the voter to go to.)

I find the whole party primary system to be a reproduction within the 
parties of the same insanity that we have in the rubber-stamp electoral 
college.... I remember when I first started watching conventions on TV, it 
must have been 1956. It seemed to me that these people were gathered not 
just to put on a stage show, but to actually make decisions. I think I 
remember multiple ballots.... I should look at the history and see if it 
was actually that way. After all, I was only twelve years old in 1956. Now, 
the conventions are just TV productions, choreographed pep rallies.

>This list was discussing approval-based primaries back in early 2004,
>if I recall correctly.
>
>Back then, I was thinking about something like this (borrowed from
>Jobst's Imagine Democratic Fair Choice page on electowiki):
>
>                    I     |  I also
>                 support  |  approve
>                directly: |    of:
>        ------------------+----------
>        Anna        X     |     O
>        Bob         O     |     O
>        Cecil       O     |     X
>        Deirdre     O     |     X
>        Ellen       O     |     O
>        ------------------+----------
>                  (vote   | (vote for
>                   for    |  as many
>                 exactly  |   as you
>                   one)   |   want)
>
>
>The real trick is deciding what to do with the results!

The real *problem* is trying to do with a fixed procedure what actually 
calls for an intelligent deliberative process. I don't think it can be 
done, i.e., I don't think that any set ballot and counting procedure is 
going to produce results even close to ideal. My current favorite method, 
Smith's Asset Voting, is as good as I expect it will be because it reduces 
the final step to a deliberative process (I consider bargaining to be an 
aspect of deliberation). The votes don't just decide on their own, by the 
application of a few simple rules (or even some complicated rules, but not 
as complicated as the human mind), to drop in the winner's box. They are 
placed there by players who understand the consequences.

I have seen Approval voting be a great *pre-decision* tool. Sometimes it is 
quite obvious from Approval results what decision should be made (Approval 
is not confined to elections, it has relevance wherever options are to be 
chosen from among a larger set). Then all that remains is to make this 
explicit by a motion to adopt or elect or whatever, which then passes with, 
often, a supermajority. As I've written before, I've seen this process turn 
a contentious issue into a unanimous decision, once the arguments had been 
fully heard and everyone knew how the group, in general, felt.

This, of course, was in an organization which values unity, which dislikes 
having a minority dragged along by a bare majority, which prefers, if it 
can get it, consensus.

Now, shouldn't society as a whole be like that? I find it interesting that 
small towns often run on something that approaches consensus on most 
issues. I think a corollary of that is that elections in these towns often 
attract only a single candidate. If that were due to the utter hopelessness 
of opposition, it wouldn't be good. But that's not it. It is simply that if 
someone is doing a good enough job, and is willing to continue doing it, 
why bother with a contested election?

>In Washington state, parties objected to the top-two runoff, because
>some supporters of a strong candidate might vote for the weaker of the
>opposition.

Maybe that would happen. Anyway, it was the wrong way to fix the problems 
in the system.

The real way is to address the core problem: electoral democracy itself is 
a lousy form of communication. It is appropriate for ratifying the results 
of deliberation, not as a substitute for deliberation. The media circus 
bears some remote resemblance to deliberation, but not enough to genuinely 
serve. That we have such close Presidential elections in the U.S. is to me 
a sign that the pre-election process is not working.... The wrong 
candidates are being presented.

Of course, I'm of the opinion that the last persons to be considered for 
high public office would be those who seek it. Politicians know this, which 
is why they always want it to appear that they have been drafted.

In a delegable proxy democracy, people who actively campaign to be named as 
a proxy would, indeed, be poor choices. Rather, proxies would simply be 
active members of the organization who are noticed by other members who 
then ask them if they are willing to serve. Since they are already active, 
it is not so much more work to serve as a proxy. It's an entirely different 
approach to political structure, built from the bottom rather than from the 
top. (We have a top-down structure that does include a kind of ratification 
process, but little bottom participation in the decisions of what is 
presented to be approved, in determining the set of realistic choices.)