[EM] Asset voting and so forth, in practice

[Michael Allan]

If I understand you Abd, we're currently developing the tools for
voters to do essentially what you describe.  And we've made some
progress recently:

  Drafting media:  http://t.zelea.com/wiki/Toronto:Pollwiki
  Voting engine:   http://t.zelea.com:8080/v/w/
  Bird's eye view: http://t.zelea.com/wiki/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/p/de

  More info:       http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht

It's all still rough work, and in flux, but the code is running live.
So we can probably start doing this today, in small ways.  (More
below.)

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> If write-ins are allowed, or there are a very large number of candidates 
> and a lot of seats to be elected, there might be votes that end up unused. 
> Lewis Carroll suggested a solution, and it's Asset Voting...
>
> If no votes are wasted, and Asset makes wasted votes unlikely, with a 
> particular known individual being responsible for wasting *your* vote, you 
> can vote accordingly in the future, and if voters aren't artificially 
> constrained to listed candidates affiliated with empowered parties, then 
> parties must necessarily become less important. They would still serve 
> other functions, I'm sure. However, this situation sets up a conflict of 
> interest between political parties and those vested within them, and the 
> voters themselves, so I wouldn't hold my breathe for political parties to 
> rush to support something like this. It is pure voter benefit, so it will 
> probably have to be the voters themselves to make it happen, which will 
> require direct voter organization for that purpose.
>
> That is probably true for any truly major reform of the system. The people 
> who have accumulated power under the present system are not likely to rush 
> to support reforms that make their accumulated power less relevant. They 
> wouldn't lose their natural influence, but who will stop to think like 
> that? In fact, a party leader who did push for and successfully implement 
> an Asset system would probably thereby be creating independent support, and 
> would maintain effective power or influence even without needing to please 
> a party elite or needing to satisfy wealthy donors.

Even if party leaders could grant a substansive democracy, that might
not be the best way to acheive it - receiving it as a gift from on
high.  Wouldn't it be better to build it ourselves from the ground up?

It's not uninteresting work, either.  But we could use some help from
voting experts and mathematicians.  Does it look theoretically sound,
what we're doing?

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, 647-436-4521
Skype michael_c_allan
http://zelea.com/