[Election-Methods] delegate cascade

[Juho]

Hi,

Some more comments and questions on the properties of the proposed  
method.

1) All voters are candidates and it is possible that all voters  
consider themselves to be the best candidate. Therefore the method  
may start from all candidates having one vote each (their own vote).  
Maybe only after some candidates have numerous votes and the voter  
himself has only one vote still, then the voter gives up voting for  
himself and gives his vote to some of the frontrunners. How do you  
expect the method to behave from this point of view?

2) Let's say that the preferences of voter A are A>B>C>D>E. At some  
point he decides to vote for his second preference (B) instead of  
himself. B's preferences are B>D>etc. At some (later) point B decides  
to vote for his second preference D. A is however not happy with that  
the vote now goes directly to D (instead of C that was better). He  
changes his vote and votes for C. The point here is that it may be  
that many voters will vote directly the leading candidates instead of  
letting the voters in longer chains (according to their own  
preferences) determine where the vote ends at. The reason may be as  
above or maybe the voter simply prefers to vote directly for the  
leading/best candidates instead of being at the long branches of the  
tree (away from the main streams close to the root of the trees where  
the decision making appears to take place). Controlling one's own  
vote may also give the voter some additional negotiating power. The  
end result may be that the cascade chains may tend to be short rather  
than long. The same question here. Is this ok and how do you expect  
the method to behave?

3) In theory the method may also end up in a loop. There could be  
three voters (A, B, C) with opinions A: A>B>C, B: B>C>A and C: C>A>B.  
If A votes for A, B votes for B and C votes for A, then B has an  
incentive to change his vote to C in the hope that also C will vote  
for himself after this move. That would improve the result from B's  
(as well as C's) point of view (from A to C). But as a result now A  
has a similar incentive to vote for B that is to him better than C.  
And the story might continue forever. This kind of loops would  
probably be rare. But do you think this is acceptable or should there  
be some limitations that would eliminate or slow down possible  
continuous changes in the votes? In this looped case is possible that  
when the voters note the loop they are capable of negotiating some  
compromise solution (e.g. A and C agree that C will get something in  
return if he sticks to voting for A).

Juho Laatu




On Jul 21, 2008, at 14:36 , Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> Michael Allan wrote:
>> Hello to the list,
>
> Hello, and welcome.
>
>> I'm a software engineer, currently developing an online electoral
>> system.  I was in another discussion (link at bottom) and a  
>> subscriber
>> recommended this list to me.  I have a few questions, if anyone is
>> able to help.
>> A key component of the electoral system (to explain) is what I call a
>> "delegate cascade" voting mechanism.  It is intended for use in
>> continuous elections (open to recasting).  The overall aim is to
>> support consensus building.  In this mechanism:
>>   ...a 'delegate' is a participant who both receives votes, like a
>>   candidate, and casts a vote of her own, like a voter.  But when a
>>   delegate casts her vote, it carries with it those received.  And so
>>   on... Passing from delegate to delegate, the votes flow together  
>> and
>>   gather in volume - they cascade - like raindrops down the branches
>>   of a tree.  New voters are not restricted in their choices, but may
>>   vote for anyone, their unsolicited votes serving to nominate new
>>   candidates and to recruit new participants into the election.
>>   http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/outline.xht
>> I can only cite 3 references for the mechanism (Pivato, Rodriguez et
>> al., and myself) all from 2007.  Does anyone know of an earlier
>> source?  Is anyone else working with this mechanism?  Have there been
>> discussions along similar lines?
>
> That sounds very much like Delegable Proxy, which Abd says was  
> first thought of by Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). In DP, as far as I  
> understand it, voters associate with proxies (delegates in your  
> terminology) and the proxies accumulate votes from those voters. A  
> proxy is then just like any other voter, and may vote directly or  
> pass the ballot bulk (in sum or part) to yet others.
>
> If you remove the ability of proxies to pass the votes on, and  
> instead let the proxies decide upon the composition of a  
> traditional assembly, you get Asset Voting. However, that doesn't  
> go very well with your continuous election idea, since the assembly  
> presumably has to reside for a given period, just like one that  
> would be directly elected by the voters.
>
> There's also the council democracy system that, I think, is used in  
> some unions. There you have local councils that elect among their  
> number to regional councils that elect among their number to  
> national councils.. the number of "levels" is logarithmic with  
> respect to the population, but again that's not very continuous,  
> and unless you use PR, it's possible for a cleverly positioned  
> minority to take control of the system. Consider the case of each  
> council electing a single person to the next level. Then having a  
> majority at the top will let you control the system. Having a  
> majority of the councils required to have a majority at the top  
> will also let you do so, etc, letting a minority of ((floor(k/2)+1)/ 
> k)^n, where k is the council size and n is the number of levels,  
> control the system in the worst case.
>
> As for others using Delegable Proxy (or "liquid democracy"), if  
> that's what your scheme is, the Wikipedia page on DP (http:// 
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting#Delegated_voting ) states that  
> it's used by a local Swedish party called "Demoex" (Democratic  
> Experiment). Abd has also said that it's used in corporate  
> governance, but I'm unfamiliar with whether that implementation  
> lets proxies transfer votes further.
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for  
> list info


		
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