[EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 05:23 PM 4/21/2010, Terry Bouricius wrote:
>Abd has made much of a proposal of Charles Dodgson tweaking STV by 
>allowing candidates to assign exhausted ballots...but that is NOT 
>the system that Dodgson's name is normally attached to. His name is 
>attached to a Condorcet method (but not knowing of Condorcet's prior 
>invention) using a matrix in which each cell was a fraction with a 
>numerator was the number of voters who ranked the row option ahead 
>of the column option, and the denominator was the number of voters 
>whose column option ahead of the row option. He proposed that cycles 
>not be settled, but rather that this would result in "no election."

Thanks, Terry.

This would explain the discrepancy between Mr. Myers' comments and 
mine and Mr. Quinn's. I'm not familiar with Dodgson's Condorcet 
method, which is obviously a single-winner method. It's interesting 
that he considered "no election" a possible outcome, that would be in 
line with what he would know of standard deliberative process.

It is not Asset which is "computationally infeasible," but, perhaps, 
this particular Condorcet method. Asset, of course, is a device for 
reducing the number of voters in an election to a set of public 
voters, who handle electing any seats not directly elected by the 
voters through vote transfers without eliminations (strictly, 
eliminations can be used, until all ballots are exhausted while not 
having been completely used for election, these exhausted ballots 
then become the "property," at their "unspent" value, of the 
candidate in first position, I presume, whether or not this candidate 
has been elected). If all one wants is to finish an election, it is 
possible that the Droop quota could be used, but I prefer the 
simplicity of the Hare quota in terms of what it means for the voting 
power of members and how that relates to the number of voters who 
supported, directly or indirectly, a candidate. If the Droop quota is 
used, and the number of electors is relatively small, then an extra 
seat might be elected, should the electors with remaining votes end 
up agreeing on someone to carry this voting power in the elected 
assembly. I prefer to aim for the higher number as a limit, and then 
there is no question of the value of each elector's vote.

This becomes important if, for later process, direct voting is to be 
allowed by electors. Asset makes that possible.