[EM] proxy representation with "dissenting votes"

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

(continuation of earlier response)

At 04:43 PM 2/26/2006, Jiri Räsänen wrote:
>The idea has been proposed by a several individuals later on. At the
>moment, there are at least two organisations proposing direct
>representation. One is The Finnish Citizens' Power Association, and the
>other is the Center for Collaborative Democracy (
>http://www.democracy2000.org )

Democracy2000.org went up in 1998, proposing 
proxy representation. There is no mention of 
delegable proxy, which is a crucial innovation, 
there. Standard proxy representation, as proposed 
by Democracy2000, would be a vast improvement 
over existing methods of forming assemblies in 
the political arena, but we can see from the 
experience with proxy representation in large 
corporations that this innovation (i.e, applying 
proxy rep to political organizations, as if each 
voter held one share in a corporation) will be 
limited in its impact. It is delegable proxy that 
could reduce the gap between individual members 
and those who represent them; without this, in 
large organizations, we will end up with 
something quite like what we have today. Better, 
but not radically different. Politics as usual, 
really. A small notch up from proportional representation, that's all.

>There is also a proxy-voting decision-making software under GNU. (
>http://www.vivarto.com/tiki-index.php )

If I'm correct, this is the software whose 
bugginess resulted in its abandonment by Demoex. 
(I'm not sure.) Software is necessary if one 
desires to make the calculation of total vote 
from actual cast votes easy, and especially (and 
with the greatest difficulty) if one wants to 
have base-level proxy assignments to be secure 
and not only confidential but blind, i.e., the 
recipient of the proxy does not know who exactly 
is being represented. Can't talk to this person 
on the phone, though might be able to send an email.

I actually think that it may be impossible to be 
fully secure, for reasons I won't go into here; 
if secure, the system will be badly hobbled. 
However, fortunately, it is not necessary to be 
secure in initial, nongovernmental applications 
of DP. Proxy assignments can be open and 
verifiable by anyone. Further, if the context is 
what I've called a Free Association, phony 
registrations in order to fraudulently amplify 
the proxy rights of someone will not only be 
difficult to maintain, but they will be next to 
useless. To describe why would take more words than I can spare at the moment.

Suffice it to say that I am actively promoting 
the combination of delegable proxy and the Free 
Association concept as being what will radically 
-- but peacefully and in an orderly way -- 
transform society, not just politics. Because of 
the avoidance of controversy *as an 
organization*, a Free Association could function 
even under difficult political circumstances, 
such as in China today. A Chinese FA would simply 
be a means whereby citizens could communicate and 
cooperate, ostensibly and *actually* for the 
purpose of intelligently and efficiently 
implementing official governmental policy. 
However, the medium is the message. Once large 
numbers of people are communicating efficiently 
and openly -- with the existing constraints --, 
and if delegable proxy is implemented, there will 
be no way to control the content of the 
communication, because it will take place by 
nonelectronic means once the connections are 
made. So a very gentle revolution, with maximum 
intelligence and minimum violence, could become 
possible. Tienananmen Square contains many 
lessons for those who would transform a place 
like China. Confronting a deeply entrenched 
oligarchy is not something that can be 
successfully done by ad-hoc and incoherent 
organizations. Even though the students at 
Tienanmen actually succeeded in getting the 
government, and especially sympathetic elements 
within the government, to negotiate with them, 
the students were unable to agree to anything, 
for the radical elements, who make the most noise 
and who can field the most fanatics on short 
notice, were inflexible and demanded nothing 
short of the total humiliation of the government.

What I see is that to confront the oligarchies, 
we must organize independently of existing 
structures, and we must organize in a way that 
can quickly form, when necessary, a consensus. If 
the organization is structured properly, radical 
elements who do not accept the considered views 
of the large majority of members (as developed 
and expressed directly or indirectly through 
proxies), and who choose to act, will correctly 
be seen as being independent of the organization, 
and the organization itself will not suffer from 
their likely repression. Free Associations, quite 
simply, don't take controversial positions. But 
there is nothing to prevent a caucus within the 
organization from acting independently, since a 
Free Association has no control whatever over its 
members. It does not even take their money and 
spend it without their individual and continued 
consent, except for very minor routine operating 
expenses, completely noncontroversial.

Once we have a broad consensus, formed outside of 
existing structures, we can move the existing 
structures, they are vulnerable to this, *all of 
them.* Only the most totally repressive of 
governments could succeed in preventing it, 
actually. China is repressive, but not that 
repressive. And neither is the United States. In 
someplace like Iraq, it is possible that the 
government could and would have acted to suppress 
the independent communication of citizens; 
however, we really don't know. Do remember that 
such an organization, in such a place, would be 
organized, ostensibly and, as I've said, actually 
at least at the beginning, to promote official 
goals. In China, for example, official policy 
favors environmental protection and is strongly against graft.

The fact is that *any* excuse for organizing that 
could bring in large numbers of people could 
establish the organization necessary to produce 
the kind of social change I'm talking about.

But the combination that would make this happen 
has never been tried: FA and DP. Demoex 
implemented DP, and it worked, but Demoex did not 
understand that in order to create what they said 
they wanted, they had to bring in everyone. Yet 
Demoex took controversial positions and promoted 
them. They elected a representative to serve on 
the city council who pledged to vote the way that 
they decided. It was quite easy to predict that 
this would alienate and offend the other members 
of the city council, who were faced with a robot 
rather than with a human being whom they could 
negotiate and deliberate with. Suppose, instead, 
that Demoex had *not* attempted to control a city 
council member, through an internet-meeting 
political party, but they had formed a DP Free 
Association, the purpose of which would be to 
*advise* the city council with regard to citizen 
views, and also to communicate back to the 
citizen whatever the council wanted to present to 
them. In other words, what if the relationship 
between this different Demoex and the council had 
remained totally voluntary, without any effort to 
exert, *directly*, political power. In this case, 
every member of the council would have a strong 
interest in communicating and cooperating with 
this Demoex. If not, I could predict that the 
next election would reverse that situation. In 
turn, the Demoex structure would be a means 
whereby the voters would receive advice about how 
to vote (which does happen with the actual 
Demoex). Note that the organization itself, 
unless a position happens to enjoy complete 
unanimity, won't be giving voting advice. But the 
individual proxies can and will advise those they represent as to how to vote.

This is typical of FAs. They do not collect and 
wield power directly. But they can mobilize 
tremendous power if they can find consensus or 
something close to it. (If there is, for example, 
a small majority in favor of some position and 
almost as many members, directly or indirectly, 
against that position, because the two caucuses 
virtually formed around this issue remain free to 
act independently, and if both sides care about 
the issue, they, acting independently, will 
cancel each other out. But if they can find 
consensus, they can exert power additively. This 
is why FA/DP organizations would tend to generate 
consensus, even with highly controversial issues: 
consensus is more powerful. *Much* more powerful.

Consensus is not nearly as elusive as most think. 
It seems elusive because the mechanisms to seek 
it generally don't exist. And existing political 
structures profit from division. Those who have 
worked in organizations using consensus process, 
though, know that consensus can often be found, 
when the process is undertaken to find it. And 
this brings us to why the organizations we need 
must be efficient, and why they must be able to 
form small working groups, why having a large 
assembly with hundreds of members won't cut the 
mustard. There are not hundreds of positions on 
any issue; therefore there is far too much 
redundancy in large assemblies and thus highly 
inefficient communication process.

However, once again, I applaud and encourage all 
efforts to apply proxy democracy, even more 
delegable proxy, whether or not the organizations 
contain all the elements that I would see as 
necessary for maximum success. We will all 
benefit from the experience gained in these 
organizations; I only caution readers that the 
failure of such organizations will not mean that, 
for example, delegable proxy won't work, because 
failures may be due to other elements present. It 
will be important for us to understand *why* 
these experiments either failed or were less 
successful than they might have been.

Note that one of the more subtle dangers is that 
an organization is mildly successful. Those who 
are the effective acting oligarchy in the 
organization -- there is always such -- will tend 
to think that the success if due to their efforts 
and that continued success depends on keeping 
things more or less the same, the only thing that 
needs to be done is to convince the bulk of the 
members that they should be more active. But 
success can exist *in spite* of what those 
involved think is bringing it. To me, the key questions would be:

1. Is the organization bleeding members 
("whiners," "people who will never be satisfied," 
"people who don't really support our goals," as 
they will often be described), or, alternatively, 
does it have large numbers of relatively inactive 
members who are not clearly represented and 
connected with the decision-making process?

2. Are new ideas rapidly considered and openly 
accepted or rejected, such that the person 
bringing the idea knows, quickly, *why* it was 
rejected, if it was rejected? Many organizations 
develop black holes for new ideas. Frustrated 
members often don't make any noise, they just 
fall silent or go away with no fuss. If you don't 
try to find out why they have become inactive, they won't tell you.

3. Does the group make decisions without the 
consent of all or nearly all of its members? I 
don't mean "active participation," that is 
actually not only impossible in large groups but 
undesirable, but rather that there is a general 
and on-going consent to the existing power relationships in the organization.

As an example of organizational dysfunction, 
consider Americans for Approval Voting, or 
Citizens for Approval Voting, and its primary 
communication mechanism, the yahoogroups list. 
The list is controlled by one person, though I 
think it may be owned by another. I was 
blacklisted from posting to that list, without 
due process, and certainly without any 
consultation of the membership. To my knowledge, 
I'm the *only* person who has ever been 
blacklisted who wasn't a spammer. And what did I 
do? I attempted to suggest that those who support 
Approval Voting organize as an FA/DP 
organization. And I did not agree to stop when I 
was asked to stop posting "irrelevancies." I 
didn't refuse, I just didn't agree to stop. I 
never violated any rule, at least not any written 
rules. I was not abusive and not truly 
irrelevant, and, when, earlier, the moderator had 
asked me, on the list, to stop writing about 
irrelevancies, several members spoke up and said 
they thought it was relevant, and the moderator 
basically said, "Never mind." But, of course, 
next time the moderator did not bring it up on 
the list, the moderator made the demand directly 
of me, and when I didn't immediately agree, the 
moderator did not threaten banning me, rather the 
moderator simply banned me, period. And even more 
arguably irrelevant material continued to appear on the list, just not from me.

Had Approval Voting been a critical issue for me, 
there was plenty I could have done. But it was 
not, and I have, as readers of this list know, 
other fish to fry. I did just a little so that if 
there was any substantial dissenting faction in 
the AV community, it would have a place to go 
(hence av.beyondpolitics.org, a wiki), and it 
appears there was none. However, and this is my 
real point: the list traffic dwindled to nearly 
nothing and has continued that way for a long 
time. I actually did support Approval Voting, and 
have continued to promote it elsewhere, even 
though AV is little more than a short-term 
band-aid on the face of majoritarian democracy.

Healthy organizations will welcome dissent and 
will channel it into its truly constructive 
purpose: deliberation and the development of 
consensus. Most of us, and most political 
activists especially, want to organize and 
communicate with people of like mind, which is quite limiting.