[EM] language/framing quibble

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Fred Gohlke wrote:
> Good Morning, Kristofer
> 
> re: "So, in essence, the pyramid structure remains even after
>      selection?"
> 
> Yes.  We have the capability of retaining the information and it should 
> be used to enhance the role of those elected to act as spokesperson for 
> a segment of the electorate.  In this connection, we should note the 
> random grouping of candidates at each level insures that the segment of 
> the electorate represented by each elected official will be diverse.
> 
> How this capability is actually used will depend on those who implement 
> the process.  As I've said before, I don't favor rigid monitoring of the 
> people we elect.  However, because the process provides a simple means 
> of enabling referenda and recall, the implementors should establish 
> rules for their use.

Even without rigid monitoring, there should be a counteracting measure. 
After all, the councilmembers work on behalf of the people, so if they 
start consistently diverging from what the people want, there should be 
a way of directing them back. This way must not be too strict, or we get 
short term interest on one hand and populism on the other. It should 
still be there; I think that's partly the point of the bidirectionality 
we're talking about, although it's not limited to "counteraction", but 
also involves information (to guide).

> re: "You'll lose the corruption resistance by surprise property.
>      This would mean that external parties could try to corrupt
>      those at the next highest level in order to overturn the
>      highest; that is, if the next to highest council has formal
>      powers. If it doesn't, there's nothing to say, in the worst
>      case, that the highest level will listen to them, so let's
>      say they have."
> 
> The process does not give unselected people any powers.  If they are to 
> have powers, they must be granted by those who implement the process. As 
> you point out, it would be fairly easy to devise rules that destroy the 
> integrity of the system.  Indeed, that is precisely the way the current 
> system was devastated, so the risk is real and imminent.  The best 
> defense may be analyze the rule-making aspect as quickly and as 
> thoroughly as possible, one of the many considerations I hadn't 
> anticipated.

My idea was that even the unselected helped the selected become 
selected. In one sense, they used their power (what one may call that 
power) to reach an agreement. Therefore, the selected are to some extent 
  accountable to them; which makes sense if you go all the way down, 
where the people (except the candidates) are all ultimately unselected. 
As you say, formal power might not be the way to do so, though.

> re: "... lower levels may initiate referenda (initiative or
>      recall) as if a majority of those below them in the pyramid
>      had requested it ..."
> 
> I understand the reasoning but wonder if it's not a bit dangerous to 
> assume those at lower levels support a given side of a single issue? 
> Would it not be better to ask them, since the means of doing so is at hand?
> 
> Your suggestion that "... if a person at level n wants to ask the people 
> of something, he must get a majority at levels below him to agree, or a 
> majority of the two levels below, or something like that." is probably 
> the better option.

There's a scale: on one end of the scale is a referendum. On the other 
end is an immediate decision by the council or government. The former 
end is direct but takes very long time, while the latter is indirect but 
goes quickly. The suggestion was of something in between. Setting "a 
majority of the two levels below" or similar might work; this all 
depends on how much the selected at one level can be considered to 
represent those below them.

> The resolution of this issue it tied to the particulars of the election 
> cycle(s), particularly the term of office of the elected officials. 
> Where an entire body is replaced every two years, there should be little 
> need for referenda.  The combination of the time it takes for a public 
> official to perform a misdeed and for that fact to become public, 
> combined with the time the referendum takes, will usually exceed the 
> time it will take to replace the individual in the next election.  Even 
> so, we must have a mechanism to deal with malfeasance during longer terms.

We end up at another element of that which it's hard to predict. If the 
final council (or aggregation of councils, assuming the body in question 
is larger than a triad or council) represents the people well, there's 
little need for a referendum - if they represent the people perfectly 
and would always do what they'd do given a magic "zero cost referendum", 
then there would be no need or point at all. To the extent they 
disagree, referenda and initiatives would have a point. If we're unsure 
about whether they're useful, I think we should include them; they could 
be removed later if not used at all, whereas if the system turns more 
flawed than expected, the backup option (of direct popular opinion) can 
be used to fix things more easily than would otherwise be the case.

> re: "If you have computers, you could [pass messages] in a manner
>      similar to delegate cascade. Anybody can submit a message.
>      The message is given weight according to (strength gained
>      from those below the sender in the pyramid) / (population
>      size). The computer lists messages sorted by weight. PR
>      methods could have some form of successive downweighting so
>      that say, a very persistent person in the middle of the
>      pyramid doesn't crowd out others at his level.
> 
> I will have to consider this more carefully.  The capability for 
> referenda is important, but I suspect the process should be simple and 
> direct.  In each case, referenda can only instruct a single 
> representative to act in a certain manner or remove that representative 
> from office.  If a movement intended to alter the direction of the 
> government arises, it must take form in each 'pyramid' separately.

I didn't mean for this to be part of the referendum mechanism. Rather, 
it would be a quicker element of bidirectionality, to just tell a given 
member of the body about the concerns of those who selected him, or 
selected those who selected him, or selected those who.. and so on. This 
need not, and probably should not, be adversary; if he continues to 
ignore the "selectors", other parts of the system could come into play, 
while this would be more of a communications channel.

> Parties can, will, and should exist, but lacking control of the process, 
> they will perform their proper function of giving voice to ideologies. 
> If a groundswell evolves, it can force a change of direction of 
> government, but that is much more likely to occur through repetitive 
> elections than through referenda.
> 
> With regard to 'tiny voters', I'm inclined to think they may be the most 
> important.  Here's why.  The majority of those who do not advance beyond 
> the lower levels are people with little interest in holding public 
> office.  They are content to let others fill that role.  If an event 
> energizes them to alter their aversion to political involvement, it may 
> be worthwhile to consider their point of view.  (Of course, there is the 
> matter of those who whine and complain about everything.  Separating the 
> wheat from that chaff may be non-trivial.)

There would be at least one way of doing so, if we assume the people in 
the middle don't discard messages. Say there's an issue of whether a 
certain service should be funded more than last year. The common 
agreement was that, yes, it should, but opinion is shifting (perhaps 
because of corruption or similar), and it's doing so broadly. Now, the 
ultimate voters, the people at level 0 have two options. Either they can 
all tell their body members (final councilmembers) directly. Each of 
those messages will have a weight of 1/(population size). Or; they can 
group together and tell someone at level 1 who tells someone at level 2, 
etc. If we have a triad, then at level 2, the message would have weight 
(3^2)/(population size) if sent directly up. In a way, that would be an 
election (using the same mechanism as was used to elect the members of 
the body), except of a message rather than of a person.

There are two problems with this idea. First, whatever distortion may 
exist because of PR issues would return, and probably stronger too, 
since messages can't change (although they can be rephrased by members 
at a higher level). Second, and more importantly, some level-2 members 
may simply decide to ignore the message, and there would be no 
repercussion to them (unlike with the final layer) since they're not 
part of the formal structure.

> re: "What do you mean by requests for guidance?"
> 
> Although I think, in general, those we elect should be left to fill the 
> roles we elect them to fill, unusual circumstances can arise that are 
> beyond the realm of normal governmental operation.  The current 
> financial debacle is but one example.  At such times, our 
> representatives should recognize the need for and seek the guidance of 
> their constituents.  I'm not confident we can form a generic injunction 
> that they do so because I'm not sure how to define an 'unusual 
> circumstance'.  It may be that the body, itself, should be required to 
> instruct representatives to seek guidance in the event of an 'unusual 
> circumstance' but I fear that opens the door for distortion and abuse.

Message-passing might help. Also, backup methods could also do so, or 
direct communication between the constituents and the selected. The 
latter happens, to some degree, already, such as by "contacting your 
congressman". The point, in any case, is that the method shouldn't need 
to recognize an "unusual circumstance"; rather, it should follow by the 
method that it would be used more when what the people consider an 
unusual circumstance occurs.

But to contradict myself, let's see what other options could be used. 
Perhaps either people (through communication or, failing that, 
initiative) or the body members could, when they consider an unusual 
circumstance, convene an independent body to investigate. This body 
could be selected by consensus or just randomly. The former could lead 
to the same sort of distortions as you find with "bipartisan 
gerrymandering" (the body being friendly with all parties instead of 
completely independent), so the latter may work better, based on 
something like British Columbia's Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform.

> A couple of additional thoughts:
> 
> 1) So far, I've left open the means by which candidates reach specific 
> offices.  After thinking about your suggestion for larger group sizes, 
> it occurred to me that might be the best solution for the final stage. 
> By that time, all the candidates have been throughly examined, several 
> times.  When a number sufficient to fill all the open posts (and a few 
> extra) is reached, that group decides who will fill what office by the 
> means you described:  Candidates list their preferences for each office, 
> by name.  Those most frequently listed for a given post are elected to 
> that post.

If you're thinking about an executive council (like the government in a 
parliamentary nation, or the executive power in a republic), you could 
use a matrix voting system, as I have talked about in an earlier post on 
this list. Basically, in matrix voting of n candidates for k positions, 
the voters rank the candidates k times, one for each position. Then the 
method selects that which gives the best overall result. In doing so, it 
might give one position to the second place winner of that election 
instead of the first place, if that means another position will have its 
second place winner rather than its fifth place winner instead.

One version of the matrix voting problem would be this, for Range:

You have an n*k matrix. Each cell gives the average rating of a given 
candidate for a given position. Now select k cells within the matrix so 
that the sum of the ratings is maximized, subject to that

no candidate is elected to more than one position (impossible),
and
no position is vacant (unless n < k, i.e there are not enough candidates 
to go around).

I think that problem can be solved using a computer. That's a 
majoritarian version of matrix voting. A PR version would downweight 
those who got the, say, minister of the interior, when deciding who 
should be minister of defense.

Matrix voting would be of an advantage wherever the tasks are 
significantly different (meaning that a certain person might be well 
suited for a certain position, while being considerably less suited for 
another).

> 2) Governments have a plethora of appointive offices.  Although many of 
> these are plums, dispensed for political advantage, there may be some 
> offices that are properly filled by appointment.  If so, the 
> appointments must be made come from those at the highest level who were 
> not elected to public office.  Also, in the event of the recall of a 
> public official, the replacement must be selected from those at the 
> highest level that were not elected.

If you wanted to be sophisticated, you could weight the other councils 
(not underneath the recalled official) higher. That would produce an 
incentive to not be subject to recall in the first place; though it may 
be more reasonable to do the weighting of all councils except the 
appointer's.