[EM] Asset Voting

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 06:39 PM 2/6/2007, raphfrk at netscape.net wrote:
>From: abd at lomaxdesign.com
> > This
> > essentially turns an election where winners do not appear from the
> > direct votes into a deliberative process, conducted on behalf of the
> > voters by those trusted by them.
>
>I think the loss of control would make this a hard sell for people who
>have used PR-STV.  They will see it as reducing their choice rather
>than increasing it.  The fact that there would (hopefully) be alot more
>candidates would likely be lost.

I see this "loss of control" argument fairly frequently. It's 
actually pretty odd. When I described delegable proxy to a neighbor, 
her comment was "Oh, I could never trust anyone with my vote." Yet 
what she has now is a system which entrusts our votes to elected 
representatives whom we did *not* freely choose. The "votes" in 
question are, of course, the votes cast in elected assemblies.

The point of Asset Voting is that if a person could be trusted with 
the office, it is a reasonable presumption that the same person could 
be trusted with choosing who is to fill the office.

I'd assume also that if Asset Voting were seeing a serious attempt at 
implementation, the fact that you literally could vote for *anyone* 
would be made known. The only restriction would be that the 
"candidate" was clearly identifiable, and that, perhaps, the 
candidate had consented to participating in further public process. 
The initial assignment of votes is by secret ballot, presumably, but 
the reassignments will be far more useful (and safer) if they take 
place in public.

Because Asset might be so wide-open, it might be appropriate to 
throttle it back a bit, for example, to require prior registration of 
candidates and perhaps a petition with a modest number of names of 
registered voters. This would indeed limit the freedom of voters a 
bit (but not nearly as much as it is now limited). These registered 
candidates wouldn't necessarily be on the ballot, this registration 
would be well below the level of support that must be shown to be on 
the ballot.

But it doesn't matter. Most people, I'd guess, would vote for someone 
fairly prominent, perhaps someone who has a real shot at winning election.

Note, also, that Asset reassignment used for single winner is 
irrelevant if a candidate has a majority in the initial election.

How the revoting would take place is a matter for consideration, of 
course. It's possible that candidates could simply register vote 
transfers, it could be done on-line. (Security isn't a major issue 
because it is unlikely that a candidate would fail to notice that 
someone else had logged in his or her account and made a transfer.)

The "Loss of Control" thing drives me nuts.... Once a person is 
elected to the office, how much control do we now have?

It's conceivable that Asset could function as a continuous electoral 
college. That is, votes could be *revoked*, effectively removing the 
person from office. Stability considerations would lead to special 
rules for this; perhaps more than a certain percentage of votes would 
have to be withdrawn in order for the person to be un-elected. (I'm 
thinking multiwinner; single-winner, it would be quite like a 
parliamentary system for the election of government ministers, the 
electoral college would be the equivalent of parliament. This would 
be a fully representative parliament, because of the thorough vote 
conservation of Asset.)

>One related issue is transfers in PR-STV.  Sometimes a party candidate
>is very popular generally.  When this candidate is elected (or eliminated)
>alot of his transfers would leave the party.  Under PR-STV, he can blame
>the voters.  However, under asset he would have to either keep the
>votes within the party or risk the ire of fellow party members.

Asset should make it possible for candidates to free themselves from 
parties. I suspect that political parties would become quite a bit 
less important; the fact that votes aren't wasted totally eliminates 
any spoiler effect.

If voters want to support a *party*, they could, for example, vote 
for a committee of party candidates. Parties might recommend this, in fact.

What if, for example, all the Democratic candidates were on the 
Presidential ballot? Vote for your favorite. If these candidates, 
together, have enough votes, they can elect a Democratic president. 
They might pull in independents to do this. ("Democratic" is just an 
example, Republicans, Libertarians, etc., could do the same thing.)

Asset should give power to small parties or independent candidates, 
for, even if not elected, those who *are* elected know where their 
votes came from. Exactly.

Essentially, Asset would take us closer to direct democracy, without 
losing representative democracy.

>Who should I vote for if I like a candidate but don't like the party he
>is representing?  Presumably, I should vote for someone who feels
>the same way.

You vote for the person, under Asset. The Party is irrelevant for the 
purpose of determining winners.

>I think some combination of lists and asset could be good.

As I mentioned, a candidate *could* post a list and promise to follow 
it. This is really all we have with Presidential electors now (in the 
U.S.). Voters could then decide if they want to vote for a person or 
a party or an independent list.

I really think the simplest vote, though, would be for the candidate 
I most trust. Asset would free me from having to think about what 
everyone else thinks....

We keep trying to find ways to automate this process, i.e., to 
incorporate vote reassignment in the election method, without having 
intelligent reassignment, i.e., done by a person.

>For example, you could use PR-STV, but exhausted votes could be
>given to the first choice on the ballot as assets.

Has this been suggested before or is it done somewhere? It sounds 
familiar to me. Yes, that is an obvious use. And if that were done, 
you would actually have full Asset, because I consider you have full 
Asset if voters can  give their votes to someone who can recast them. 
And, if it is as described, you could simply vote for one, it would 
be enough. Your vote wouldn't be wasted.

>Another option is that candidates could publish a partial list, and
>would have to stick to the list until it was exhausted.

Candidate-list, I think we called it.

>The first option preserves the voter control but allows the vote to use
>pure asset if they wish (just rank 1 candidate and leave the rest
>unranked).  If everyone does that, then the result is asset but with
>a PR-STV-like elimination sequence.

Yes. However, why set up that complex process with its potential for 
failure (i.e., failure to choose a Condorcet winner or -- more 
importantly -- a maximized utility winner.)

Deliberative process, one of my realizations this last year was, 
actually combines Condorcet and Range methods. It does it informally 
(or sometimes even formally). If you have a series of Yes/No votes on 
a motion to elect so-and-so, with the motion being amendable, i.e., 
to name someone else, the process would choose the Condorcet winner 
(if those voting were awake!) And assemblies in deliberation do 
discover preference strength and use it to consider compromises.