[EM] Election methods in student government...

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:48 PM 12/20/2006, Tim Hull wrote:
>Does anyone have any suggestions?  What are the flaws with my 
>proposed system?  Is there something that would potentially be 
>better while not becoming too complex?

There are two kinds of elections, really: officer elections and 
representative elections. In some systems, officers are elected by a 
representative assembly and serve at the pleasure of that assembly. 
It would be equally accurate to say that they are hired servants.

But as to representatives, elected representative is a bit of an 
oxymoron. Who does the representative represent? Those who voted for 
him or her, or the "constitutency," including those who did *not* 
vote for him or her?

There are forms of representative democracy that don't involve 
elections, as such. Proxy democracy, which is in common use in 
business (as a democracy of money, i.e., all shares are equal), 
involves representation which is chosen, rather than elected in some 
kind of contest where voters engage in a tug of war to see who gets 
to have a desired representative, it being assumed that some must lose.

Delegable proxy is a new concept which is starving for actual 
applications. It has been used in one place, within a political 
party, Demoex, in Sweden. But Demoex thought of delegable proxy as a 
computer thing. It isn't, it can be done without computers, though 
computers do make it a little easier. The essence of delegable proxy 
is a proxy list. Any qualified member can name a proxy on that list. 
If the proxy accepts, the relationship is created. The rest is 
analysis, i.e., how the list is used.

To use it for delegable proxy, whenever a vote is analyzed, or, for 
example, one wants to determine who is represented at a meeting, the 
list is compared with who is present or who voted. If a member voted 
directly, then, obviously, that is their vote or their presence. 
Then, if a member was absent, was his or her proxy present or voting? 
If so, then the member's vote is added to that of the proxy, or the 
member is considered to be represented at the meeting. If the proxy 
is absent, then this process is applied recursively with the proxy of 
the proxy, and so forth.

If you try to visualize the structure, it is complex (a fractal, 
actually). But from the point of view of the individual member, it is 
extremely simple. The member names a proxy, and then either 
participates directly or lets the proxy participate.

We envision that peer organizations, where possible, will function as 
direct democracies where voting is concerned. With large 
organizations, it is not direct voting that is a problem, but direct 
deliberation. So we imagine that meetings that otherwise would be too 
large would set rules for full participation: to have the right to 
speak to the meeting without having to ask permission (other than the 
standing and rising to be recognized by the chair), one would have to 
be properly qualified; such qualifications could include be able to 
exercise, directly or indirectly, a certain number of votes, as 
determined by analyzing the proxy list. Other possibilities are that 
some members might participate ex officio, or otherwise as admitted by vote.

As long as voting remains direct/proxy, those who have the right of 
full participation cannot run away with the process, they merely 
serve as representatives of those who have chosen them.

This process could change the world. I won't go into all the details, 
but a student government could be an ideal place to try it out. We 
very much would like to know how it goes, if it is attempted. Even if 
you attempt to propose this, and the proposal goes nowhere, we would 
like to know how and why.

Proxy voting really shouldn't be controversial; it is prohibited 
typically where entrenched authority wants to prevent members from 
exercising full rights. It is allowed by common law whenever property 
rights are involved: you can always name an attorney-in-fact, another 
word for proxy, to handle your property for you. Why not consider 
political rights as being equally important to preserve as property rights?

But *delegable* proxy is totally new. It has been independently 
invented in about four different places in the world in the last 
decade or so. We are very short on experimental data about how it 
would *actually* work, as distinct from the theory, and what problems 
are actually encountered. It is my opinion that many problems that 
people propose as being potentially serious difficulties actually 
won't arise in real practice.

The biggest problem with proxy voting, though, is when it is allowed 
in the rules, but it is not used. Then, comes someone seeking power 
who notices the rule, and that person, perhaps rather quietly, goes 
around and collects proxies, and shows up at a poorly attended 
meeting and turns it upside down. This kind of action, I have seen, 
can result in rapid action by concerned members to outlaw proxy 
voting. But proxy voting wasn't the problem, it was actually the 
*lack* of proxy voting. If every member had named a proxy, which 
assignment is effectively moot if the member actually shows up, there 
would not only have been no problem, but there would have been a very 
high participation rate. The meetings would actually represent *all* 
the members, not just those with extreme views who tend to be more 
represented among those sufficiently motivated to attend meetings....

For information and connection with others around the topic of 
delegable proxy and the related Free Association concept, see 
http://beyondpolitics.org.

One more possibility: a DP assembly is not a "peer assembly," in 
which every participant has the same voting power. There is a variant 
on delegable proxy called Asset Voting. It's one of Warren Smith's 
inventions, which I simplified into Fractional Approval Asset Voting. 
Used multiwinner, it creates a peer assembly where every member 
represents a certain number of members. It can use secret ballot.

Here is how it works: The ballot is a standard ballot with a list of 
candidates, and a place for at least one write-in, and possibly more. 
The voter may vote for as many as the voter chooses. In standard 
Approval Voting, each vote is counted fully, i.e., if you vote for 
more than one, each one you vote for gets one vote added to his or 
her total. Single-winner, this is still one-person, one-vote because 
all votes that are cast for losers are moot; the result would not 
change if those votes were discarded. However, with Asset Voting, 
votes are not wasted, so this is Fractional Approval: if you vote for 
N, each gets 1/N vote.

When the ballots are counted and analyzed, we have a list of 
candidates with vote totals. These votes are considered "Assets" -- 
hence the name -- and the assets may be used to "purchase" seats in 
the assembly. If T ballots are cast containing a vote for at least 
one candidate, and it is desired to elect N members of an assembly, 
then it takes exactly T/N votes to elect one member. Candidates 
holding assets may use these assets to elect themselves, to elect 
another, or may transfer them to another for further combination.

This turns the election of an assembly into a deliberative process....

Sometimes writers have proposed that the Droop Quota be used for the 
election. I don't think that is appropriate: with Asset Voting, 
candidates may hold and use fractional votes, so an exact quota is possible.

There may be dregs, where candidates holding votes cannot come to 
agreement on how to combine them to create winners. My present 
opinion is that the simplest solution is to allow the assembly to be 
short a member or two, with the provision that at any time, the 
remaining votes can be used when those holding them can come to 
agreement. However, it is also possible to create fractional seats, a 
reduced participation status, these seats would still have a 
(fractional) vote, but not necessarily the right to participate in 
deliberation, i.e., to take up the time of the assembly. I'd 
generally suggest avoiding this complication, the damage from the 
very small number of votes that we can expect would end up being 
wasted would be small.

Note that if there *are* votes wasted, there are also candidates who 
are clearly responsible for it, through refusal to compromise.

Asset Voting, used as described, creates a proportional assembly 
without involving party affiliations. Voters may assign votes 
respecting party affiliations, or not, as they choose. Voters could, 
for example, vote for all the Democratic candidates in a public 
election. This would effectively create a party caucus which could 
then choose its members. Somewhat like party list. But voters would 
not be restricted to that. They could simply vote for their favorite, 
giving maximum strength to the empowerment of that individual.