[EM] MultiGroup voting method

[Juho]

Some delayed comments on MultiGroup.

On Apr 8, 2007, at 7:20 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

> At 06:01 AM 4/7/2007, Juho wrote:
>>> it is an imposed system that the party names are on the ballot at  
>>> all
>>
>> That could also be called "information"
>
> It is one particular kind of information, one which provides  
> information about candidates affiliated with a party and no  
> information about candidates not.

Note that the MultiGroup method allows also non-traditional-party  
candidates to form groups, and it allows party candidates to form  
groups across parties (and other groups and candidates). Parties are  
just one of the reasons to form a group.

> If you allow one kind of information, you favor candidates who look  
> good to the voter in the light of that information. It introduces a  
> bias to provide one or two bits of information, I've never seen  
> more than that.

All information and groupings are allowed, so there should be no bias  
in that sense. All candidates are allowed to advertise themselves by  
announcing "membership" in any group that they consider positive.  
(Well, some groups might handpick their members while others could be  
open to anyone to indicate support. There could be also limitations  
set by the system, e.g. only one region/state allowed. And existing  
parties are likely to influence in all voting methods, one way or  
another.)

>> One difference is that in MultiGroup the declared associations to
>> different groups are used in determining which candidates will be
>> (proportionally!) elected.
>
> What this must mean is that, effectively, the voting is for  
> "groups" rather than for candidates..... which in my view is the  
> exact opposite of what we need....

The MultiGroup (vanilla) votes are to individual candidates. Only the  
proportionality calculations are based on groups that are announced  
before the election.

I can understand support to methods that are free of parties and  
other groups. In some countries the parties have currently stronger  
role than the citizens would like. But getting rid of all groupings  
in large societies is not probable. This leaves "groupless" methods  
(like STV) the benefit of flexible votes that are not bound to  
announced relationships between different candidates. Ok, but I don't  
know if the benefits weigh more than the complexity. The rules on who  
is allowed to become a candidate in "groupless" elections may have  
some further impact (do parties have a role? anyone free to become a  
candidate?). Groupless methods have also the problem that if the  
number of candidates is large voters need lots of information (one  
could distribute informal grouping related information that doesn't  
influence the vote counting process) and filling a ballot could  
require lots of work (e.g. to list all the 100 candidates of the  
favourite party).

>> Note that to some extent grass always looks greener at the other side
>> of the fence. Current political systems may not work optimally. But
>> also future and alternative political systems are subject to
>> corruption.
>
> The claim is made. The proof is actually lacking.

I can't prove that. Too difficult for entire social systems. But I  
give one example. There have been lots of sincere belief and theories  
about the benefits of single-party systems. Practical experiments  
were not entirely successful. In the "partyless" methods I expect  
some new form of parties to arise. In FA/DP I'd expect power hungry  
people to get interested if the FA/DP system becomes influential. I  
mean that when people learn the dynamics of the new systems they also  
find ways to utilize whatever weaknesses the systems may have. I do  
support studies on these topics and their success, but better be  
careful and study carefully also the threat side of the coin.

> Delegable proxy, well implemented in a society which has learned  
> how to use it, would be highly corruption-resistant. Essentially,  
> there aren't any critical nodes to target. The obvious targets are  
> high-level proxies, but high-level proxies can lose their power in  
> a flash if their clients smell a rat. So the high-level proxies,  
> who are generally proxies for quite sophisticated clients, have to  
> be able to convince their clients that the proposed action (which  
> is actually the product of bribery of the proxy) is the best  
> action. Now, if these arguments exist, the corruption isn't necessary!

The property of "losing power in a flash" is common to all methods  
that support "continuous elections" (= not necessarily a proxy  
method, and all proxy methods might not have this property).  
"Sophisticated clients" are more clearly a proxy related property.  
Also "lower layer" clients could change their proxies when the media  
informs them about the political events and this would immediately  
impact also the higher layers. Proxies and continuous elections  
however provide a nice setup that certainly has some positive  
properties worth trying.

>> Sometimes it is better to change an old system to a new one, but
>> often it is also enough just to remove whatever rotten apples there
>> are and find ways how to avoid such problems to emerge repeatedly in
>> the future.
>
> More often, it is all blamed on the "rotten apples" and the remedy  
> is limited to tossing them out, to be replaced by more rotting  
> apples....

This is very true as well.

> until the system changes, the stone will continue to roll back down  
> the hill.

Yes this may happen, but here I see both options, either to change  
the whole system or to recognize the apple replacement problem and  
learn tricks that keep such problems at manageable level. (Rotten  
apples can be either persons, mechanisms etc.) Proxies have some  
positive properties but I don't believe they would automatically  
solve all the corruption related problems. My best guess is that they  
work quite fine in many areas like AA but performance in areas where  
power attracts power hungry people their performance is not quite  
proven yet, and careful tuning may be needed to find the best working  
scenarios.

Juho



	
	
		
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