[Election-Methods] Partisan Politics + a method proposal

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 12:46 PM 5/22/2008, Juho wrote:

>Note that there are also cases where the groupings can not be
>hidden.  For example two white persons and one black person in a room
>might easily elect a white person even if the back person said
>nothing about the skin colours and all of them would behave politely
>etc.
>
>I also do not have full trust that only good properties of the people
>would propagate upwards in the election process.  It may also be that
>people that are good at fooling other people and hiding their true
>(maybe less noble) intentions will reach the top levels more often
>than others.

Where I would agree with some in this discussion is that party 
representation isn't representation of the people, at least not 
directly. Political parties are really subsets of the electorate, and 
the question then arises as to how parties make their decisions. The 
answer to that has varied, but, often, the process is just as flawed 
as the overall process, or more flawed.

The history of the FA/DP concept, for me, went through a stage where 
I considered fixed groupings. It never occurred to me to consider 
groups as small as three as a fixed size; rather, from my experience 
with group process, I usually thought of ten. Besides, it made the 
math easy....

However, I soon realized the loss of representation problem. I also 
started with the idea of some imposed schedule for meetings, as a 
national election process, but the bureaucratic complexity of it all, 
plus the representation problem, nixed that approach for me.

Instead of having groups be composed by some external process, what 
if people voluntarily join groups? Indeed, what if they join groups 
based on the identity of the representative. Suddenly no election is 
needed. And, indeed, almost instantly, the possibility of delegable 
proxy presents itself. Suddenly there is representation that does not 
depend, at all, on what we ordinarily think of as elections. It is 
pure representation, voluntary, and chosen, not elected in some kind 
of contest. There are no losers.

Now, TANSTAAFL. If someone is unable to trust others, they will end 
up, unless others trust them (which is unlikely, mistrust is commonly 
mutual), unrepresented at levels in such a structure high enough that 
some restriction must exist on participation. In a small town, 
individual might simply represent themselves at a Town Meeting. But 
even with some small towns, individual who do that can sometimes take 
up so much time that ultimately some controls or restrictions arise.

Now, given that very large numbers of people could coherently 
organize themselves very quickly and efficiently with such a 
technique (no elections, no campaigns, people just name whom they 
most trust to represent them when they cannot represent themselves), 
it becomes possible to consider such organization when there is no 
public funding, no treasury, no large expenditures of funds. And it 
then becomes possible to apply this concept entirely outside of 
government, in very light, efficient organizations that would 
classically be called anarchist or libertarian, but without the 
political implications. I.e., they are "libertarian" because they, 
rigorously, do not coerce. They encourage participation because 
participation never is harmful. If you give $20 to some, say, 
environmental organization, they will decide how to spend it by some 
mechanism, and it could end up being spent quite contrary to how you 
would want. But Free Associations, as I came to call these, don't 
collect funds. They don't collect power. All they do is to 
facilitate, through the delegable proxy structure, the negotiation 
and discovery of consensus on a large scale.

And then the whole vision of an FA/DP revolution, taking place with 
little fuss and no violence, the people simply waking up and 
exercising their natural power, became clear.

I *do* think that wisdom and prudence and other qood qualities will 
increase as we move up the spontaneous hierarchy of a delegable proxy 
structure. The reason is that people will not be choosing strangers, 
media images, they will, I predict, in the long run, be choosing 
people with whom they can and do communicate directly. There really 
is no reason to do otherwise, you gain nothing by choosing the famous 
movie star, unless you are one of a few whom he is willing to 
communicate with directly. So media image becomes irrelevant.

As to government, existing structures are already open to the power 
of the people, the only reason government doesn't function that way 
is that the people are asleep. And, in fact, the people, as 
individuals, are not going to wake up, at least not most of them. 
They have other things to do that don't involve being consciousy 
involved in government and large-scale cooperation. They will, quite 
properly, focus on raising their kids, taking care of their houses 
and their jobs. But they will make one decision with vast import. 
Among all those they know, they will choose the person they most 
trust, if he or she is available and willing to accept that trust 
(and responsibility). My opinion is that people, if we confine the 
situation to people they personally know, will *more often than not* 
choose someone as trustworthy, or more trustworthy, than themselves. 
Hence the average trustworthiness will increase as we move up the 
structure, because it is a fractal, self-similar regardless of scale.

Once established to a certain degree, my opinion is that there is no 
force on earth that could stop it from continuing to grow, beyond a 
total natural disaster that essentially wipes out all human life. 
Political groupings and special interests have no power that does not 
derive from the power of the people. I do not expect attempts to 
repress FA/DP once it is established beyond a modest level. One of 
the reasons is that FAs don't take controversial positions. If an 
organization advocates, to take an example, nationalizing the oil 
industry, it is *not* an FA. (Unless everyone, including those who 
work in or own the oil industry have agreed, i.e., there is no opposition).

And this stops some people in their tracks. If it doesn't take any 
positions, they ask, quite understandably, how can it get anything done?

The answer is that it is not an executive power. It is a judicial 
power. It is the ultimate independent judiciary, the judiciary of the 
people. It has no power to coerce, but it deliberates and measures 
its own consensus. Others take this information and act based on it, 
but not being compelled by the judiciary; there is, in this, a 
rigorous and complete separation of powers. In an FA, the power 
remains entirely in place, with the people or with whomever wishes to 
be advised.

That the people are organized, for communication and representation, 
into an FA does not prevent them in any way from organizing in other 
ways, and FAs provide a very simple, practically automatic form of 
organization by default: we call it a "natural caucus." This is a 
proxy together with all clients and all clients of clients, etc. Such 
an organization has a natural leader, the single proxy who is 
trusted, directly or indirectly, by all caucus members. So it becomes 
possible to have the efficiency of "strong-leader" systems without 
the coercion. Action in the world, the executive power, is in the 
hands of the members, and then, to the extent that they delegate it, 
in the hands of these caucus leaders, who then use the delegable 
proxy system, overall, to estimate what degree of overall consensus 
has been reached. To act prior to consensus is very inefficient, 
unless you happen to get it right. Get it wrong, and your efforts 
will be opposed, leading to far less efficiency, less result for more 
effort. Narrow majorities in organizations that make decisions by 
vote, controlling collected power, can move enormous power based on a 
narrow majority. Once that ability is gone, the only real power is in 
finding consensus. And thus there comes to be an efficiency pressure 
for consensus.

Will it happen this way? We won't now for sure until we try. 
Fortunately, the whole concept requires little effort. At this point, 
the basic work to be done is to develop the concept and to publicize 
it, and to attempt to apply it in whatever organizational 
opportunities present themselves. I've seen so many organizations, 
over the last few years, struggling with issues that could be very 
easily resolved. Problem is, existing organizations, even if 
theoretically compatible, have generally developed some power 
structure, and so we run into the Lomax effect: power inequities 
perpetuate themselves, because those with unequal power will see a 
distribution of power as threatening their own power; exceptions to 
this are rare enough that the effect seems to *always* take place. 
Many organizations are nominally egalitarian, all members have the 
same rights. Except that some are more equal than others. I.e., some 
know the traditions and unspoken rules of an organization, have 
extensive experience with how it works, the politics of it, know how 
to move the levers and push the buttons, and, indeed, often do 
actually understand what is best for the organization, more than the 
average member. What if the average member suddenly has equal power? 
The vision is not a happy one for far too many. It is really the old 
fear of democracy, and anyone who has actually experienced Town 
Meeting government should know that it is a false fear. But that does 
not stop it from being widespread.

So it may be that FA/DP will first find most of its success with new 
organizations. And starting a new organization just to start a new 
organization doesn't work very often. But it will happen, I'm sure, 
sooner or later. There are a number of fledgling efforts; I'm putting 
most of my hope in the Election Methods Interest Group, even though 
that has been dormant for months. There is a person running for 
political office who is making delegable proxy part of his platform. 
There are students who have written papers. The idea is starting to 
get out. There was Demoex in Sweden which actually used delegable 
proxy for a little while and found that it worked. They were not, 
however, a Free Association, and though they were modestly 
successful, had they done what they were doing as an FA, I think 
they'd have been even more successful. Instead, they ran into 
opposition and, frankly, at least some of the opposition made sense. 
Demoex elected a representative to the town council, and that rep was 
pledged to vote the way Demoex, through its process, decided. (Demoex 
is a direct democracy party, "DEMOcracy EXperiment".) Understandably, 
the other members of the council didn't like holding a deliberative 
meeting with a rubber stamp. It violated some basic principles of 
deliberative process. But if, instead, the rep had been a free agent, 
chosen for trustworthiness, representing those who trusted her, no 
problem. And then Demoex could have functioned in a far more 
effective way, uniting the town instead of being one more cause of division.

But God bless them for trying, and there is nothing that says they -- 
and we -- can't learn and grow.




>When considering your interest to avoid strong party style groupings
>to take control of the political life, and on the other hand your
>interest to allow the ordinary people to make the decisions, I came
>to think that you might like (in addition to your "groups of three"
>method) also the following method.
>
>One can nominate candidates for some office/task freely.  In some
>cases any nomination and/or volunteering is enough.  In some other
>cases one might require the candidate to have some education/degree
>in some appropriate area.  Or one could require the candidate to have
>at least 100 listed supporters (or 100 independent emails to the
>election coordinator).  The need for this kind of additional criteria
>depends on if the position in question requires some specific skills,
>or some level of trust.  But in general the lists of candidates are
>collected using this kind of open process that is not controlled by
>any parties or other existing bodies.  One could also check from the
>"nominated" candidates if they volunteer for the task in case they
>are elected before their name appears in the candidate list.
>
>After the lists of electable persons (candidates) have been created
>we can arrange the election.  Winners will be simply picked by random
>votes.
>
>One modification.  One could include in the criteria of making
>someone electable that he/she must have received a certain number of
>votes in the election.  In this case the voters could give a (maybe
>fixed length) list of candidates.  All listed candidates get one
>support vote for electability.  The first candidate on the list that
>is electable will be elected.  (This rule could allow also write-ins.)
>
>Another modification.  Elect that candidate from this voter's list
>who has most support overall.
>
>Third modification.  Arrange two rounds.  First round picks
>candidates for the second round.  Candidates can be presented to the
>voters in more detail before the second round.
>
>Many of the possible rules that I described above take the method
>away from pure random vote method towards a method that favours
>candidates that are also competent (in addition to being the
>favourite of one of the voters) and that have wide support (not just
>the support of this one voter).  I think it is possible to develop
>this type of methods that may freely elect candidates outside of the
>incumbent power structure, and candidates that are wanted for the job
>rather than candidates that want the job, and that still tend to
>elect quite good and competent candidates.
>
>The (electability and election) conditions need to be balanced
>carefully if the task really requires that the elected person is not
>just anybody but one of the best for the job.  For the very top jobs
>like the leader of a country one maybe would come quite close to the
>traditional methods since the criteria need to be very strong (it
>would be e.g. too risky to just give nuclear weapons in the hands of
>some randomly elected John Doe).  But these cases are exceptions.  I
>think many elected jobs / representative tasks do not require much
>more than a regular honest guy that is generally known to be
>competent for the job (he/she may actually be typically better for
>the job than e.g. some power hungry politically oriented person).
>
>This method also avoids the need of the candidates to be skilled in
>fighting their way up the ladders against other candidates.  And it
>is reasonably fair towards minorities.
>
>(There are also other methods that are based on a very bottom-up
>oriented approach like direct democracy and delegable proxy.)
>
>Juho
>
>
>
>
>
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