[EM] Geographically proportional ballots

[Juho]

On Aug 29, 2008, at 15:51 , Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

>>>> One more approach to semi-computerized voting. A computer  
>>>> displays the personal alternatives and then prints a ballot.  
>>>> This solution hides the personalized nature of the ballot and  
>>>> still avoids the problem of voter voting for candidates that he/ 
>>>> she should not vote.
>>>
>>> One could augment the semi-computerized voting by making it print  
>>> all candidates
>> That could be thousands, so maybe a subset in many cases.
>
> Just enough to hide the data. One could print out to the nearest  
> candidate that's, say, a tenth of the population away from the voter.
>
> Here I say that a candidate is N voters away from a voter if it's  
> not possible to make a compact region that includes both the voter  
> and the candidate, yet has fewer than N voters in it. For  
> simplicity, the region might be a circle.

One should maybe avoid the possibility of someone deriving the  
location of the voter based on the distribution of all the candidates  
on the ballot. (Also picking fully random candidates may reveal the  
location since there will be one concentration of nearby candidates.)


>> If you allow me I'd like to advertise trees once more. Trees (=  
>> hierarchical open lists) can be seen as very truncated ranked  
>> votes. Bullet vote to one candidate is inherited by his/her  
>> nearest group and so on. When the tree is formed one can expect  
>> all common thinking patterns to get their own branch in the tree.  
>> If there are lots of people who are green and also somewhat right  
>> wing and also a little bit feminist there would probably be such a  
>> branch in the tree with few candidates to choose from.
>> Adding the ability to rank three of the candidates of the  
>> surrounding small group would offer a pretty good vocabulary of  
>> typical green/right/feminist opinions. And since the three would  
>> be from a relatively small set (maybe 5 out of 100) the number of  
>> combinations might still be safe (reduce the allowed number of  
>> ranked candidates to two or one if needed).
>
> Assume that a voter votes for the green wing of the social democrat  
> party. Would you then have LocalGreen > LocalOtherSocialDemocrat >  
> FarawayGreen, or LocalGreen > FarawayGreen >  
> LocalOtherSocialDemocrat ?
>
> I guess the statement that political proportionality is more  
> important than geographical proportionality would force the second  
> ballot.

Yes, that is the first assumption (simple and natural). If people  
feel strongly about locality they may establish a branch for local  
matters. Then voters can express their feelings and support local  
candidates by giving their vote to this branch. This way locality  
became a political topic (and got more priority). If there is support  
for any topic there may also be a branch for this topic.

> Also, how would you get parties to cooperate in making a tree? The  
> party may say that party unity is too important and therefore pass  
> an internal rule that no member may create a subgroup. This is kind  
> of like the problem when a party is in majority and that power is  
> contingent upon closed list PR; then the party won't want to change  
> to open list PR. However, in that case, opinion shifts could cause  
> the party to lose its grip on power, but the party always has power  
> over its own organization.


Yes, these are central questions - how to keep the tree structure  
rich enough, and how to get the idea of trees accepted in the first  
place.

One trick (for the first case) is to make the list creation rules  
such that after one party (or group) has announced its list of  
candidates those candidates may freely form and announce smaller  
subgroups. Some parties might still try to ban this using party  
internal rules but it would be more difficult, both morally and in  
terms of being able to stop the process.

One trick is to make the rules such that they favour groupings a bit,  
e.g. use d'Hondt. I'd prefer other means though, but if needed one  
can boot and boost the process this way.

One brute force solution is to limit the number of candidates that  
one flat group can set, or limit the number of seats one flat group  
can get.

One fear or hope that the parties may have is that it would be easy  
for a green social democrat to move to pink greens, or the other way  
around. In many political systems of today this feature may however  
make the system better. Note also that these two groups are close to  
each others, so the absolute change is not radical. And further, it  
is also possible that voters that are not happy with the actions of  
the party only move to another (formerly weak) branch of the party to  
change the policy, and not out of the party.

Parties may benefit of allowing their voters to give feedback and  
influence the policy of the party. Party officials and central  
figures may lose some control of the policy, but maybe they can also  
stay in power as neutral figures and just let the voters decide the  
political direction (= relative size of different branches within the  
party).

If some party has a strict internal discipline then it is still  
possible to set rules that all party members must vote together (but  
still allow party internal branches to exist). Some parties are  
actually proud of having a lively internal debate.

If there are parties that allow voters to express their opinion by  
using branches and others that do not allow this, then the voters  
might vote with their feet (not sure though).

People might get interested if the new political system allows them  
to influence more. Many politicians are worried about the low  
interest level among the citizens. Many citizens feel that the  
parties just continue on their old tracks no matter how one votes.  
With party internal branches the ability of the voters to influence  
the political direction of the party increases significantly.

Juho




	
	
		
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