[EM] proxy ideas: continual consideration, and proxy committees

[Thomas von der Elbe]

Hello James,

I am Thomas from Germany. Sorry if my English is a bit strange. I am 
also a member of the Votorola-Project. I like very much, that you are 
doing theoretical work on this subject. As far as I'm aware, this is 
quite needed.

In your paper you write about the one benefit of delegated voting, which 
has to do with division of labor. For example: I delegate my vote 
concerning all environmental issues to Greenpeace and they do the work 
for me. I.e. they become and stay experts in this field and they place 
my vote for me.

Now this would already be a huge advantage (and it is partly implemented 
in Votorola already).

But there is another great benefit, which not many people seem to know 
of, yet. And which is a core principle in Votorola. Maybe it is what you 
were pointing to here?

> Imagine, for example, that under my proposal, a lot of the people who 
> held a lot of proxies would often get together with each other, and 
> have discussions, debates, etc., with the aim of actually 
> understanding each other's points of view in depth even when they were 
> opposed, and working toward compromise or common ground.

What I mean is: Vote delegation can also be used as a method for 
enabeling large-scale discourse. For example: I delegate my 10.000 
received votes to Greenpeace not because I am an non-expert who wants 
them to do the work for me, but because I am an expert myself who wants 
to work together with them. Because of the votes behind me I have 
something to negotiate with. And since their position in a particular 
poll is very similiar to mine, they would only need to make a few minor 
changes and I could agree to them, i.e. delegate my votes to them. 
Together the two of us would be the winning team. ;-)

This form of delegation is all about communication, negotiation, 
discourse, ... and the result is basically a collaborative writing of 
laws, plans etc. The amount and form of collaboration is structured by 
the weight of the votes. The use-case of this "communicative delegation" 
is probably more inside single polls than across many.

But what is most fascinating to me: it seems to give the system an 
implicite tendency towards consensus, because it rewards synthesis with 
a competitor since this gives you (and your former competitor) more 
influence over the other competitors ... .

A picture is often better than thousend words: 
http://u.zelea.com/w/User:ThomasvonderElbe_GmxDe/Communicative_Delegation

I'm very curious about your opinion.

And one short note: You write about "deleting" the votes after a certain 
time to avoid having e.g. 40-year old votes.
There is also the idea of having votes "rust", i.e. they loose weight 
over time until they are completely gone. Another aspect: Since all 
votes will have a timestamp, they can be filtered by age. As well as by 
age of the voters (if they give this information) or by their gender, 
nationality, ... .

Greetings,
Thomas von der Elbe