[EM] RE : Re: RE : Re: Ranked Preferences, Range

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 10:24 AM 10/30/2006, Kevin Venzke wrote:
>If (in a public election) a voter wants to vote for the consensus option,
>but doesn't know what it is and doesn't feel confident in providing
>his own input as to which candidate it should be, can it really be so
>important to accomodate this voter as to implement a different election
>method for him? Particulary considering that lots of information should
>have been available on which this voter could have made a decision.

Any serious and deep political reform has got to understand that most 
people don't want to be, and never will be, continually involved in 
politics. People do their jobs, raise their families, pursue their 
interests entirely aside from politics.

Yet these people have a right (and associated responsibilities) to 
participate in the processes by which society guarantees that it is 
functioning with the consent of its members. Which *is* important.

They may not have the time to do the research that would allow them 
to vote with full understanding. But their opinions still matter, 
what is important to them still matters.

There are two rights that I consider basic that don't exist in many 
contexts now.

The first would be the right to consent or withhold consent regarding 
decisions being taken that affect them. Directly.

Representative systems that use elections to select representatives 
do not accomplish this. Rather they attempt to create some kind of 
decision-making body, and the thinking behind this has often been 
that the people are not to be trusted with important decisions. Yet, 
what I've seen of Town Meeting democracy is that, on a small scale, 
ordinary citizens do quite well.

But Town Meeting only theoretically gives every citizen the right to 
vote directly. If everyone shows up, the Meeting is cancelled and 
postponed until a venue can be found that will accomodate the 
crowds.... It is much more common, in fact, to have trouble putting 
together a quorum, which may be as low as 5%, I forget.

Proxy systems entirely solve this problem! They have new problems as 
the scale increases, which is why corporations have often run away 
from effective shareholder control, but delegable proxy, I'll assert, 
addresses this.

But the problem of scale is really almost entirely the problem of 
*deliberation.* It is deliberation that becomes impossible as Town 
Meetings increase in size, until ultimately they drop Town Meeting 
and go to, say, Mayor/Council. So the concept is to *leave* direct 
voting wherever possible, and use representation for deliberation. 
This is possible without the Internet, but the Internet makes it easy.

Mailing lists, for example, on yahoogroups, can be moderated for most 
members, with a class of members allowed to post directly. This is 
restriction in deliberation. But every member of the list can vote in 
polls. This is direct participation in voting.

In reality, I think that the vast majority of votes will be cast by proxies.

Ah, yes, the second right. I mentioned it without making it explicit 
that this was the second right. It is the right to freely *choose* 
representatives. It is a common law right when property is involved. 
It is a mystery to me why it is so obscure, the idea of applying this 
to politics.

It should have come a long time ago.

But, then again, so should suitcases with wheels, which were unknown 
when I was young. We used to lug those monsters. "Luggage."