[EM] Election methods in student government...

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 12:44 AM 12/22/2006, Tim Hull wrote:
>The ideas you put forth are quite interesting, to say the least.  To 
>tell you the truth, I have been working on more ways to make student 
>government more accessible than using a system of proportional 
>representation rather than allowing the majority faction to grab all 
>seats.  One of my ideas was to in fact create an "associate 
>representative" position where students who show up at a certain 
>number of meetings can speak but not vote.  From the sounds of it, 
>delegable proxy has much of the same idea behind it, except the 
>representatives decide who they want to designate as proxies and it 
>can be multilevel (proxy of a proxy, etc).  Also, they have the 
>right to vote...

Well, if the system is direct democracy, any qualified member of the 
organization can vote. However, most won't, most of the time. The 
arguments allowing direct democracy mostly assume that most people 
won't be qualified to vote, i.e., won't have put in the time to 
understand the issues, etc. It's actually antidemocratic nonsense; 
what really happens is that if people don't feel qualified to vote, they don't.

Now, if you made voting very, very easy, you might indeed get a lot 
of noise, i.e., uninformed votes. I don't know. But if you still 
require that voters show up at the meeting in order to vote directly, 
you don't have to risk this. It might still not happen even if you 
allow internet voting, especially if the process for voting required, 
for example, the voter to state that they have read the record of the 
debate....

But if voters are present at the meeting where debate takes place, 
what is the argument for not allowing them to vote?

Yes, it is contradictory to representative democracy. Supposedly 
there are already representatives there who will be casting, in 
effect, "their" vote. But if you have delegable proxy, that doesn't 
happen. If a voter votes directly, the proxy is moot for that poll. 
To determine a vote count under DP, you take the list of voters and 
how they voted and expand it with the proxy assignment list. You only 
add votes from voters who did not already vote, but who have a proxy 
who voted.... or their proxy did not vote, but *his or her* proxy did, etc.

>Currently, proxy voting is expressly prohibited in the rules of our 
>student government.

Absolutely not surprising. It is common. Why?

One thing that should be realized: direct democracy means that votes 
aren't secret, generally. Certainly the vote of a proxy can't be 
secret! (Unless you have a system which, say, gives out ballots to 
proxies; much more complicated that what I am proposing. Generally, 
secret voting is not part of deliberative process....)

Consider the effect of outlawing proxy voting: it makes it much more 
difficult for students to actually exercise power, unless they invest 
much more time than many of them have. It leaves power in the hands 
of a much smaller group of students, typically those with strong 
political interests or aspirations.

Remember this: proxy voting is a common-law right whenever property 
rights are involved. Were it not explicitly prohibited, it would 
probably be lawful. Shareholders in corporations insisted on proxy 
voting, it is in *their* interests. (In share corporation democracy, 
the institution of the proxy has somewhat been corrupted by the 
common practice of existing management soliciting proxies from 
shareholders, at company expense. Since many shareholders don't 
realize the implications, these proxy solicitations get signed and 
turned in, particularly by small shareholders, but a lot of them, and 
thus existing management has an edge. And a clear conflict of interest.....)

>   However, it could be changed by a simple two-thirds vote - which 
> may be something I may look into as an alternative to the 
> "associate representative" plan I originally created.

Generally, bylaws may be amended either by a two-thirds vote *or* by 
a simple but absolute majority. At least that is Roberts Rules. 
(i.e., this would be a majority of all eligible voters.) Worth keeping in mind.

>   Those ideas will face opposition, though - many don't like the 
> associate representative idea because they are only representing themselves.

But if proxy voting were allowed ....

The big problem with proxy voting is that it can be abused *if* few 
students name proxies. In other words, proxy voting gives the 
membership power. But if most members don't exercise that power, by 
naming a proxy they trust, then a few members may collect proxies and 
appear and overwhelm those who directly participate. This tends to 
get them upset! And these members then, being the most generally 
active ones, may act to outlaw proxy voting. And sometimes they succeed.

>   The proxy idea could potentially be better in this regard, as the 
> representative is the one with control.  I don't know about 
> multilevel proxy (in a student government it sounds like overkill), 
> but a flexible proxy system seems to be something worth looking in to.

Delegable proxy seems overkill, but it is actually quite simple, and 
delegability only affects things when it is needed. In other words, 
if you name a proxy, and the proxy actually attends, then 
delegability is moot. But what happens if your proxy misses a meeting?

Now, if you trust your proxy, why not trust the person your proxy 
trusts? This is the idea behind delegable proxy.

Further, DP is scalable. It does not matter how large the 
organization is, with DP you can function as a direct democracy. 
Essentially, DP can boil down working meeting size to whatever degree 
is necessary. But since direct voting is still allowed, this small 
working group can't run away with the organization. They still have 
to convince the *voters*. And there will be proxies who don't hold 
enough proxies to directly participate in deliberation, but they can 
still, for example, attend meetings, and they can still vote. They 
can also speak if they get permission, and I presume that meetings 
would allow some time, say at the end, for general comments from 
members present.... and, of course, they can effectively speak 
through their proxy, the one with sufficient trust to have full 
deliberation rights.

It isn't really "multilevel" proxy if there is only one meeting..... 
It is simply that the proxy who represents each voter may shift, 
depending on who attends. The proxy list only has one proxy per 
student. It is a very simple list.

(There are details that I'm not going into, and, unfortunately, we 
don't have any working models to show how decisions were made about 
these details. There are, for example, many different ways that could 
be used to determine who has direct participation rights, i.e., the 
right to speak and enter motions. "proxy rank" is one. There are others.)

>That said, I really don't like the process of asset voting - which 
>seems like a separate idea than proxies.

Yes, but it is the concept of proxy voting applied to secret ballot 
and also to creating a peer assembly, if that is desired.

>   This is because it takes control away from the voter in much the 
> same way party lists do except that each candidate is effectively a "party".

Big difference!

It doesn't take control away from the voter except in the sense that 
*any* election of representatives takes control away from the voter. 
Do I get to go to Congress and vote? No!

Now, if I would trust A to represent me in Congress, why not trust A 
to *select* the person who would represent me in Congress? Indeed, 
much of the real job of elected officials, including representatives, 
is in selecting staff and delegating responsibility to them. A 
representative who is not good at this is not going to be a good 
representative....

>   It sounds like an interesting system, but one that would only be 
> useful in special cases.  As far as voting systems, I'm probably 
> either going to look into proposing STV and IRV (yes, I know IRV 
> isn't great, but it satisfies the later-no-harm principle important 
> to students and is familiar) or some variant of range/approval (if 
> later-no-harm violation is less of a problem).
>
>Overall, I'm just hoping I can do something to open up participation 
>and make the student government here more useful to students.  I 
>actually was appointed to a vacancy one year ago and have been 
>working on issues of participation and electoral reform for a long 
>time.  I actually have lost two multi-seat elections - one by a lot, 
>and the last one by one spot (10th with 9 winners) with 9 
>majority-party members finishing ahead of me.  I do chair a 
>committee, though (and get non-voting parliamentary rights because 
>of it - though a person tried to abolish that after i started to USE them...).

That will happen.

>
>
>Tim
>
>P.S. Am I understanding correctly what you mean by "delegable proxy"?

Understand what "proxy" means. A proxy is someone who exercises a 
right that you could exercise directly, if you could be present (or 
competent; for example, health-care proxies make health care 
decisions for you when you aren't able to do so yourself).

Delegable proxy means that your proxy may designate someone further 
to exercise the right if the proxy cannot do it.

For simplicity, we assume that only one proxy is named. If everyone 
names one proxy, this will, neglecting loops, create a system that 
insures everyone is represented at any meeting. But, of course, there 
will be loops. Some students of DP consider loops a problem, I don't. 
All that needs to be done when loops in a proxy list lead to lack of 
representation -- everyone in the loop is absent -- is to inform the 
members who are so collectively absent. The loop is broken if any 
member names someone outside the loop.

We think that such a system will tend to become one in which there 
are a few large natural caucuses. These are people connected by proxy 
assignments. With such large caucuses, total absence would be rare.

There would still be quorum requirements, but instead of referring to 
numbers of members directly present, they would refer to numbers of 
members present directly or represented by proxy. Delegable proxy 
simply assumes that the proxy of a proxy serves in the absence of the 
proxy.....  and that this is extended indefinitely. That's what makes 
is scalable.

So for DP, this would be a basic description of what you might have:

1. Direct democracy. Any member may attend meetings and vote.
2. A Proxy list. Likely maintained on the internet; any member may 
edit their proxy record at any time. We have tended to think that 
proxies should be accepted to be effective....
3. A practice of expanding direct votes at meetings using the proxy 
list. It is not difficult to generate a printout of a proxy list such 
that one can determine the expanded vote from a list of direct votes. 
On a computer, it is trivial. However, note that with DP, it becomes 
possible to shrink meetings substantially without losing diversity, 
and this makes consensus democracy, at least to some degree, more 
possible. And when you have consensus, expanding votes becomes much 
less important! You would only do it on request, or later, for the record....

We suggest that proxies be accepted because we consider that being a 
proxy is a responsibility: it is essentially an agreement to 
communicate with the client. If I were a client, I'd want the phone 
number of my proxy, I'd want to be able to call him or her up and 
talk about issues. This militates against a single person collecting 
a huge number of proxies *directly*. Indirectly is another matter. 
Indirectly, one proxy could represent even billions of people.... but 
through delegability.