[EM] stratified renormalisation for elections

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 09:00 AM 5/21/2007, raphfrk at netscape.net wrote:
>One solution would be to do stratified renormalisation.  This is 
>where you split the population up into sub-groups.  If a sub-group 
>is over-represented by the number of voters, the vote of each member 
>of that group would be reduced in weight.  Similarly, if the 
>demographic is under-represented, it would have its votes increased in weight.

Of course, delegable proxy does this directly. Who shows up becomes 
almost irrelevant. Subgroups don't have to be specially identified.

Further, Asset Voting with absentee ballots also covers it completely.

The lengths we will go to avoid the pure democracy of Delegable Proxy 
or the very reasonable approximation of it represented by Asset 
Voting continue to amaze me.

Proxy voting is what rich people do, as Mikael Nordfors has pointed 
out. For the rest of us, well, we have to duke it out to see who is 
represented.

Representation should not be something I have to contest anyone 
about. There are reasonable grounds for restricting deliberative 
rights, i.e., the right to take up everone's time with speech or 
process, but there is no such ground for restricting representation, 
i.e., the aggregation of opinion over the whole society.

Requiring that members of an assembly, having full deliberative 
rights, represent some base number of voters is a very simple method 
of making it likely that the active representatives will be boiled 
down to people who are relatively informed and likely to give issues 
due consideration.

The big bugaboo of direct democracy has always been the vision of 
vast numbers of people making knee-jerk, uninformed, foolish, shallow 
decisions. But that would not happen with delegable proxy or Asset 
Voting. Instead, decisions would, in the vast majority of situations, 
continue to be made by relatively small numbers of people, but the 
difference is that these people would not be explicitly and without 
contest chosen as trustworthy by the people. Yes, I would have people 
continue to have the right to vote, directly, but that is essential 
neither in Asset Voting nor with Delegable Proxy. It merely becomes 
possible, and, I think, a major safeguard.

Most people will not bother to vote directly, unless they have some 
special interest. And that is exactly when it would be more fruitful 
for them to vote. Why bother voting when you have someone you 
delegated the responsibility to?