[Election-Methods] Partisan Politics + a method proposal

[Juho]

On May 26, 2008, at 17:41 , Fred Gohlke wrote:

> Because our physical needs often dictate the course of our lives,  
> most of those who would make the best leaders are unaware of their  
> political talents and are never able to exercise them.

Or may think that it is not possible or tempting for them to first  
fight their way through the unpleasant jungle to then deliver  
something better than that fight through the jungle. Or they may  
think that the system is too rotten or too strong opponent for them  
to even provide good end results after the fight. Or they may think  
that those who seem to be more motivated also have better ideas than  
they do.

> They are out there.  Can we find them?  My interest is in doing so.

I don't think we can "find" them but we can increase the probability  
that they will find their way to the top.

> In the course of outlining this suggestion, you mention several  
> aspects.  I will summarize my understanding of them ...
>
>
> * Nominations are open to the entire electorate.
>
>
> * Anyone can nominate anyone else, including oneself, for office,  
> provided the nominated person accepts the nomination.  If  
> restrictions on the nominations are established, they might include:
>
> - an educational minimum
>
> - if expertise is required in the area for which the person is  
> nominated, a degree symbolizing competence in that area.
>
> - if trust is required in the area for which the person is  
> nominated, support of at least 100 persons in addition to the  
> nominator, expressed by email or in some other form.
>
>
> * Nominations (the name of the nominator and nominated) are  
> recorded by an election coordinator.

Listing the nominators may not be always needed. In some cases there  
could be 100 nominators.

> * The election coordinator publicizes the list of candidates.
>
>
> * The public votes for the candidate of their choice ...

I guess "public" doesn't necessarily mean that the ballot would not  
be a secret/anonymous ballot.

> - by voting for a single person, or
>
> - by making a list of the candidates the voter approves, in which  
> case the candidates are listed in order of preference.  If the  
> first candidate on the list does not get sufficient first place  
> votes for election, that candidate is dropped from the list and the  
> second candidate moves into the first position on that ballot.  In  
> this case, since anyone may nominate anyone else, voters may write  
> the name of their candidate on the ballot.
>
> - the candidate receiving the greatest number of votes wins.
>
>
> * Alternately, the preceding process is used to select those who  
> will be candidates for election.  Then, after these candidates are  
> presented to the voters, an election determines the winner.
>
>
> * The purpose of the method is to ...
>
> - make candidacy available beyond the incumbent power structure.
>
> - replace candidates who want a particular job with candidates the  
> people want in that job.
>
> - allow the election of good and competent candidates.
>
> - favor candidates who are preferred by one voter and attract the  
> support of many voters.
>
> - eliminate the need for a candidate to fight his way against  
> challengers.
>
> - be fair to minorities.

Yes, I tried to support this type of targets to meet the needs that  
you might have.

> * The challenge of the method is to insure that the person elected  
> is the best for the job.

In summary, yes, that is what the rules could look like. I'm very  
flexible to what kind of set of rules each user would adopt. The  
rules also could be much simpler than including all the listed  
possibilities. My intention is just to show various paths that could  
be used to make the basic random vote method more applicable to the  
needs.

> You also mentioned the possibility of direct democracy and  
> delegable proxy.  As to these ...
>
>
> * I find the description of direct democracy vague.  The references  
> I see to it assert it is an absolute good without taking the  
> trouble to explain how that absolute good will work in practice.   
> The closest analogy I've been able to draw is a desire for  
> anarchism.  Personally, I don't find that appealing.

I was thinking in terms of direct vs. representative democracy. I.e  
people vote themselves on the decisions instead of electing  
representatives to vote for them. In my mind Switzerland is a  
classical example on how this could work in practice.

(I don't think this is close to anarchism. Maybe this has some  
interesting differences to the more typical representative  
democracies with respect to populism, conservatism, expert vs. common  
opinions etc.)

> * Delegable proxy, to the extent I understand it, is the height of  
> folly.  The explanation I saw of the method was that a voter could  
> give someone else his proxy, to vote as they see fit.  As I said  
> once before on this topic, such a method would have proxies  
> available on eBay before the ink was dry on the enabling legislation.

I agree that this is a risk. I'd like to keep the method such that as  
much as possible the votes would be anonymous, just like in regular  
elections, and thereby making vote buying impossible. Vote buying and  
coercion are serious risks. Traditional election systems are  
typically carefully planned to keep the privacy (in some cases even  
against the short term interests of the voters themselves), e.g. by  
forcing all to vote in official locations and in isolated voting booths.

I think DP can work in appropriate circumstances also so that the  
votes are reasonably secret.

The reason why I mentioned DP is that it has some interesting  
properties like that it allows the voters to make the election in  
steps (just like in the "groups of three" method) and it allows  
voters to vote on less known candidates that they strongly trust.

(In another mail I mentioned also STV as an interesting "party  
agnostic" method. In STV the point is that it provides proportional  
representation in a way that is independent of the party structure.)

> Will the lists become unwieldy if the process extends beyond the  
> local community?  For example, the number of candidates nominated  
> for governor of my state could be immense.

In cases where the number of candidates is large maybe the list of  
candidates could be just a check list of who has accepted / not  
refused to be a candidate. If the ballots have a list of candidates  
it is no problem if some of them are also ones that do not accept the  
nomination (we can skip to the next listed candidate in that case).

(It is also possible that the list of candidates nominated for  
governor is not that long since we may have some additional criteria  
here (since we may want to exclude the possibility of electing a  
random John Doe). Some other elections (with less strict  
requirements) might have longer lists than this one.)

> Does nominating someone for public office suggest a beneficial  
> interest in that person's election?  If so, should we be concerned?

I'm not sure if I caught the point, but I don't see a big difference  
between different candidates here.

> When the list of candidates for a given office is published by the  
> election coordinator, will the candidates campaign for the office  
> for which they have been nominated?  For example, when you  
> mentioned that candidates would be "presented to the voters" does  
> that mean they will campaign?

I think it s impossible to avoid all campaigning. Maybe the rules for  
campaigning are separate. In many cases I think it would be useful to  
limit the amount of campaigning to avoid the one-dollar-one-vote  
effect. One could e.g. set a fixed limit on the campaign costs.

My interest when talking about presenting the candidates to the  
voters was in avoiding a situation where there are so many candidates  
that the voters are not able to analyze the long list of candidates  
well enough to understand who would be good and who would be bad.  
Many votes could be lost. Or only some public figures would have a  
chance. In this way the regular good people would at least be brought  
to the attention of their potential voters before the final decision.

> At the moment, my grasp of your suggestion does not allow a firm  
> opinion.  Can we flesh out parts of it with greater detail?

I presented the proposal as a family of methods that might use  
different rules in different ways. In order to go to greater detail  
(maybe to lesser amount of details too) one could take some example  
situation and example method. We could for example see what kind of  
rules could be used in electing ten people of a city to act as  
trusted citizens monitoring the criminal interrogations of the police.

There is probably no reason to require any specific skills => normal  
people will do. Maybe all volunteers can be expected to have good  
intentions => no need to control the candidates from this point of  
view either. Maybe we could require some width of support => let's  
say three support votes needed. We could allow voters to list e.g.  
three candidates. After collecting the ballots (and counting the  
number of support votes for each candidate) we would pick random  
ballots and elect the first candidate (who has not been elected yet)  
with at least three support votes overall from each ballot. If we  
don't know if someone has volunteered we could call him and check  
(and move to the next candidate or ballot if the answer is negative).  
If all citizens can be uniquely identified with good enough  
probability (in unclear cases the previous ten elected citizens may  
interpret the intended meaning of the vote) there may be no need for  
a formal nomination process.

This method is quite simple and straight forward and might work well  
enough for this simple task. Just one example among many.

Juho





		
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