[EM] RE : The list's complete rejection of the poll

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 01:42 AM 2/21/2007, Juho wrote:
>Few thoughts about wiki and public voting:
>- I guess people will be more "mainstream" when their votes can be
>seen by others => extreme groups that are not generally liked (in the
>media, by friends etc.) will get less support

etc.

Of course, there is a solution, which is mixed anonymous/public 
votes. That is, there can be a public poll and an anonymous poll at 
the same time.

Generally, in the FA/DP concept, polls will be taken publicly. 
However, there is nothing to prevent people from joining anonymously 
(i.e., using a pseudonym). There is nothing to prevent sock puppets.

*But* poll analysis is distributed in FA/DP. That is, anyone can 
analyze a poll, using information about users. Some users will be 
known. Others will be known, not publicly, but to their proxies. So 
there will be fully anonymous users, validated users (validated by a 
public process), and indirectly validated users (validated by their 
proxy, presumably.) All this can be considered in analyzing polls.

This can be done in FA/DP because the organization is not taking an 
official position based on the poll. The poll is for information 
purposes only, and can legitimately be reported as such. That is, it 
would never be legitimate to say that the Free Association of 
Democrats endorses such and such a candidate. But it could be said 
that 96.3% of the members, voting directly or by proxy, endorsed that 
candidate. It's just a fact.

Similarly with the Election Methods Free Association and polls 
regarding election methods.

FAs are what exist by default. What we are trying to do is to 
formalize them. DP adds a new dimension.

Many think that DP is a fish bicycle in small organizations. Not so, 
at least not in theory. EM, for example, has people who come and go. 
They may continue to have an interest in EM, and they certainly don't 
lose their knowledge -- or at least most of them haven't, my mind is 
a leaky sieve -- but life moves on, many of them simply don't have 
the time any more. That is exactly what DP is for. If they leave 
behind a proxy, not only have they provided information about who 
represents the "majority," or whatever, but they remain contactable, 
presuming that they have entrusted their proxy with continued contact 
information. They may be able to come back in if something comes up 
that they should attend to.

DP, we think, will allow small organizations to grow in a way that 
currently is not possible. I've already seen, myself, the benefits of 
thinking of Jan Kok as my proxy. Quite simply, I can now do things 
that I couldn't do before. Among them, I can respond to the Approval 
Voting mailing list even though I'm banned there. I simply send my 
post to Jan. If he thinks it appropriate for that list, he forwards 
it. It's totally legitimate, and it answers the legitimate concerns 
of the moderator of that list. If he wants to ban everyone who dares 
to transmit something they think relevant to the list, that would be 
up to him, wouldn't it?

(And in any case, after I was banned, traffic on the AV list 
plummeted. Cause and effect? Well, it wasn't only me who was 
repressed or who they attempted to repress. Basically, they tried to 
stop discussion of Range Voting, and the response was the formation 
of the Range Voting list. Which has *huge* traffic, compared to what 
the AV list had in its heyday. Much of it *very* relevant to 
Approval, specifically.

In fact, the general sense on the RV list, though we haven't polled, 
is that AV is a very good first step, the simplest and most 
cost-effective reform on the table. We have some chance of actually 
seeing political consequences to this. And there is a good level of 
consent to this from Condorcet advocates. It will whet the appetite, 
we think. People will then want the ability to rank (moving in the 
Condorcet direction) or rate in more detail (going in the Range direction).