[Election-Methods] Partisan Politics

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 06:24 PM 4/28/2008, Fred Gohlke wrote:
>This is probably the crux of the difference in our views.  There can be
>no mandate when, as I said in an earlier message, "The only choices the
>people have are those foisted on them by those who control the political
>parties that have a stranglehold on our nation's political processes."

While I'll agree that "mandate" can be problematic, it is not a 
general truth that the only choices the people have are those 
"foisted" on them; however, if the people are asleep and are unaware 
of other choices, it could seem so, likewise if they are unwilling to 
pay the cost of those other choices.

When an election result seemed unfair in the Ukraine, the people went 
into the streets. Here, they complained about how unfair it was and 
did nothing. Did we have a choice? Sure we did. But we are variously 
asleep, afraid, greedy, ignorant, cynical, and often in despair. 
"They" are not going to fix this for us!

If we wanted a different system, and were willing to take, really, 
some very small steps, we'd have a different system, and quite 
rapidly. But one of my slogans is:

Lift a finger, save the world. But most people won't lift a finger.

Why not? Well, they don't believe it will do any good. Then, 
periodically, they engage in a burst of false hope and try to make a 
change that hasn't been deeply considered, and, then, when they get 
the same old same old, which is not surprising if what they do to 
change things is the same old same old, they relapse, exhausted, into 
despair and cynicism again, having confirmed once again that it's 
hopeless, things will never change, etc., etc.

What it takes to break out of this is astonishingly simple. But, 
watch. Very, very few people are willing to look at it seriously 
enough to recognize it. Definitely not to test it. Testing it takes 
far less involvement than most political actions. But it has taken 
years to find a handful of people willing to actually *talk* about 
the change, and more to begin to create the structures. It's 
happening. Slowly. All over the world.

The plan, as I formulated it, involves two elements: the Free 
Association concept pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous, generalized 
for general applications. (It's incorporated in the operating 
traditions of AA, specifically the Twelve Traditions and the Twelve 
Concepts for World Service. It was *phenomenally* successful, in 
spite of being radically libertarian. It had to be such or alcoholics 
would have fought each other continually over the structure; Bill 
Wilson's brilliant design (forged, I'm sure, in cooperation and 
consultation with a lot of very bright people) sidestepped all that, 
allowing AA to focus on finding consensus and unity.

But AA confines the vast bulk of decision-making to the group level, 
which is very small scale. Groups are all independent, not controlled 
in any way by national or international organizations. All control 
and support moves in the other direction; power is ultimately 
retained by members and local groups, and the national organization 
would collapse if not for the continual voluntary support of groups.

How could something like AA function for decision-making on a large 
scale? AA did -- and does -- have some decisions to make on a large 
scale, and they use a delegate Conference to handle this. They elect 
delegates by supermajority and repeated balloting. If, after what is 
considered many ballots, they don't find a candidate with at least 
two-thirds support, they choose the delegate by lot from the top two. 
It was a simple device that worked well enough for them.... but there 
is another possibility, more recently proposed, though the roots, in 
fact, go back to Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). Over the last decade or so, 
this idea started popping up around the world: delegated voting in 
Europe. Liquid democracy in certain internet circles. My own 
delegable proxy. There has now been a paper published in an academic 
journal on the behavior of "delegated democracy," which is, pretty 
simply, delegable proxy.

It's a device for collecting representation and participation on a 
large scale, based on the accumulated and analyzed individual choices 
of members. With it, it is possible to create a representative 
assembly, or, really, various ad-hoc committees, that are broadly 
representative. Without elections.

So. Take the Free Association concept and add to it delegable proxy. 
That's FA/DP, and there is absolutely nothing stopping it except 
ignorance, cynicism, and despair. We have seen very little opposition 
that is based in any understanding of how it would work. Attempts 
were made to introduce delegable proxy to Wikipedia, which badly 
needs a method of measuring consensus on a large scale; the effort 
was, shall we say, vigorously opposed, almost violently opposed. By 
whom? By the oligarchy, the very vocal and very active core of 
Wikipedia, the kind of people who spend countless hours, often doing 
mind-numbing "mop work," and who, understandably, may think that 
therefore they own the place. Some of them are heros, in my book, but 
others are actually pretty nasty, making snap judgments about the 
intentions of others, ready to label and blame and reject at the drop 
of a hat. If DP is to come to Wikipedia, it will be gradually and 
slowly, I suspect, through a small number of user beginning to 
organize themselves with the technique. If the theory is correct, 
that organization should be efficient and effective. If the theory is 
wrong ... well, the whole concept is designed to require minimal 
investment, little will be lost.

I've seen this here and elsewhere. Getting people to argue about this 
or that election method is relatively easy. Getting them to lift a 
finger to actually *do* something is far, far more difficult. Slowly, 
though, structures are being created. Too much, at this point, 
depends on me personally; sooner or later the realization will dawn 
that I'm not good at follow-up; but, gradually, stuff is happening 
without me instigating it. And then I can support it....

The world is changing. Slowly. There is a reason why people don't 
listen. It has to do with how we filter information, how we protect 
ourselves against information overload and meme attack. What it takes 
to bypass the filters is patience and persistence. What people reject 
this year, they may consider next year. That an idea persists over 
time seems to be one of the filter criteria. As more people become 
involved, another filter will open up, people depend on other people 
to filter new ideas, and most won't take the time to consider 
something that doesn't already have a following. It's efficient. If 
sometimes frustrating.

So how long will it take? I expect to be seeing certain effects in 
public life within a year or two, small effects, but significant. A 
highly visible public adoption could speed things up drastically, 
though. I'm not holding my breath. While the depth of the angry 
response from the Wikipedia community was surprising to me, that 
Wikipedia did not leap to adopt delegable proxy did not surprise me 
at all. That's *normal*.

People may complain bitterly about the status quo, as many do on 
Wikipedia, but come a new idea that might fix it .... they do *not* 
jump for it, most find it hard to even listen for a few minutes. If 
traditional thinking would work, the problems would have been 
addressed and solved long ago, but, by definition, most people think 
traditionally. There must be dozens of deeply-held beliefs that FA/DP 
runs contrary to, and dismantling those takes time. On Wikipedia, the 
immediate objection was that this would be a field day for sock 
puppets. And so it could seem, if one neglects that sock puppets 
can't generate good advice any better than the masters, and if the 
system is being used for advice, votes don't count. It's an 
information filtering system, where you choose your filter, and the 
existence of sock puppets is irrelevant to it, they really can do 
almost nothing except play with themselves. My friend who got excited 
about delegable proxy and proposed it, and who was blocked for his 
efforts, banned from the project, set up a file system for naming 
proxies and collecting te proxy information, and named me as his 
proxy. He and I were promptly the subject of a suspected sock puppet 
report, and were checkusered. (A handful of administrators on 
Wikipedia have access to raw IP information for all edits, and this 
is used to help in the detection of sock puppets.) For a puppet 
master to create sock puppets in order to increase his own apparent 
voting power would be sock-suicide. Socks and their masters go out of 
their way to avoid being connected!