[EM] Path to a Proxy Legislature

[Dave Ketchum]

Trees by Proxy starts at the bottom, such as village, but then extends 
upward to town, county, and state, as practice works toward perfection.

Below registering of  candidates is mentioned - makes sense for, even 
though filing a proxy is easy, such should not elect someone with no interest.

Abd and I have similar goals in different worlds.  Perhaps our having 
separate threads will clarify for readers.

DWK

On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:02:01 -0400 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

> In discussions here under the thread "Trees by Proxy," a proxy 
> legislature was under consideration. As part of this discussion, the 
> question of practicality came up, i.e., of this or that provision, 
> which might possibly, as representing a greater change, prevent implementation.
> 
> It occurred to me to outline a possible path from here to there.
> 
> It begins with Asset Voting. Asset Voting preserves secret ballot at 
> the first stage but effectively becomes delegable proxy for the 
> purpose of electing the assembly. The basic concept of Asset is that 
> voters choose one or more candidates to receive their votes, called 
> Assets. If more than one is chosen, in the original version by Warren 
> Smith, voters could assign any three-place decimal fraction in the 
> range of 0 to 1 to the candidates. There are other implementations 
> which are simpler for voters, including what I called Fractional 
> Approval Asset Voting, FAAV. It is approval because the voter may 
> vote for more than one. It is fractional because if the voter votes 
> for more than one, the vote is divided among them. As a practical 
> matter, it is possible that a voter could get, say, 10 votes and 
> could destribute them as desired. In that, it is like cumulative voting.
> 
> However, FAAV is Asset Voting because the votes then received by the 
> candidates are disposable by the candidates in order to elect 
> winners. We are here assuming a multiwinner election, and in 
> particular, of a legislature with a single district, state-wide. A 
> quota of votes is required for election to the legislature. So if a 
> candidate receives the quota or more, directly, that candidate -- at 
> his or her option -- is immediately elected. In any case, votes not 
> used up to elect a winner remain disposable, at the discretion of the 
> candidate holding them. This is essentially proxy or delegable proxy 
> (and I recommend it be delegable proxy because it makes it more 
> practical for votes to be assigned in relatively small numbers and 
> still concentrate rapidly).
> 
> Asset Voting converts the private, secret votes of individual voters 
> into public electors, who then determine, as the proxies of those who 
> voted for them, the winner(s). Because they can bargain and use 
> deliberative process, the results are not predictable. I will note, 
> however, that if write-in votes are allowed, anyone can serve as an 
> elector, including the voter himself or herself. There are, in some 
> contexts, security considerations that might require secret 
> reassignment of voters where the voter-candidate holds less than a 
> certain number of votes. Beyond that number it becomes practical for 
> the society to protect the electors.
> 
> Perhaps for this discussion it would be better to assume, from the 
> outset, that candidates must be registered as such; if the 
> registration requirements are simple, and if a means is provided to 
> clearly specify from a large number of candidates on the ballot, this 
> may be very little loss of democratic power.
> 
> I have elsewhere described that Asset may be used to elect a 
> legislature that is *mostly* district-based, with the districts being 
> defined on-the-fly by the electors. If votes are reassigned in 
> precinct blocks, it becomes, then, possible to create winners whose 
> votes come from specific areas as shown in the voting records. It is 
> likely, then, that most voters would have a local representative, 
> with a district including their location; districts, of course, will 
> overlap, and there might be a few legislators with a district that 
> includes the entire state. This provides maximum representation to 
> minorities, without needing to define them. They are defined by how 
> they amalgamate their votes.
> 
> Okay, so now we have a fully-proportional, *chosen* legislature.
> 
> The next step is obvious. The electors remain, and may reassign their 
> votes at any time. Again, the simplest way to do this is probably 
> through delegable proxy, where every elector assigns a proxy to 
> another; every elector may directly change their proxy assignment, 
> effective immediately; and this propagates up the hierarchy it 
> creates until it actually changes the vote assignments of legislators.
> 
> (Some worry about proxy loops. Loops are inevitable at the highest 
> levels, if everyone assigns a proxy; the only problem with loops is 
> when they take place at a low level. And there is an extremely simple 
> solution: if a loop leaves someone unrepresented, that elector is 
> notified and if any elector in a loop changes their proxy assignment 
> to someone outside the loop, the loop is broken and connected to a 
> larger group.)
> 
> I have considered it possible that schemes could be set up whereby a 
> peer legislature is maintained. But it is far more flexible if the 
> voting power of legislators varies with their current proxy assignments.
> 
> As long as the secret ballot assignment of votes to electors is 
> maintained, direct voting on the part of citizens remains impossible, 
> for there is no way to reconcile these votes with the votes cast by 
> the legislator-proxies. However, direct voting *could* be implemented 
> for electors, since their vote assignments are known. Votes in the 
> legislature then become continuously representative of the electors, 
> who either vote directly or by proxy.
> 
> What, then, does it mean to be "elected"? It means that the 
> legislator gains "floor rights." This is the right, subject to 
> assembly rules, to speak in the assembly and to enter motions. It has 
> been pointed out that some level of uncertainty and practical 
> disturbance would exist if floor rights depended continuously on 
> proxy counts. But I see no reason why these have to be rigidly 
> connected. There is little harm if a legislator maintains floor 
> rights beyond the time when he or she holds a quota of proxies. All 
> that changes is the number of votes cast. And when a new legislator 
> gains floor rights, the proxy of that legislator remains active until 
> the legislator takes his or her seat -- and even beyond then, because 
> I assume that legislators, even though having floor rights, may still 
> vote by proxy. So the implementation of actual floor rights may under 
> some circumstances be delayed a time. All this would be a matter of 
> assembly rules, and if direct voting is maintained by electors, the 
> electors can control those rules, effectively excluding some of 
> themselves in the name of legislative efficiency, but never thereby 
> losing voting power.
> 
> The largest step here is Asset Voting.
> 
> Oddly enough, when I first heard of Single Transferable Vote, and it 
> was before I knew of Smith's Asset Voting, I thought that this was 
> what it meant: that the candidates receiving votes could transfer 
> them.... It must not be such a terribly strange idea.....
> 
> The problem, of course, with STV and similar schemes is that it is 
> not flexible, it rigidly determines outcomes at the time of the 
> election can has no power to adjust to ongoing circumstances. STV for 
> a large-district many-winner legislature could produce similar 
> initial composition of the legislature, though Asset has the 
> potential of making expensive campaigning a fish bicycle; with Asset 
> no votes are wasted, even those cast for someone who gets very few. 
> (None at all would be the result if not for security concerns; if I 
> want to coerce your vote, I could require you to vote for yourself. 
> And then, from that point on, I know exactly how you vote.... And I 
> know if you did not vote for yourself as well....)
> 
> (Of course, some votes could be wasted: a holder of votes could 
> refuse to use them to create winners; but if direct voting is 
> allowed, even then there is little harm, since the voting power remains.)
> 
> Proposals for direct democracy are typically rejected, even by 
> progressives, because of the problem of scale. But the problem of 
> scale is a problem of deliberation, not of voting power. This may be 
> one of the most important realizations to come out of these 
> discussions. There is a solution to the problem of scale in 
> democracy. Delegable Proxy. With appropriate assembly rules, it 
> creates a deliberative body of manageable size, while leaving the 
> voting power in the hands of the public, but, normally, exercised 
> through proxies who can become informed regarding the business of the 
> assembly. The everyday citizen is not required to follow all this, 
> except to the extent that he or she is specifically interested; the 
> important choice that citizens may make is: whom do you trust?
> 
> All forms of representative democracy involve such a delegation of 
> trust. What is new is the idea of using this to elect 
> representatives, rather than only for deliberation in a representative body.

-- 
  davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
            Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
                  If you want peace, work for justice.