[Election-Methods] "Town E-meetings" for encouraging group intelligence and working toward consensus

[Ralph Suter]

Jan Kok's detailed, carefully-thought-out Town E-meeting proposal 
deserves a thoughtful response. I regret that this one has to be so 
negative, but I believe that for the following two reasons, the 
proposal is not a good way to respond to the effort in Fort Collins to 
replace plurality voting with IRV. As explained below, I believe there 
are better ways.

* Some elements of the proposal, particularly the concept of delegable 
proxy (DP), are themselves very controversial, or they would be if 
they were to attract very widespread attention and discussion. I, for 
one, am not persuaded that DP is is either a very good idea or a very 
practical one. I won't detail my concerns with DP here and don't want 
(and don't have time) to get into a debate about it. But my guess 
(which of course could be wrong) is that the DP concept and possibly 
other elements of the proposal would generate controversy that would 
seriously interfere with the more important Fort Collins voting method 
controversy that the proposal is intended to help resolve.

* In addition to its controversial elements, the proposal is too 
complicated and involves too many new ideas to have much hope of being 
set up and promoted quickly enough to soon attract many participants, 
especially among Fort Collins residents. If the Fort Collins voting 
method controversy is at all urgent -- that is, if there is a 
possibility that IRV could be adopted very soon, say within the next 
year -- the proposed town E-meeting probably can't be set up quickly 
enough to have a good chance of playing an influential role in the 
controversy (though it could be very valuable as a way to test the 
viability of the E-meeting concept and gather data that could help 
change the minds of people who are skeptical about DP or other 
controversial elements of the proposal).

Here are some alternatives to the town E-meeting proposal as a way to 
address the Fort Collins voting method issue.

* Form a local committee or organization aimed at challenging the IRV 
initiative and advocating the consideration of alternative voting 
methods. It would not need to commit itself to a particular 
alternative to IRV and would not need to be adamantly opposed to IRV. 
To the contrary, I think such an organization would be most effective 
if its main goal were to insure that concerns about IRV and 
alternatives to IRV (and concerns about them) be adequately discussed 
before IRV or any other new voting method is adopted. This could begin 
as an ad hoc Fort Collins committee, but if it goes well, it could 
conceivably evolve into a national organization to promote better 
voting methods. I for one would be very interested in supporting such 
an organization and would welcome it as an alternative to FairVote and 
the other aggressively pro-IRV organizations that now overwhelmingly 
dominate the discussion of alternative voting methods in the U.S.

* Instead of a town E-meeting, why not a regular town meeting, or a 
series of them? Fort Collins is a small enough city (just over 
100,000) that in-person meetings aimed at attracting fairly large and 
diverse numbers of attendees are much more feasible than they would be 
in a much larger city such as Los Angeles, where an effort to get IRV 
adopted is also now being made. While town meetings would certainly be 
possible in L.A. as well, a much greater and better coordinated effort 
would need to be made to promote them and persuade L.A. media to 
adequately cover them. Also, while an L.A. town meeting effort 
probably would require raising money and hiring paid organizers, it 
should be possible to organize town hall meetings in Fort Collins with 
volunteers and little or no fund-raising.

* Another good alternative to a town E-meeting would be to organize a 
representative "citizens jury" of Fort Collins citizens who would be 
asked to carefully consider and make recommendations regarding IRV and 
other alternative voting methods. Unlike delegable proxy, there is a 
long history, in the U.S. and in many other countries, of 
experimentation with the citizens jury concept, and such juries have 
had impacts on actual elections and other civic controversies. For 
more information, see the following:

Descriptions of the Citizens Jury Process:
http://www.jefferson-center.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={2BD10C3C-90AF-438C-B04F-88682B6393BE}
http://www.thataway.org/exchange/resources.php?action=view&rid=1580

Organizations:
http://www.jefferson-center.org/
Jefferson Center -- an organization that formally experimented with 
and conducted citizens juries between 1974 and 2002. The idea has 
since been adopted in many other countries but has attracted less 
enthusiasm among government officials in the U.S. Because of 
insufficient funding and other reasons, the organization had had to 
suspend its activities in 2002, but the website still provides a lot 
of valuable information, and there is an email address to contact the 
center's founder, Ned Crosby, who may be very interested in advising 
or even helping set up a Fort Collins citizens jury re the IRV 
controversy.

http://www.thataway.org/
National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation -- an organization 
that advocates a much wider range of methods (including but not 
limited to citizens juries) for achieving the goal, as Jan put it in 
his subject line, of "encouraging group intelligence and working 
toward consensus".

-Ralph Suter



In a message dated 7/9/08, Jan Kok wrote:
> Right now I feel like I've been struck with divine inspiration. Hope I
> don't wake up tomorrow feeling like an idiot. :-)
> 
> "Town E-meeting" is a way to
> - disseminate information about competing proposals
> - allow a controlled debate and negotiation among supporters of the
> various proposals
> - allow/encourage supporters to "present their case" as strongly as
> possible, but providing a rebuttal mechanism that encourages honest
> arguments and discourages insincere, deceptive arguments
> - allow similar proposals without much redundant arguments (because
> proposals can refer to each other.)
> - allow similar proposals while neither encouraging nor discouraging
> their creation
> - does all that in a manner that is fair and neutral toward all proposals.
> 
> It's similar in some ways to a court trial, where we strive to allow
> all parties to be fairly represented and heard. It's an application of
> FADP*. It also borrows infrastructure and culture from Wikipedia.
> 
> (FADP: Free Association with Delegable Proxy. See
> http://beyondpolitics.org for an introduction. There is a FAQ at
> http://www.beyondpolitics.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=BeyondPolitics,
> and a glossary of FADP terms at
> http://www.beyondpolitics.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Glossary . The
> Glossary is also a mini-tutorial about FADP concepts.)
> 
> Town E-meeting was inspired by this current, real-life situation:
> There is a movement to try to replace the voting method used for Fort
> Collins, CO elections with IRV. (Currently, Fort Collins elections use
> single-round Plurality Voting.) I would much rather have Range,
> Approval, or ER-Bucklin Voting, rather than IRV. How can I get the
> word out about those alternatives? How can I get the alternatives
> compared side-by-side in a fair manner? How can I promote multiple
> alternatives (proposals) without risking a "vote-splitting" effect
> among the alternatives? How can I encourage an honest discussion among
> backers of the various alternatives, to try to reach consensus about
> which is the best alternative?
> 
> My proposed solution is a combination of several elements. I'm calling
> this generic solution "Town E-meeting" for now. (Feel free to suggest
> other names.)
> 
> - Create an FADP. (E.g. the Fort Collins Voting Free Association. It's
> purpose would be "To facilitate discussion of alternative proposals
> for the future of voting in Fort Collins.")
> 
> - Anyone can become a member simply by signing up at a web site. There
> are two types of members: local voters, and other interested people.
> When polls are taken of the members, the votes of local voters and
> others are tallied and reported separately.
> 
> - In order to participate in polls, members must agree to have this
> info about themselves be published in a publically accessable
> membership directory: real name, city/state, registered voter (y/n) in
> the city of interest (e.g. Fort Collins), member's proxy, accepting
> clients (y/n). (Publishing that information, and holding proxies
> accountable for verifying that their clients are real people,
> discourages creation of sock puppets.)
> 
> - By default, all voting information related to polls conducted within
> the FA is public. Anyone can look up any member's voting history on
> any or all issues, or list out how each member voted (directly, or by
> proxy) on any issue.
> 
> - There is a web site for the FA's use, featuring a wiki that is used
> for describing various proposals, listing and discussing pros and
> cons, etc.
> 
> - Certain designated top proxies may edit the wiki. They may also
> grant and revoke editing privileges to their clients. Those new
> editors may grant and revoke editing privileges to their clients, and
> so on. This method of controlling editing privileges creates chains of
> accountability and encourages responsible, civilized editing behavior.
> 
> - The wiki home page has a list of proposals. (E.g. Approval, Range,
> IRV, Top-2 (Delayed) Runoff, Proportional Representation for the city
> council seats, NOTA (i.e. keep Plurality Voting)) The proposals are
> listed as title and brief description. The titles are links to wiki
> pages fully describing the proposals.
> 
> - There is an ongoing, real-time poll concerning the proposals. Each
> proposal has a poll score listed next to it. (How the score would be
> computed is not specified yet.)
> 
> - The proposals are listed in the order that they would be chosen by a
> proportional representation method. The intent is to present a variety
> of proposals among the first few entries; to minimize the incentive to
> create clone proposals; and to avoid having any one person (a
> "dictator") determine the ordering of the proposals - rather, the
> ordering is a group decision based on members' votes.
> 
> - In order to avoid favoritism toward either rating- or ranking-based
> polls, members can choose whichever they want. Those who choose to use
> ratings get the proposals sorted by Reweighted Range Voting (RRV).
> Those who choose to use ranking get the proposals sorted by Single
> Transferrable Vote (STV). Functions for converting ratings to rankings
> and vice versa are needed so that all votes are used by both sorting
> methods. (Maybe allow Proportional Approval Voting as a third voting
> method option?)
> 
> - Each wiki page has an owner who may express a point of view on his
> page. Those who wish to provide rebuttal are allowed to do so using
> certain formatting and with certain restrictions, to be established.
> For example, each "pro" paragraph in the article could be followed by
> a rebuttal paragraph, indented and in italics. The inserted rebuttal
> paragraphs could be limited to 500 characters, and could be in-line
> text, links to other wiki pages, references to footnotes at the bottom
> of the current page, or combinations. Rebuttal paragraphs could be
> followed by rebuttals to the rebuttals, but limited to 100 characters.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> So, what do you think, folks? I would love to have a Town E-meeting
> web site for the Fort Collins Voting Free Association, as soon as
> possible. Any volunteers to help with this?
> 
> Augustin Masquilier has done some pioneering work on his web site
> (minguo.info/usa) by creating some Drupal modules to support a version
> of Delegable Proxy. I am very grateful for Augustin's work. However, I
> really don't like Drupal itself, very much. For some reason I find
> navigation in Drupal sites confusing. I would prefer to use MediaWiki.
> 
> I suspect we can find someone who would be willing to provide hosting
> for the Fort Collins Voting FA, and provide MediaWiki on the site as
> well.
> 
> What's mainly missing is some WikiMedia modules to support Delegable
> Proxy, RRV, STV and so on to provide the features described above.
> 
> Some work is needed to tune up my idea about using PR methods to sort
> proposals, to minimize problems with clone proposals, and also to
> handle "no opinion" votes which would occur when new proposals are
> added.
> 
> Some style macros (not sure if that's a proper term for them) might be
> useful to support creating rebuttals.
> 
> Is there a way to share content between the Fort Collins Voting FA
> and, say, an Aspen Voting FA, or other city Voting FA?
> 
> Some help with creating content for the Fort Collins Voting FA would be great.
> 
> Any volunteers?
> 
> Cheers,
> - Jan