[Election-Methods] Challenge: Elect the compromise

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 09:09 AM 8/25/2007, Jobst Heitzig wrote:
>Dear Abd ul-Rahman!
> > >Range *is* a majoritarian method since a majority can elect whomever
> > >it wants by bullet voting.
> >
> > That does not contradict what I wrote. Being a "majoritarian" method
> > does not make the method Majority Criterion compliant.
>
>I did not claim that is does. But the relevant question in the 
>situation I specified is whether the majority 55% can elect A no 
>matter what the B-supporters do or not.

"No matter what" is a pretty big condition. Part of my question is 
this, and it is often neglected in discussions of election method 
theory. How will the method itself be determined for this election?

What vote is required to choose an election method? Someone like 
Jobst will imagine, I suspect, that the election method is *imposed* 
by some benevolent dictator.

It isn't a democracy -- majoritarian or otherwise -- if the rules are 
not subject to free choice. And choice by what standard? Is total 
consent required, for example, on the rules?

What if total consent is required for the election? Again, it's 
fairly easy to get C. This might, indeed, be Jobst's secret method. 
Consensus, or some high supermajority, required to complete the 
election. 60% would do in this election, and, in fact, standard 
deliberative process is even stronger, requiring a two-thirds 
majority under normal rules to proceed to a vote, and the C faction 
would not rest until the motion were amended to choose C.

So standard deliberative process would, in fact, satisfy the 
conditions of the problem.

But supermajority consent is itself hazardous for other reasons, and 
I've mentioned them. Standard rules do give the majority tools that, 
if it cares enough, it could use to overcome the determined 
opposition of a minority like 45%. But it won't use them in a 
situation like this, if the preferences are accurately stated and 
commensurable. I gave an example where they would not be, but if we 
assume that they are, then generally the majority would not care 
enough to take the risky move of bypassing the normal rules. The 
majority knows that those rules are there to protect everyone, not 
just this particular minority, this time.

> > Majority rule in aggregative systems is oppressive, which is why few
> > seriously propose pure aggregative, direct democracy. However, in the
> > context of full deliberative context, it is crucial, for, in fact,
> > the alternative to majority rule is not supermajority rule or
> > consensus, it is minority rule, where the status quo favors the
> > minority.
>
>How do you come to that conclusion?

Experience and theory.

Well, if the status quo favors the minority, it is obvious. If a 
minority can block decision, no matter how important, then the 
majority is powerless to rectify what may be even severely 
oppressive, as the situation has developed. And who decides what is 
"important?"

Some consensus communities incorporate a circuit breaker to 
ameliorate the problem. One, for example, provided that, after 
certain process had been exhausted, 80% of the property owners (it 
was a cohousing community) could vote to bypass the consensus rule. 
But, of course, this merely requires that the faction holding out is 
not 20%. It ameliorates the problem, but does not fix it.

>  There are of course other alternatives, as the solution of the 
> stated problem will show.

We'll see.

> > Majority rule is the foundation of deliberative democracy.
>
>No. Democracy means "the people" rule, not a mere 51% of the people.

I wrote "deliberative democracy," which means that the *deliberation 
of the people rules*. Not the people simply voting. Deliberation 
requires process and process requires constant decision-making. How 
are these decisions made? Is consensus or supermajority required for 
all of them?

This is difficult enough when there are only, say, twenty people in 
the community. Try this trick with 200 or 2000. Without DP, forget 
it. And with DP, how would the assembled proxies make process decisions?

Would they have to debate every decision? Robert's Rules are the 
operating foundation of deliberative democracy, they are a 
codification of common law, based on the actual practice of 
deliberative assemblies -- peer assemblies, with the freedom to make 
their own rules -- the world over, though, mostly from western 
culture, to be sure. If you have to debate the question of whether or 
not to close debate and proceed to whatever decision-making process 
is going to be used, well, Robert's Rules does not allow debating 
Previous Question. To do so would defeat the purpose. Similarly, 
there are other motions that are not debatable.

A majority is the *bare minimum* by which a deliberative body makes 
certain decisions. Some decisions, including the very important 
Previous Question, require a two-thirds majority. The relative 
guarantee of full deliberative process, and the procedural 
protections involved in Previous Question, mean that a vote is not 
taken until a supermajority considers the time ripe; a large 
minority, then, can ensure that it has been fully heard and that 
strength of its preferences is available for consideration.

But a minority cannot, without some external force intervening, force 
a majority to do something without its consent. If the majority does 
not consent to the "compromise," a voting method that allowed the 
issue to be forced would be clearly undemocratic.

Now, if the majority accepts, for example, Range Voting as a method, 
and then votes sincerely, i.e., the assumed ratings, C will win. But 
if we force something else, if we force a C win no matter what the 
majority chooses to do, we are coercing consent, no matter how we slice it.

>  Majoritarian methods can never be democratic in the basic sense of 
> "democratic".

Hogwash. First of all, "majoritarian methods" is undefined. While we 
can certainly imagine -- and note the existence of -- 
non-majoritarian solutions to the problem of social organization, 
they do not result in single decisions. For example, the market 
solution creates a host of individual decisions that may average out 
in certain ways, but not a single choice as implied in this problem.

"Democratic" as Jobst is using it includes a host of assumptions 
about how the people operate to make their choice. Does it require 
that every person in the democracy consent to every decision?

Perhaps. I generally use "democracy" as a measure, not aa an 
absolute. We have maximum democracy if everyone consents to the 
common decisions. We have majority democracy if at least half 
consent, which is obviously far less desirable. To the extent we have 
less than that, what we have something that is less democracy than it 
is something else, usually some kind of oligarchy. Which is what we 
have, mostly, in most places.

If we care about democracy, we will, then, act to increase the true 
consent of the people to what is collectively done in their name. And 
this is what I see happening in free peer assemblies, as are quite 
common on a small scale. This is not something new and experimental.

What is new and experimental are ideas about how to scale this to 
work in large societies.

Small societies, for the most part, use majority votes to make 
decisions, routinely. But they also may put a lot of effort into 
ensuring that these decisions are well enough crafted that they do 
not seriously offend a minority. A group may disagree on some 
decision, but may also be quite willing -- and this is normal -- to 
accept the decision and move on, it not being considered important 
enough to push the issue. Standard process *does* provide for 
procedures that protect minorities against a premature decision by a 
majority. But the majority ultimately has the power, if *it* chooses 
to force the issue.

And certainly this is an undesirable situation, and certainly a wise 
majority will strive to avoid it, but sometimes -- rarely, actually 
-- it must proceed.

Who decides if a situation, perhaps an emergency in the view of the 
majority, warrants going ahead and deciding by a mere majority?

To me, the answer is quite clear. Jobst, what would be your general answer?

There is another possible solution, but it is not democracy. It is 
"rule of law." And this requires an outside, imposed enforcement. We 
cobbed together, in the U.S., a hybrid system, with complex checks 
and balances that work, sometimes, and don't work, sometimes, and it 
is quite well known that we don't have a democracy here, not a pure 
democracy. We have "rule of law." We have a "republic." Both of these 
abstract power from the people and empower an oligarchy. Rule of law 
empowers the judiciary and executive branches, as well as the 
legislature. Both of these, in a republic, require the existence of 
privileged voters. We elect them, but through processes which favor 
those with financial resources. Some of this was not part of the 
original design, it developed.

>  They may only lead to pseudo-democratic state in the long run when 
> majorities shift (which is of course not guaranteed but relies 
> heavily on chance, and seemingly many on this list don't like chance...).

This presumes fixed factions. The fact in real small democracies is 
that such factions are very loose and undefined. I'm in the majority 
on this vote and in the minority on that. It actually averages out 
quite rapidly, if the organization has a lot of business.

By focusing on candidate elections -- which are not actually a 
democratic feature, for they assign the power of the people to 
individuals, typically for fixed terms, thus removing power from the 
people for the term (the right of recall is so difficult to exercise 
that it is rarely used) -- we make it seem as though the benefits 
balance out only over a very long period. And that's true, and it is 
a defect of single-winner elections.

Indeed, single-winner, majoritarian elections for representatives are 
oppressive, denying the minority *any* representation. And that is 
totally unnecessary. There are much better systems. And then, once we 
have truly democratic representational systems (such as good PR or 
Delegable Proxy or the like) we can elect officers through 
deliberative process, and, in that process, wide consent is 
definitely valued in healthy societies.

And a society does not become healthy merely because of the 
introduction of better voting methods. It takes more than that, a lot more.