[EM] language/framing quibble

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Fred Gohlke wrote:
> Good Morning, Raph
> 
> When I offered to send you a draft of the petition outlining a method of 
> selecting candidates for public office, I planned to send it privately. 
>  After seeing your response, I asked the author's permission to post it 
> publicly and he agreed.  Here's the draft in its current form:
> 
> 
> (draft)            (draft)            (draft)            (draft)
> 
>                        P-E-T-I-T-I-0-N
> 
>           To the Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council
[SNIP]

> ILLUSTRATION
> This table describes the method by which the members of the Church Ward 
> will select candidates for the Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council:
> 
>                                      Select
>                                     Randomly
>                                       From
>                        Full   Over  Previous   Total
>     Level Candidates  Triads  flow    Level   Triads  Selected(1)
>       1)     9001      3000     1       0      3000     3000
>       2)     3001(2)   1000     1       2      1001     1001
>       3)     1001       333     2       1       334      334
>       4)      334       111     1       2       112      112
>       5)      112        37     1       2        38       38
>       6)       38        12     2       1        13       13
>       7)       13         4     1       2         5        5
>       8)        5         1     2       1         2        2(3)

This sounds a lot like what I've previously referred to as "council 
democracy". In a council democracy, you have councils of size p. Each 
elect one of its number to the next council. The coverage is exponential 
in the number of levels.

I wonder if the problems of council democracy also would affect this 
proposal. The first problem of council democracy is that it magnifies 
opinion in a possibly chaotic manner. Say, for the sake of the argument, 
that there's an opinion held by r% of the people. What value of r is 
required so that there's a way that the majority of the final council 
will hold that opinion?

That's ((floor(p/2) + 1)/p) ^ q, where there are q levels. Intuitively, 
that's a "majority of a majority of a majority ... of a majority". Let's 
see what this is for 8 levels and a majority of 2/3 (as with your 
triads). In the very worst case, an opinion held by (2/3)^8 = 4% can be 
held by a majority of the last triad.

Your randomization thwarts strategists from deliberately poisoning the 
triad system, something that could be done in a council democracy, but 
the point holds: because the comparisons are local, disproportionality 
can accumulate.

Your overflow solution is interesting, as it deals with the second 
problem of council democracy in that there's no "obvious" (for 
non-random councils at least) way of making the numbers even at each level.


One could reduce the first problem by having a larger group that elects 
more than one member. Perhaps a group of five that elects two in a PR 
manner? In order for the opinion to be transmitted from a level to the 
one above, both must hold it, so two Droop quotas have to have it. That 
is, if I'm doing this right, 4/5. The reduction:

Level   Candidates     5-groups  Overflow   Elect from prev.
0       9001           1800      1          0
1       3601(2)        720       1          4
2       1442           288       2          3
3       578            115       3          2
4	232            46        2          3
5       94             18        4          1
6       38             7         3          2
7	14             2         4          1
8	3              1	 4          1
9	2              1         (Elect one to fill 5-group)

The minimum possible opinion that can attain a majority here has (4/5)^9 
= 13.4% support among the people. That's better, even if it's still low.