[EM] Buying Votes

[Jobst Heitzig]

Dear Greg,

you wrote:
> I'm not speaking about majoritarianism in this case, although you are
> correct that it alleviates many of the problems. What I meant was
> there is the potential for vote buying under any voting method where
> voting is verifiable and non-unanimity can pass a policy.

OK, I agree.

You continued, answering me:
>>> In every reasonable voting method (remember democracy is distinct from
>>> consensus), ...
>> I can only remember what I believe to be true. This claim is not!
> 
> democracy is distinct from consensus? Of course it is! I can win under
> any reasonable voting method by pleasing less-than-everyone. 

I think I misunderstood you there. What I meant was: Sophisticted 
democratic decision methods can lead to almost complete consensus. FAWRB 
promises to do so by giving everybody an incentive to search for a good 
compromise and making sure it wins with very large probability. This is 
indeed very near to reaching consensus! Only majoritarian (and thus 
undemocratic) methods lead to results often far from consensus. For this 
reason, I tend to find majoritarian methods relatively unreasonable :-)

> I attempted to explain in
> You Can't Have it Both Ways that a voting system cannot and should not
> be designed to protect rights... but I digress.

A voting system should not be designed to protect rights? Of course it 
should! It should be designed to protect the right of everybody to have 
an equal amount of power in decisions!

> I have never seen any method lauded so much for disobeying a criterion. ; )

What's a "criterion"? Usually it is a sentence which can either be true 
or false about any decision method. Whether "passing" or "failing" a 
criterion is the good thing depends on values. My most important values 
are first equality and individual rights, then efficiency. Hence failing 
the majority criterion is mandatory for any reasonable decision method 
since majoritarian ones disrespect my most important values.

>> You're totally right. This is the best motivation for giving each voter the
>> same voting power instead of giving some majority all of the power. Then the
>> majority has something to "trade". In order to get my proposed option
>> elected, I need their cooperation which I must "buy" by taking their
>> preferences into account in my proposal.
> 
> I don't follow. If I reward a majority, then that does nothing to
> prevent future majorities from forming. 

I don't want to prevent any majority from forming. That would be 
ridiculous as people have every right to have the same opinion as 
others. The point is not whether there are majorities or not. The point 
is that majorities must not be given 100% of the decision power in any 
single decision.

> Majoritarianism isn't some
> complete shift of power to whoever can muster 51%...

Er? That's *exactly* what majoritarianism is! What else than a shift of 
power would you call it when 51% of the people need not care what the 
other 49% want in some individual decision because they can safely 
establish what they want? Obviously they have the complete power in that 
decision when a majoritarian method is used.

> Every voter has the same capacity to influence the election. 

If you believe this is the case with your favourite majoritarian method, 
then please show me how the latter 45% in the following quite common 
situation have the "same capacity to influence the election": 55% 
wanting A, 45% wanting B. Just tell me what the 45% can do to avoid 
getting A for certain.

I can tell you what they can do when FAWRB is used: They can just vote 
for B and thus give B a 45% winning chance, compared to a 55% winning 
chance for A. But even better: They can also propose a good compromise 
option C which everybody prefers much to the 55%/45% lottery. If they 
suggest such a C, everybody will have an incentive to mark C as 
"approved" under FAWRB, so that C will be elected with certainty.



> OMOV and
> majority are not in conflict. No rules says that a majority method is
> automatically non-OMOV.

OMOV is a purely formal requirement which is so trivial that I cannot 
remember a single decision method having been discussed here that not 
fulfilled it when interpreted correctly. "OMOV Interpreted correctly" 
means "the only information about the voter used in the decision process 
must be his or her preferences as revealed by him or her on the ballot".

What OMOV does *not* guarantee is that everybody has an influence on the 
decision. Obviously, majoritarian methods are OMOV but make it 
impossible for as much as 49% of the voters to influence the decision.

> I don't think that non-majoritarian methods are intrinsically better.

If you don't think democracy is important...

> Right... voting is non-contractual. THAT IS THE POINT! If it were
> contractual (read "verifiable"), 

No, I don't read "contractual" as "verifiable". FAWRB makes it 
essentially contractual in providing safe ways to cooperate anonymously 
without having to reveal my preferences to anybody.

> Voters do not make contracts. Voters do not agree to
> respect each others decisions. 

Are you reporting your own experience here? Or are you just stating that 
  most methods do not provide incentives to make contracts and respect 
others decisions? FAWRB does give such incentives: The 55% majority 
really gains much in helping to find a compromise which is attractive to 
the other 45%, too, because then they will get the compromise instead of 
the 55%/45% lottery in which one faction's favourite wins at random.

> I will expand this slightly.
> 
> Democracy and individual rights are inconsistent.

At least democracy is not inconsistent with the individual right to have 
equal power in decisions (this is what FAWRB proves). Rather, democracy 
is just *about* that particular individual right!

> Being from California, I am from the west and thus am guilty of
> equating majority rule and democracy. 

Nobody saves you from erring even in the presence of better evidence 
which I won't repeat again :-)

> By democracy I meant
> non-dictatorship non-perfect-consensus. 

To me it makes no essential difference whether the dictator is one 
person or a group of persons. So, in principle, majoritarianism 
qualifies as dictatorship, too.

> Democracy will only last until people realize they can just vote
> themselves the money. Mutual distrust keeps them from realizing this.

It is Majoritarianism what will only last that long. In many countries 
around the globe, majority populations *have* realized that they can 
just vote themselves the money of the rest. That's a main reason why so 
many minorities want to separate themselves from the respective 
majority, which they often can only be prevented from by using violence.

Yours, Jobst