[Election-Methods] Determining representativeness of multiwinner methods

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:18 PM 6/23/2008, Howard wrote:
>I feel that the need to look for and design a system around 
>geographic proportionality is a waist of time (except as a sales pitch).
>I believe that geographic proportionality would naturally come out 
>of a truly proportional system (if it was important to the voters) 
>where the proportionality of all issues important to the voters are 
>taken into account.
>As an example, if a large number of voter care about the number of 
>pot holes on bank street it is likely that many of these voters live 
>or work near bank street. and thus would elect at least some 
>politicians that live near bank street.
>
>Geographic location is a hold over from the days when communication 
>was limited to a local area is largely irrelevant today.

I agree. It's quite possible to design a system that is, for most 
voters, geographically proportional, but, for a few, is politically 
proportional, and that is, again for most voters, both geographically 
and politically proportional.

I don't see any sign that he realized the possibilities, but Charles 
Dodgson first proposed the key concept in about 1884, as a tweak to 
Single Transferable Vote.

He suggested that, in lieu of exhausting a ballot with a bullet vote, 
the candidate receiving the vote would be able to "spend" the ballot 
"as if it were the candidate's personal property." This is the same 
metaphor used by Warren Smith in his Asset Voting publication of 
(2004?). The method was also called Candidate Proxy by Mike Ossipoff 
in a post to this list before 2000. It is related to Delegable Proxy, 
my own invention, independently invented by others as well; but the 
Asset form is, as proposed, for multiwinner elections, used to create 
a peer assembly, which has certain functional advantages over pure 
proxy systems for public use.

Consider the simplest Asset system: voters vote for one candidate, 
and that candidate becomes their proxy for the purpose of determining 
representation. If the candidate gains a quota of votes, the 
candidate is automatically elected (or may, at will, elect someone 
else), and any leftover votes are then disposable for the purpose of 
creating more seats when combined with the votes held by other candidates.

What prior writers did not seem to realize was that such a system 
would gravitate toward the voter voting for the single person they 
most trust, both to function in the assembly themselves, should that 
occur, or for the purpose of choosing who will represent the voter, 
ultimately. I would expect direct election in the "primary" to become 
increasingly rare, for there will arise very good reasons to vote for 
someone you personally know and can reliably communicate with. This 
person, who is a public voter, I call an "elector," will be known to 
the holder of the seat as the one who directed votes to him or her. 
Thus Asset will set up filtered communication channels between voters 
and seats, thus resolving an old problem with deliberative and 
representative democracy, the problem of scale and communications 
breakdown resulting from it.

Now, an elector will have a list of precincts from which his or her 
votes came. The elector may have a good idea who these people are, 
but that isn't verifiable, votes in the primary remain secret. 
However, the elector *may* choose to assign votes, in cooperation 
with other electors, so that seats have a maximized relationship with 
the precincts from which the votes came. Thus there may be, for a 
large population city, a number of seats representing relatively 
common different political positions, whereas some seats for small 
minority political positions may cover an entire state, and a few 
seats may be a kind of catchall seat, likewise drawn from the whole 
state, being representatives who have promised, perhaps, to represent 
diverse positions in the Assembly. "Represent" here means to ensure 
that positions are represented in debate. I'd presume that the seat 
would vote the conscience of the seat, which *might* represent, for 
example, "far left" or "far right," though, in reality, political 
positions are only grossly represented by such categories.

("Libertarian" for example, is in some ways "right," and in some ways 
"left." There are, in fact, different axes of polarity.)

What Asset Voting does is to increase, to maximize, "chosen 
representation" that doesn't represent the majoritarian compromise; 
such majoritarian compromises, when involved in the creation of 
seats, tend to take place on grossly oversimplified levels. The 
result can be serious loss of representation.

Asset Voting actually would make possible something very close to 
direct democracy, without the known problems. It's hybrid 
direct/representative democracy, all the more so if electors, who are 
now public voters (like seats are), have the right to vote in 
Assembly decisions. Not participate in deliberation: they would not 
have the right to enter motions or debate on the floor, absent 
permission, unlike seats. Seats, then, exist for the purpose of 
participation in deliberation, and voting by seats is a convenience.

So convenient, though, that I'd expect the vast majority of votes in 
the assembly to be cast by seats, and only electors who maintain 
seriously active involvement with Assembly business would vote, and 
only when they had a position different from that of their chosen 
representative(s).

Asset Voting, implemented like this, would create a cloud, a penumbra 
of electors, around the Assembly, intermediate between voters and 
seats, and, I expect, the sense of the public that this is "our 
Assembly" would grow. It is this possible increase in participation 
and sense of public ownership that got me excited, years ago, about 
Delegable Proxy.

Direct democracy works very well on a small scale, and on that scale, 
nobody even thinks to suggest electing representatives. When the 
scale increases, though, meetings become increasingly tedious and, 
eventually, direct democracies devolve into representative or other 
oligarchical structures. In business, the problem was faced long ago: 
corporations are (in concept and sometimes in fact) direct 
democracies, obviously so when investments are equal (so every 
"owner" has equal voting power). And the problem of scale and 
convenience was solved with the institution of the proxy. But, for 
reasons which probably have much to do with fear of democracy, this 
approach wasn't taken in politics. Robert's Rules, in dismissing 
proxy voting, gives, as a reason, that members don't have "ownership 
rights." That's correct. And is part of the problem.

It is not "my government," in the sense that I own it and, with 
others, aid it, direct it, inform it, and all the rest. In fact, for 
most, it is "them." "They" do this and "they" do that, and we don't 
have a sense of personal responsibility for it. What's great about 
Town Meeting towns is the sense of cooperation, of this being "our 
town" and "our government." There is a tendency to seek consensus 
greater than mere majority, out of a recognition that it is good for 
the town if town decisions have wider support than merely a majority. 
But, of course, relatively unimportant decisions get made by majority 
vote because that's simply the most efficient way to do it, and few 
get exercised about "losing" such votes.

We could have something so close to direct democracy, in the good 
ways, that the difference is minor. Asset Voting could do it, without 
running afoul of the serious problems that are traditionally 
considered to make direct democracy impossible.

And how do we get from here to there? Not being content with simply 
building utopian castles in the sky, I realized that if this is, 
indeed, a superior method of democratic organization, *it should also 
work in nongovernmental organizations, including ones concerned with 
politics.* Hence the FA/DP plan to promote delegable proxy in 
organizations that aren't biased toward one particular position, thus 
simulating, on a smaller scale, or even, possibly, a large scale, 
what a truly representative assembly would be, without the risks 
involved in trying for immediate implementation in government.