[EM] Delegable proxy/cascade and killer apps

[Raph Frank]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 8:07 PM, Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com> wrote:
> Raph Frank wrote:
>
>> Vote buying could be an issue.  In fact, it is possibly the Achilles
>> Heal of the proxy system.
>
> Vote buying will be a poor investment.  The votes are too shifty.
> Voters will take the money and run: they'll take it from one side,
> then shift their votes and take it from the other.

The parallel system helps, if there is still a secret ballot, then
corrupting the delegable proxy system is less valuable.

The only benefit is that it might allow someone become one of the
top-2 (assuming that the main election remains as plurality).

>
>> > But I was speaking of overlay networks like Napster...
>
>> ...even with a small number of people, it was worth using.  You
>> could use it to send files to friends.
>
> Yes, that's the key.  It's free of scale dependencies.  Same for open
> voting (though I haven't been able to convince you).

I am not sure I agree.  Napster was more valuable the more people who used it.

What exactly do you mean by scale invariant.

>> For example, it would be worth using your system for a sports club of
>> some kind.
>>
>> If that turns out to be popular, then maybe some of those people would
>> use it for larger groups.
>
> Again, you are suggesting this because you are concerned about a
> network effect.  I believe it's scale free.  If a sports club is
> roughly equivalent to a city, except smaller, then I want the city.
> Why test on a rough equivalent, when I can test on the real thing?

Well, if it really scale invariant, then a smaller group is easier to
convince to actually start using it.

> A threshold of 5% of the population is rather high as an estimate.
> Commercial polls are not based on such large samples.  But the news
> media routinely report them.  When they discover there's a continuous
> poll running 24x7, it'll make the news.  By reporting on it, they'll
> drive up its participation.  It's in their interest.

True.  Have you considered using the pollster's method of directly
contacting people?

Ofc, they just ring up and ask if someone what is their opinion on an
issue and it takes the person a few seconds to respond.

Maybe you could ask "who is the person you most trust?", but that
might sound a little spooky :).  This would give you the initial trust
links, but probably each person would just vote for 1 other person.

Alternatively, you could ask them directly to participate.

Actually, what about this:

You assign each resident various scores.  For example

- location
- gender
- age
- income (doubt it is public and anyway, will kinda be related to the
location/age combo)

Each resident is assigned to a location, even if they aren't participants.

Any resident can join the system and is then verified.

Each participant can assign their vote to another participant under you rules.

However, all non-participants are assigned to the participant that is
closest to them.

This creates an incentive to join.  If you are from a group of people
who aren't well represented, then you would be able to assign the
votes for lots of your peers.

Another way of looking at it is that each participant's votes are
rescaled to eliminate participation bias.  In fact, that might be a
better way of describing it, as being allowed to vote other people's
votes is not good public relations.

In any case, it gets you the running poll system.  If a person doesn't
log in every month or so, they might have their participation score
decreased.  Their vote could drop by 10% every week they are away
after the first month.

>
>> > The state's polling stations have no built-in discussion forums.
>> > The state's ballots have no spaces for comments.  Their's is just
>> > a "pure vote tabulator".  Our's too.
>>
>> Yes, but they have the advantage that they deploy real power.  A low
>> voter turnout doesn't diminish State power quite so directly.
>
> I don't know if a discussion forum is a good substitute for a power
> connection.  But maybe there's no need for a substitute.  Since the
> state's system already has a power connection, let's use theirs.

Right, but the power you have due to a discussion forum requires
participation and I agree, the idea is to get organised and then state
power follows.

>> Maybe saying not real was unfair, but there is certainly a low turnout
>
> I just started the server few days ago.  Nobody in Toronto is aware of
> it.  It's not time, yet.

Fair enough.

>> (and some voter register fraud :p ).
>
> (Unfair.  In your own design sketch, you did not *preclude* sock
> puppets.  Rather you had different trust levels for viewing the
> electoral data.  Same here.  The current level is zero, for testing.
> The sock puppet is visible, but it's clearly marked as being
> untrustworthy.)

Yeah, I know was just joking.

>  http://web.archive.org/web/20061113083043/wikocracy.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
>
> Was it purely a drafting medium?  No voting?

Correct.  In fact, most people just ignored the other voters and made
their own pages.  Each amendment was basically self contained, so some
contradicted each other.

Some like the right to bear arms were basically edit wars.  One of the
compromises that I suggested was to allow the right to apply to single
target weapons (if it can be used to just kill one person at a time),
but not area weapons like bombs.  This was disliked by some as it
would prevent militia from being allowed have artillery.

> I was thinking the most natural drafting medium to support
> this is recombinant text:
>
>   http://zelea.com/project/textbender/d/overview.xht

Had a look, and it sounds reasonable.

However, care needs to prevent massive explosion of the options.
There should be 2 forces, people making suggestions expand the
options, and then the consensus mechanism reduces them to a manageable
number,

>
> But maybe I am wrong, maybe a Wiki will work.  What if the
> candidate-drafter provided write-access to her immediate voters?  The
> voters could submit text, and she could be editor in chief.

Another option is to have 2 versions of the page.  The wiki version
and the "committed" version.

The committed version has been approved by the proxy in question.  The
wiki version can be modified by anyone who has been given write access
by the proxy.

The proxy would then transfer any info from one to the other that he
agrees with.

> Distortion and suppression are problems.  Ideas of the voter-drafters
> would not be expressed as they had intended.  They would be edited.
> They would thus be hidden from view, and effectively suppressed.

If your proxy does that, then you could withdraw your support and
submit the change elsewhere.

> But suppose the voter-drafter had her own Wiki too, in which *she* was
> editor in chief?  Then she'd have freedom of expression there ("what
> *I* think the law ought to be"), and only editing privledges in the
> candidate draft ("what my candidate thinks").

Right, and also worth having links from her draft to the one she submitted to.

> This is interesting, a cascade of Wikis.  Text would flow as usual
> from voter-drafter to candidate-drafter, and so on, down to the
> consensus drafts.  But it would be pushed at each step rather than
> pulled.  Maybe push is OK.  Some things I like about it:
>
>   i) Voter-drafters are motivated anyway to push text into the
>      candidate draft, one step closer to consensus, so why not let
>      them?  Why make them wait for a pull?
>
>  ii) Authorship of voter-drafters is formally acknowledged in the Wiki
>      history of the candidate draft.
>
>  iii) The tools are off-shelf.  No need to code anything.
>

I wonder if it is worth having a composite draft that is subject to discussion.

There would need to be a consensus agreement on how the draft should
be formatted (as in what goes in each section).

Then the page might be

Section 3 -
Option 1: Summary
click to expand text
Option 2: Summary
click to expand text

and so on, with maybe the support for each option shown.

2 proxies might be willing to merge their drafts like that if it meant
that they could agree to suggest them at a higher level.

This would mean that users would be able to see the main options in each case.

One possible disadvantage is that sometimes a compromise would involve
agreements on more than one option.


> Yes.  In the beta release, all of the electoral data will be public
> for verification purposes.  The same data will suffice to fork the
> electoral server, as a last resort.
>

But not the final release?

>
>> My big concern is the incentive to participate (in case you haven't
>> notices :) ).
>
> I'm more worried about usability as a barrier.  In any case, the
> general solution to low turnout is: 1) identify the cause, and 2)
> correct it.  It's all a part of the development process.  We're not
> stuck.  The current causes of low turnout are: it's only an alpha
> release, the server is 3 days old, and nobody knows it's running.  So
> I'll work on the corrections for those.

Fair enough, I realise that new servers don't instantly become mass used.

>
>> The point of participation is to have some change in the real world.
>> This means that you need some way to verify that the people you are
>> talking to (and possibly compromising with) are actually capable of
>> fulfilling their side of the bargain.
>
> I guess that's the purpose of the electoral system.  If you disappoint
> your voters and don't answer for it, you'll lose their votes.  It will
> happen immediately.

I wasn't referring to the elected, the system should be usable in most
general instances.  You could have 2 groups of people who agree on a
compromise candidate that they will back.  However, when it actually
becomes time to canvas for the compromise, only one group shows up.

It turns out the other group was actually a sock puppet army or maybe
the proxy was just representing lazy people.

The effect would be that that proxy would be considered to possibly
represent some voters, but isn't someone you can rely on to get people
to actually do anything.

> (Frankly, I'm fed up with your performance in the
> Council elections.  You've just lost my vote. ;)
>
>  http://t.zelea.com:8080/v/w/
>

Well, it happens :).