[Election-Methods] Partisan Politics + a method proposal

[Fred Gohlke]

Good Evening, Juho

With regard to my observation ...

"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."

You made three points ...

"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."

An electoral method that lets everyone participate, at whatever time in 
their lives and to whatever extent they are motivated to act, will give 
the people an opportunity that is now denied them.  Given the 
opportunity, I've little doubt they will take an active part.  The 
intense discussion of political topics on the internet gives us insight 
into their eagerness to participate.



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

That's quibbling.  If they find their way to the top, we found them.



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

Knowing who made the nomination is required.  It gives us information 
about the candidate.



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

It may be clearer if we change:

* The public votes for the candidate of their choice ...

to

* The people vote for the candidate of their choice ...



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

We are seeking a method that benefits the people.  Whether or not it 
suits me is not important.  If any of the points I've made are worthy of 
consideration, we can blend them into the proposal as we describe it.



re: "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."

Such an assertion works against devising a better method.  How can the 
rules be simpler than listing the possibilities?  My purpose in 
itemizing what I understood you to say was to allow careful examination 
of the elements of the method you suggested. If we do not list the 
elements, how can we examine them?

We may be working at cross-purposes here.  I feel no compulsion to 
discuss a different method, but if you are proposing one that is better 
than Active Democracy I want to consider it, carefully and in detail.



I will avoid comment on Direct Democracy and Delegable Proxy unless and 
until they can be shown to be more effective in improving the people's 
control of their government than Active Democracy.



re: "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)."

'Maybe' is not a good basis for discussion.  Methods must meet specific 
needs.  In my state, there are well over 5 million voters.  If everyone 
can nominate a candidate for office, how many nominations will we have? 
  Several hundred thousand seems conservative.  How would I get enough 
information to make a rational choice among the people in such a long 
list?  If some of the people in the list have not accepted the 
nomination, how would I know?  Will their names be marked with an 
asterisk?  If so, why not just drop the name?



re: "(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.)"

What are the additional criteria?  It is impossible to evaluate a 
concept if we can't describe it's elements in sufficient detail to allow 
others to critique our suggestions.  No one of us is so knowledgeable we 
can craft an electoral method in our own minds. It is only through such 
a critique we can hope to devise a workable proposal.



re: I asked, "Does nominating someone for public office suggest a 
beneficial interest in that person's election?  If so, should we be 
concerned?" and you responded, "I'm not sure if I caught the point, but 
I don't see a big difference between different candidates here."

The point is that when someone nominates a person for office they may 
expect to benefit from that person's election.  Parties, for example, 
nominate people they can rely on to enact the laws the party's 
fund-raisers sold to the vested interests that financed the party's 
campaigns.  The same thing is likely to be true of any nomination.  My 
question was whether we should be concerned about this circumstance.



re: "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."

We should have learned by now that the need for campaign funds is the 
fundamental reason our system is corrupt.  You may think it impossible 
to avoid campaigning, but I don't.  I've outlined a method that does not 
involve campaigning and there are probably others.  Political 
campaigning, by definition, guarantees the supremacy of money over 
intellect (and integrity).



re:  "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."

Since campaigning is a self-defeating option, we need a method of 
examining the candidates and making the results available to the 
electorate.  Can you suggest a method of doing so?



re: "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."

Even if we have a 'family of methods', we must examine each one 
carefully.  In the case of "... electing ten people of a city to act as 
trusted citizens monitoring the criminal interrogations of the police.", 
if we are to implement such a system, how many nominations should we 
accept and who should we accept them from?  If we attempt to graft this 
method on our existing political structure, the political parties will 
reserve to themselves the right to name the 'trusted citizens'.

I like this suggestion, but I question how we can achieve it.  When 
those with political power write the rules by which that power is 
maintained, it is unwise to imagine altruism will be their motivating 
force.  There are a multitude of situations in my state (and probably 
everywhere) where some form of genuine and unbiased civilian oversight 
would be beneficial.  We already have several such 'boards' and 
'authorities' in our state. but they are, without exception, shams.  So, 
although it's a good idea, implementing it will not be straightforward. 
  My friend in the U. K. (that I've mentioned before) suggested that, 
with the Active Democracy concept, the people who do not advance at the 
final level should form a pool of citizens to populate such boards or to 
fill vacancies that occur in public offices.



re: "Maybe all volunteers can be expected to have good intentions ..."

I don't believe you mean that.



re: "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."

An electoral method ought not be based on 'maybe'.  I am unable to 
comment on this paragraph because it is too vague.  You say the method 
is 'simple and straight forward' but I'm not sure what you're talking 
about and I certainly don't understand how it could be a model for a 
better electoral process.


I planned to append the itemized list to this message with a couple of 
adjustments.  I've decided not to do so because it does not appear to 
represent a firm proposal for an electoral method.  If it is, please let 
me know and I'll post it again so we can work on providing a rationale 
for each of its elements.

I'll try to respond to some of the other posts tomorrow.

Fred