[Election-Methods] Partisan Politics + a method proposal

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 02:23 PM 5/25/2008, Juho wrote:
>On May 25, 2008, at 4:16 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
>
>>How about Asset Voting? It is a truly brillig method. Simple.
>>Invented over a hundred and twenty years ago.
>
>I didn't include Asset Voting or related features since it includes
>"cabinet negotiations" between the candidates and the to-be-elected
>representatives. That may be considered to open too many doors for
>the parties/groups/strong individuals to impact the outcome.
>Delegable proxy represents the idea of bottom-up influencing in a
>more basic way.

Asset Voting is delegable proxy (or could be) with a secret ballot 
ground stage. That's all.

Tell me, if you were deciding on who is to represent you, wouldn't 
you want to be able to sit down with candidates and ask questions? 
Would you want this to be secret or public? Either could be arranged, 
you know. Sequester the candidates who hold votes, like they did in 
Venice, give them each a room and a terminal that allows them to send 
messages to anyone. Public only. But I'm not sure it's a good idea.

I can say that personally, I'd like to be able to look the candidates 
in the eye, see the high-bandwidth information that we get from 
personal presence, ask questions and see immediate responses, changes 
in respiration and pulse, body language, etc. Not necessarily 
consciously. And there is no way to make that public, in fact, with 
present technology (unless you spend a fortune on each meeting, and 
even then, what would you do with all that data?)

Now, if you can't meet a candidate in person, how about someone you 
choose meeting the candidate. You choose someone you *can* meet in 
such a way. And that is whom you vote for in the election. Frankly, 
it's *stupid* under Asset to vote directly for the famous person who 
doesn't have time for you. You like that person, fine. Find someone 
you trust who also likes that person. And if you can't, well, that 
might say something to you!

This is an example of applying party-system thinking to what, though 
simple, is really a radical reform. Warren Smith didn't get it, he 
was thinking of a candidate set more or less like what we already 
see. What I see is that there could be, in a large election, 
thousands upon thousands of "candidates." It would be the *norm* that 
nobody gets a quota in a multiwinner election in the secret ballot.

But what is *not* secret is the vote reassignments. What an asset 
holder in an Asset election is, is nothing other than an elector, a 
public voter. That's crucial. The *negotiations* may be private, but 
the voting is pubic. Some kinds of negotiations might be illegal, 
that's another matter.

Remember, all that is being chosen in an Asset PR election is an 
assembly. If one thinks that "secret deals" are going to be prevented 
by avoiding Asset Voting, what happens, then, once the seats are 
assigned. There are now -- unless we go whole hog and keep up with 
direct voting by electors allowed in the assembly -- specific people 
with voting power. Classic targets for corruption. The more 
concentrated power, the more attractive it becomes. Asset with direct 
voting is about the only idea I've seen that could really address 
this; generally, when power is more broadly distributed, corruption 
becomes more difficult, because it becomes more expensive.

In Asset with direct voting allowed, the seats are proxies and 
represent the electors in deliberation. They also vote, but if an 
elector votes directly, this vote power is subtracted (fractionally( 
from the vote of the seat. So, what a seat crucially does is to 
present arguments, and that is public. Corrupt a seat, and you may 
get corrupt arguments.

But then around the seat is a penumbra of high-level proxies, i.e., 
electors holding lots of votes, and these are relatively likely to 
take an active interest in the business of the assembly. Collectively 
-- and they are in touch with each other -- they have the power to 
remove the seat, if needed, and they can gut the seat's voting power 
immediately even without removal process. On the other hand, because 
the relationship is voluntary and relatively uncoerced (for most 
seats), the level of trust and communication between the seat and the 
direct providers of seat votes should be high. And suddenly the seat 
is presenting some weird argument that, yes, we should use voting 
machines with particular specifications that favor a particular 
vendor. Why, ask the direct supporters of the seat? "Uh, well, it's 
really complicated, I'll get back to you next week...."

You know what I think would really happen? Remember, these people 
have good communication, they *like* each other. The seat would 
privately tell the proxies, "They offered me ten million dollars if I 
presented those arguments. Of course they are phoney baloney. I'm 
about to retire anyway, and, of course, I'm going to publicly present 
you with excellent arguments that this is great stuff to buy. 
Privately, you know better. Do what you need to do, please don't say 
I said this. So the seat makes his arguments, fulfilling his 
agreement with the vendor. The proxies gut his voting power and also 
spread contrary information through side channels and other unbought 
seats, saying, "we just don't know what got into our friend! maybe 
it's time for him to retire!" And he does and they throw him a big party.

When power is broadly distributed, it is much cheaper to put sales 
efforts into providing arguments that will prevail. And that is 
easiest if your intention is actually to serve, instead of to rip 
off. One can get plenty wealthy providing good service. Corruption 
only pays when it's a good buy, i.e., when you only have to buy off a 
single individual or a few, because of their power. When the numbers 
get large, it gets risker, for one thing, and it gets highly 
inefficient. Those who would corrupt do so because they see a profit 
in it. A few million dollars to make a few hundred million? Of 
course! But if you have to pay off scads of people, and if all those 
people can do is present arguments and relatively few votes (they 
will lose votes if the arguments they make don't make sense to their 
supporters, and because Asset doesn't need campaigning, the same 
considerations don't apply as with more fixed seats), you might as 
well simply present the arguments. You can do that for free, and it's 
legal. If they are good arguments. That' might cost some money. Start 
with good products!


>>>After the lists of electable persons (candidates) have been created
>>>we can arrange the election.  Winners will be simply picked by random
>>>votes.
>>
>>How about simply allowing people to choose who represents them?
>
>At the end of my mail I mentioned delegable proxy as one method that
>is "party agnostic". At this point I covered only the random ballot
>based options (and tried to avoid collegial decision making as much
>as possible).

In other words, tried to avoid democracy, which is founded on 
collegial decision making. This has been a point I've been making for 
a long time: voting is actually a small part of democracy. 
Aggregation vs. deliberation. Aggregation without deliberation is a 
pretty bad idea, it's responsible for the worst in democracy.


>>>(There are also other methods that are based on a very bottom-up
>>>oriented approach like direct democracy and delegable proxy.)
>
>Btw, I should have mentioned also STV as one central "party agnostic"
>method.

Yes, in theory. But because it demands name recognition for the 
candidates, and there are too many voters, in general, and too few 
possible candidates, voters can't truly vote with complete sincerity 
for the person they consider -- out of the whole world -- could best 
represent them.

The only systems that allow that kind of sincerity (which really 
ought to be obviously desirable, but which we are so far from that we 
don't even think of it as missing), are Asset Voting and, yes, 
Delegable Proxy. Same systems, really. (Asset leaves silent how the 
electors negotiate the seats. Delegable proxy is a very simple way 
that could be use to suggest vote assignments, spontaneously, through 
electors simply choosing which person they most trust, this time 
openly, using delegable proxy analysis to identify seat candidates as 
being in proxy chains large enough to elect.

>>Asset Voting is clean enough and simple enough and really can
>>become DP beyond the secret ballot level.
>
>What property makes Asset Voting be better here? (DP and many methods
>may have problems when votes become public, but why does Asset Voting
>stand out here?)

Asset Voting bridges the gap between secret ballot and public voting. 
Delegable proxy requires public voting, in fact, or, in my opinion, 
it is far too dangerous. It's essential that proxies and clients have 
direct communication, and that each know who the other is. The theory 
of DP is that uncoerced choices, made with knowledge are likely to 
collect trustworthiness. (i.e., the client is choosing a proxy 
personally known to the client; in our proposals we usually 
incorporate "acceptance" as part of the process, and discount 
unaccepted proxy assignments; accepting a proxy is equivalent to 
accepting communication, and I'd never give my proxy to someone who 
didn't give me their phone number....)

Asset, though, as normally described, creates a peer assembly, 
through voluntary vote assignments. Now that there are public 
electors, and a *relatively* small number of them (there may still be 
many), and that there are now seats to represent all the electors, 
and thus all the voters, in deliberation, direct voting and, indeed, 
a consideration of the Electoral College, we could call it, as a 
standing body that does not formallhy meet, but whose members 
continue to represent those who voted for them, direct voting becomes 
possible. The seats serve as proxies for this, but, as with proxies 
in general, if the client (the elector) votes directly, the proxy's 
vote doesn't count.

Asset creates a peer assembly that would look like today's 
assemblies. The process does not have to be reinvented. My opinion is 
that direct votes would *ordinarily* not amount to much, but the very 
possibility has some nice effects. First of all, it prevents the 
seats from holding too much power, they could lose their seats 
quickly (I'd have persistence of seats, but voting power can go in a 
flash; a seat without voting power can still present motions, etc., 
but can't vote on them.) Secondly, it allows true minority groups, 
small numbers, to cooperate on a seat without thereby having to 
accept all the views of that seat. If they are willing to follow the 
assembly business and vote, they can. So really all they *must* find 
is someone that will present to the assembly their most notable 
arguments. Even if it is to say, "I don't necessarily accept this, 
but I have constituents who believe that ... and in fairness.... blah, blah."

The point is to make the assembly truly representative of the people, 
and *keep it that way.* The electors are not high-level politicians, 
usually. They are relatively ordinary people who were willing to 
become public voters. Under difficult conditions, precautions might 
be needed to protect them; this would place restrictions on the 
number of votes held by a public voter. (I.e., you can't allocate 
protective resources to every voter who decides, "I want to vote in 
public," and there are certain other problems -- soluble, I believe 
-- with very small numbers of votes held, like down in the twos or 
threes or so. Vote coercion becomes possible when the numbers are 
very small.) (Possible solution: when registering as a candidate, 
candidate names a proxy. Small numbers of votes are not announced as 
going to that candidate, but to the proxy. But all this is for 
difficult conditions. I don't see the U.S. as being difficult in this way.)