[Election-Methods] Partisan Politics

[Fred Gohlke]

Good Afternoon, Juho

(I just noticed that I have another message from you, in another area. 
I will copy it and respond as quickly as I can, probably tomorrow.  I'm 
inexpert at navigating this site, but learning.  flg)

In the message I'm responding to, you raise several important issues.

IMPROVEMENT
You mentioned several reasons why improving our political system is an 
uphill battle.  I would add the complexity of human nature as another. 
Overcoming them is difficult, but "A trek of a thousand miles begins 
with a single step."  In my view, the first step is to seek understanding.

The forces that guided our political development over the past 200 years 
are clear enough.  So far, we've tended to think of them as inevitable. 
  We've failed to examine them analytically for the purpose of 
deflecting the worst of them.  (I had the privilege of sitting in on a 
political science course last year.  It described many of the blemishes 
in our political process, historically and present, but did not address 
them from the perspective of learning to correct them.  Neither, to my 
dismay, did it encourage such an intellectual approach.)

We did not reach our present situation by accident.  If we are to 
improve, we must learn to anticipate and inhibit the forces that 
derailed The Noble Experiment.  It will be a long, hard road, not to be 
completed in my lifetime, but that is no excuse for not making the first 
"... small steps forward."

LARGE GROUPS
You make the excellent point that, under the method I outlined, large 
groups will succeed better than small groups.  Warren Smith made the 
same point to me, privately.  Where you suggest partisan dominance, he 
used advanced math to show that, based on purely racial attitudes, 
whites would dominate blacks.  The rationale supporting some of Smith's 
mathematical terms were obscure, but I don't doubt the conclusion.  I 
have no doubt the attitudes of the largest group of voters will prevail.

However, the group that prevails will not be party and will not be race. 
  It will be society (at least, insofar as society is reflected in the 
electorate) ... and the most common attitude in society is a desire for 
tranquility.

Society is us.  All of us; our friends, relatives, co-workers, neighbors 
and acquaintances.  We have partisan feelings, we are influenced by our 
family, our race, our education, our national heritage, our age, our 
health and our status, but none of these are greater than the fact that 
we are, in toto, decent, law-abiding people.  Society could not exist if 
we were not.

This is the large group that will prevail; these are the "whites" in 
Smith's equations; these are the people whose attitudes will triumph ... 
if they are given a voice and a choice.

GROUP SIZE and PERSUASION
You suggested larger groups and fewer layers.  I am not averse to such a 
change, but would like to describe the rationale for using a group size 
of three.

At the initial level, when the entire electorate meets for the first 
time to select one member of a their group to represent the other two, 
there will be three kinds of participants:  (1) those who do not want to 
be selected, (2) those willing to be selected, and (3) those seeking 
selection.  In any group where all three participants do not want to be 
selected, the triad will not make a selection and all three participants 
will be eliminated.

Thus, among the groups that actually make a selection, the people who 
are selected will either be people who want to be selected or people who 
are willing to be selected.  This is not to say that each person must be 
of one type or the other, but rather that each person will be somewhere 
on the continuum from those willing to be selected to those wishing to 
be selected.

For simplicity, we will assume that the desire to be selected is 
equivalent to a desire for public office and that the people we mention 
as examples are at one end of the wish-willingness continuum or the 
other.  The reality is infinitely more complex but the results will 
differ only in degree from what we learn by thinking about the kind of 
people who are at the hypothetical poles.

We must also note that the attitudes we've mentioned may not be static. 
  Although, generally, a person seeking public office is unlikely to 
become a person willing to serve, a person willing to serve might be 
transformed into a person seeking public office:

[If person-willing-to-serve (A) feels person-seeking-office (B) is not a 
good choice, (A) may seek to persuade the group that (A) or (C) is a 
better choice.  Such an effort moves (A) closer to being a 
person-seeking-office because, if A will not support B, the chance that 
A will be chosen increases.]

Based on this assessment, we can say that people who advance to the next 
level either persuaded the other members of their triad to select them 
or they relied on the other members to select them.  The difference is 
the extent to which they used persuasion to achieve selection.

In a pyramiding process of the type under discussion, it is reasonable 
to think that active seekers of public office will succeed more 
frequently than passive ones.  Thus, after several iterations of the 
process, we can anticipate that each member of a triad will be a person 
seeking public office.  Under such circumstances, the art of persuasion 
assumes mounting importance.  Those making the selection want desirable 
qualities in the person they choose.  Those seeking selection will try 
to persuade their peers they possess the qualities sought.

When persuasion occurs between two people, it takes place as a dialogue 
with one person attempting to persuade the other.  In such events, both 
parties are free to participate in the process.  The person to be 
persuaded can question the persuader as to specific points and present 
alternative points about the topic under discussion.  In such 
circumstances, it is possible that the persuader will become the persuaded.

When persuasion involves multiple people, it occurs more as a monologue 
with one person attempting to persuade the others.  The transition from 
dialogue to monologue accelerates as the number of people to be 
persuaded increases.  The larger the number of people, the less free 
they are to participate in the process.  As the number of people to be 
persuaded grows, the individuals among them are progressively less able 
to participate in the process.  They can not question the persuader as 
to specific points or present alternative points about the topic under 
discussion.  In such circumstances, it is impossible for the persuader 
to become the persuaded.

Viewed in this light, we can say that when selecting public officials, a 
system that encourages dialogue is preferable to one which relies on a 
monologue.  Discussion can best be encouraged by having fewer people in 
the "session of persuasion".  Because of the need for a definitive 
decision, I believe the best group size to encourage active involvement 
by all participants is three.  In working toward a functional system, 
other aspects of the matter are sure to arise.  Group sizes of 5, or 7, 
or 9 may be found to offer more advantages.

REGIONALITY
You wondered whether the concept would have a regional bias.  I intended 
that it should.  Presumably, we would develop software to randomly 
assign voters to groups while preferring geographic proximity.  This 
offers the advantages you outline and causes the least disruption for 
the electorate.  It also supports the idea that the first fruits of the 
process are officials for the local community.

PARTISANSHIP
You raise a couple of questions of partisanship; whether "... it is 
possible that the party influence will infiltrate the system from top 
down ..." and "... if there are some groupings/parties at the top level, 
the candidates at one level below could make their affiliations clear ..."

To take the second first, there is no top level until the level below 
has made its choice.  There are, indeed, previously elected people with 
partisan attitudes.  Candidates in the process might indicate their 
approval and support for those people.  If they do, the others in their 
triad will decide for themselves whether they agree, and will make their 
selections accordingly.  That is the purpose of the system.

As to the first, the matter is more open to challenge.  For my part, I 
think it will be incomparably more difficult for existing parties to 
"infiltrate" (or corrupt) the Active Democracy process than what we 
presently endure.

In the first place, there is no infrastructure.  There is no 
organization or "fund raiser" to act as an intermediary for corruption. 
  Those who would peddle corruption can not do so en bloc as they do 
now; they must do it individually and directly.  When those they seek to 
suborn have been chosen by their peers (at least in part) for their 
perceived integrity, approaching them will not be easy.

When candidates don't have to "sell their soul" to a political party, 
when they owe their advancement to nothing but their own intellect and 
ability, I believe most of them will reject, and probably denounce, 
influence peddlers.  I don't doubt that we'll occasionally have a 
deceitful public official, but he'll be operating in a goldfish bowl. 
It won't be as easy to keep it hidden as it is now.

THE LONG CHAIN
The possibility that "... the highest level decision makers do not 
listen to the lowest level voters ..." need not come to pass: "The 
process is inherently bi-directional.  Because each elected official 
sits atop a pyramid of known electors, questions on specific issues can 
easily be transmitted directly to and from the electors for the guidance 
or instruction of the official."  The extent to which this capability is 
enabled depends on the way the process is implemented.

In terms of the length of time from the beginning of an election cycle 
through the multiple levels, we can say with certainty that it will not 
be as long as the present two-year travesty.

Wow!  That turned out to be more than I expected to write.  I'm not 
certain I've given an adequate response to the issues you raised, some 
of which were quite subtle.  I hope we can continue to examine these 
questions and that others will bring their expertise to bear.

Fred