[EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 04:24 PM 4/25/2010, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I am a member of the Czech Green party, and we are giving our statutes
>an overhaul.
>We are a small parliamentary party with only some 2000 members.
>Lately we have had quite some problems infighting due to the
>winner-takes-it-all election methods used within the party.

You are familiar, I presume, with 
http;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

For a small party to be effective, it must be coherent. Every time a 
"winner" takes all, i.e., forces a large minority (or sometimes an 
actual majority due to poor voting systems) to either support the 
winner or leave the party (or at least not support the winner), it 
weakens the party. A string of these can devastate it.

>I am sitting in the working-group for the new party statutes, and
>would like introduce proportional elections instead.
>So I thought I might find some help in this forum in formulating my proposal.
>
>There are several practical different types of elections in the party,
>which need to be addressed:
>1. election of council members
>2. election of delegates to regional and national rallies, where the
>regional and national council members are elected
>3. election of candidates to the ballot - primary elections
>
>In this letter, I would like to ask you to propose good proportional
>election system for the election of the council members.
>A council exists at all levels in the party organization: national,
>regional and local.
>
>SCENARIO 1: COUNCIL ELECTIONS
>We have to elect the following:
>1. Election of the party president
>2. Election of one or more vice-presidents in order of importance,
>i.e. first vice president, second, third etc.
>3. Election of the rest of the council members
>Normally the council has five or seven members.

The best way to handle council officer electinos is within the 
council itself, and repeated ballot is the standard way to do it; 
these officers should serve at the pleasure of the council, they are 
servants of the council. Thus ordinarily majority vote is adequate, and simple.

How you elect the council determines whether the council is 
representative of the members or of only certain powerful members. 
Since a political party cannot compel its members to vote or to 
donate to the party, it will do best if it truly satisfies the 
members that it is *their* party. However, some members, being very 
active, come to think that they know best for the party, and as long 
as they are reasonably popular, it can seem like what is good for 
them is good for the party. But the influence of the party will be 
limited, roughly, to their personal power, rather than to the 
normally increased power of a coherent group that seeks consensus and 
that is open to new members and their ideas.

If the organization has local councils that are open to attendance 
and participation and that seek consensus rather than simply making 
quick decisions by majority (they can still make decisions that way, 
including the decision of how much consensus is enough), the party 
will be a living thing, open to new growth. But the natural tendency 
of organizations is to devolve into oligarchical structures that 
self-limit, and that expand, then, only under certain conditions, as 
when a candidate, say, becomes personally popular among the general public.

It's remarkable to me how rarely do organizations arise that truly 
attempt to change the dominant paradigms of political structure. 
Mostly they imitate what they have seen operating in more powerful 
parties, or, occasionally, they choose alternate structures that seem 
better but that are inefficient and ineffective. Structure determines 
what elements in the party rise to power, just as it does for the 
overall society, so new political movements that use traditional 
structures recreate traditional problems with new faces.

>CURRENT SYSTEM:
>Currently the president and the vice presidents are elected in several
>two-round run-off elections
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-round_system).

Bad idea. Elect a representative council and let it elect the 
officers. Use elections like that and you are limited to fixed terms 
for officers. The model is the old King model, really, all we changed 
was that we elect Kings for fixed periods. There is a reason for this 
model; a King can make rapid decisions; but that requires a dedicated 
army responsible to the King. In democratic structures a president is 
a servant of the members, not the other way around. And the members 
can change the president at any time.

That is, any direct democracy can vacate the office of chair and 
elect a new chair, at will (following the rules for meetings). The 
purpose of a chair of a democratic meeting is only to ensure orderly 
process, so that members can be heard and decisios aren't railroaded 
through. A dominating or over-controlling chair in a real democratic 
organization is quickly gone, a chair who knows how to facilitate 
consensus, who is trusted to be fair, can serve without limit.

>The rest of the board members are elected by block-voting
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality-at-large_voting) in the
>following way:
>1. A candidate who gets 50% of the vote is elected
>2. In the second round, candidates with less than 25% of the votes are
>eliminated
>3. In the third round, candidates with less than 30% of the votes are
>eliminated. Now only 40% of the votes is enough for election.
>4. New elections are arranged for the rest of the mandates, where
>candidates who got at least 20% of the votes in the previous election
>rounds can run as candidates in new elections:

Cumbersome and guaranteed to be divisive. It's not representative, 
it's majoritarian. Any faction that can muster 50% can control the 
entire council. To them, that might sound great, but if the goal is a 
united party, it's not. The party will gradually alienate members, 
who will either shift to other alternatives or who will remain with 
lessened enthusiasm. It will not build strength, except erratically.

>DELIVERABLES FOR IMPLEMENTATION:
>In the end, if proportional elections are to make their way into the
>party statutesm, then I have to deliver the following:
>1. a proposal of a text to the statutes, describing the election rules
>and procedures
>2. a motivation of the proposal which shows why it is better than the
>present one.
>3. a vote counting computer program which works
>4. preferably a ballot scanning program
>5. preferably some good examples that the system works in real life.

Proxy voting works for businesses, but it's often deprecated for 
membership organizations where there is no ownership interest. My 
sense of that is that this keeps voluntary organizations weak, 
because the members don't "own" them.

Delegable proxy worked for Demoex in Sweden, but it was a limited 
application for a limited time, and I don't recommend it where secret 
ballot is involved, except as a voluntary (informal) structure to 
facilitate amalgamation under Asset voting.

The best PR system in terms of producing decent factional 
representation is STV-PR, and others can explain how to do it. There 
are programs that exist. But with 400 ballots, counting ballots is trivial.

Has it occurred to you to wonder why, with 2000 "members," you only 
get 400 ballots? I can tell you, it's pretty simple.

You have a weak membership definition, probably, plus members don't 
believe that their votes make a difference, or, to make a difference, 
the members must become more involved than they have time for. With a 
truly democratic proportional representation system, where an elected 
council represents *all* the members, and actually does so, rather 
than simply "intending" it, every vote counts and the members can 
tell. They know who represents them, personally, so they know who to 
talk to if they want to see new ideas discussed in the Council.

But you have ruled this out from the start. STV-PR requires members 
who are knowledgeable enough to rank more than one candidate. Asset 
was simply, originally, a device for making STV-PR work well with 
voters who only knew who their favorite was, which will be the bulk 
of your members, unless you remain a party that only really 
represents a few activists who have the time to devote, that becomes 
an oligarchy, the "oligarchy of the active," which is self-limiting, 
because others who might become active can only advance in influence 
if they "join" this oligarchy by agreeing with it. In general.

It is very important to understand that this is a natural phenomenon, 
it is not caused necessarily by greedy, power-hungry oligarchs. It 
happens with the best of intentions, if structure to contain it and 
limit this effect isn't in place, and it would be very rare that a 
large organization (2000 is large in this sense) self-limits. The 
oligarchy would be surrendering its excess power to what they will 
perceive as the relatively uninformed general membership. They quite 
naturally believe that they know better what is good for the party, 
and they might even be right.

But in a democratic organization, the job of the oligarchy -- 
oligarchies always form! -- is to lead, to facilitate consensus and 
uncoerced cooperation for collective goals, not to dominate and 
control. They will be trusted if they do this job well, we can be sure.

>CRITERIA:
>I am looking for a approximately proportional election scheme, which is
>(i) simple for the party members to understand - this is the main
>criterion. A complex system like Schulze-STV has no chance of getting
>required political support
>(ii) simple to use, i.e. where it is quick to vote and vote counting
>is also quick (max 400 votes cast)
>(iii) gives results which leave most party members reasonably
>satisfied with the result
>(iv) votes are cast "secretly" on paper ballots, alternatively on some
>smart electronic voting system that is as secure as paper ballot
>voting.
>(v) asset voting is excluded due to lack of political support

In other words, the simplest, easiest-to-understand, fully 
transparent system is ruled out from the beginning, for lack of 
"political support," which must mean "lack of support from the 
dominant clique, the oligarchy."

My question is, "Why do you care?" You already know what you are up 
against. You are up against some big frogs in a small pond. If you 
are going to try to improve party process, then, faced with this, you 
are almost guaranteed to end up frustrated, unless you happen to be a 
very big frog yourself. As to your ultimate political goals, if you 
are going to serve an existing party, you would probably be more 
effective joining a large party and becoming active. It can be easier 
than you might think, and major changes have come when people who see 
the existing problems do this, and proceed with caution and wisdom. 
Think Gorbachev.

>ASSUMPTIONS:
>There are several types of board elections in the party, where several
>types of assumptions apply:
>1] 70-90% of the voters are "dishonest" - i.e. they vote strategically
>as they are told by leaders, who want to maximize the number of
>"their" people on the board - this is the case for the election of the
>national party board

Again, tell me why you want to empower a party of sheep?

My real suggestion: organize the remaining 10 % to 30% of members 
into a *real* democratic party. Let the sheep bleat all they want, 
there is absolutely no reason to prevent them, and let them join your 
new party any time they like. Build the new party from the ground up. 
Use Asset voting techniques from the start to elect a representative 
council, and let the asset electors continue to vote until the next 
Asset election. Your party will be politically revolutionary, it 
could change the whole world, not just your country, by becoming an 
example for others.

Along the way, if it is open as I describe, the party itself will 
grow and change, it will not be nailed to a founding agenda. It could 
become the first true Party of the People, led by a vanguard who had 
the vision to form that instead of a Party that only empowered a few 
leaders -- which was the error the Communists made.

Your new Party can decide to endorse the old party's candidates. Or 
not. Depends on whether or not they respect you, right? That is, your 
new party can start as an organized faction with the means and guts 
to stand up for itself. It doesn't need to have a "name." But it will 
"govern" itself through being strong in developing its own consensus, 
and it could easily become the dominant faction in the original 
party, and, if so, it would then be able to transform the original party.

I can tell you, the existing oligarchy won't like it, and they will 
probably try to expel you from the party, which will simply reveal 
the naked truth about such oligarchies. They start out serving a 
party, but they end up serving themselves and their own power.

Your new party will seek to be inclusive, it will not exclude the old 
oligarchs, if they want to join and participate. And to the extent 
that they deserved their positions of power, they will gain power in 
the new structures. Do it carefully, and do it right. If, on the 
other hand, you simply reproduce the conditions that create this 
excess oligarchical power, you might even "succeed," but all you will 
have done is to change faces.

They will think that is what you are trying to do, they will accuse 
you of seeking your own personal power, because that is how most of 
them are likely to think, they will assume that you are like them. So 
be ready for that. Be ready for people you thought were your friends 
to betray you and abandon you, it can easily happen. Or not, it 
depends on how much they actually are your friends, and how carefully 
you do your work.

Don't attack the oligarchy! Just build what must be built, and don't 
depend on oligarchical approval for it. Just do it.

Technically, what you need to build, to start, is an FA/DP 
organization of party members and supporters and anyone interested. 
This organization isn't going to be your new party, it's just a 
glorified discussion group, with delegable proxy structure to allow 
assessmemnt of consensus. The actual application of power (as in 
voting power or collection of funds power or political footwork by 
volunteers) is left with the members, who can decide whose advice 
they want to follow.

A new political party would actually form only if enough members of 
the FA/DP organization think it is time for that.

>2] 30-60% of the voters are "dishonest" - the roughly regional election case
>3] 20% of the voters are "dishonest" - this is roughly the local election case

I don't think that the characterization as "dishonest" is correct. 
These voters honestly believe that doing what the leaders tell them 
is the best thing. They trust the leaders! (Or they have a concept of 
political power that follows the strong-leader model, i.e., they 
believe that we must have strong leaders to be effective; it's a very 
old idea, rooted in a reality: autocratic structures were more 
efficient than tribal, collectivist, consensus-seeking structures and 
thus more functional in war, so autocratic societies came to 
dominate. However, autocratic structures are weak compared to hybrid 
structures that incorporate democratic techniques, which is why pure 
autocracies have largely disappeared or are in retreat, everywhere. 
For maximum power, my opinion, we will see tribal, collectivist 
models return that incorporate sophisticated structure that allow 
them to find and amalgamate consensus on a large scale.

It requires synthetic understanding that does not merely rail against 
the obvious abuses of power that arise with oligarchies, but that 
incorporates oligarchical functions into a place in a larger, 
inclusive structure.

>Currently I am considering Re-weighted range voting and range voting,
>since it fulfills the criteria above, but other simple-to-understand
>methods could be used.
>Maybe the RRV system will have be reduced to approval voting for the
>high dishonesty scenario.
>This would lower its attractivity.
>A contender to the RRV-range voting system is the STV-IRV system used
>by the green party of the USA, since it evidently works, but is more
>difficult to understand than RRV: see
>http://www.gp.org/documents/rules.shtml#section7
>
>QUESTIONS:
>Please propose a voting system fulfilling the criteria above with the
>given assumptions, and answer the following questions:
>
>1. if the proposed election system is as simple to understand as RRV
>and range voting,
>name what advantages and disadvantages it has to RRV and range voting.
>Alternatively, which specific variant of RRV and range voting do you
>recommend for the elections described above (normalization of voter
>scores, number of categories, given that 70-90% of the voters vote
>strategically)?
>To clarify: Asset voting is excluded for this election type, since we
>have problems with transparency and political support.

Asset is utterly transparent, and the Election Science Foundation 
steering committee election showed that it works, it rapidly 
negotiated a three-member steering committee from 17 voters, with 
unanimous support. I can provide experience from that election if 
requested. As the board composition was negotiated, it was easy to 
elect the first member (me). But the surprise was that the 
second-largest vote-getter didn't get a quota to secure election, and 
I held back redistributing some of my excess votes. And he decided to 
transfer his votes to a dark horse, who wasn't expected to have much 
of a chance.

This was the initial vote:
Clay = 4
Raph = 1
Abd = 7
Sean = 2
Warren = 3

The final election was Abd, Warren, Raph. There is no way to predict 
this from the initial votes, but the result was fully representative. 
We could have elected someone who didn't get *any* votes! (But who 
was willing to serve.) What the election did was to reduce the set of 
voters to what I call electors, so instead of 17 people negotiating 
representation, a secret ballot election reduced the group to five 
electors, who then, with public deliberation, determined the board composition.

I immediately gave enough excess votes to Warren to elect him, and 
had a little left, and held off. I could have elected Clay, but 
suspected that this wouldn't be the most representative set. (Clay is 
a hard worker, for sure, but that's not necessarily the best 
characteristic for a board member, and the steering committee's 
ultimate intention is the formation of a formal board. This committee 
represents *all* the members, and Clay transferred his votes to Raph, 
giving Raph a seat (using the Droop quota). Sean was asked if he 
approved, and he did. So every voter was satisfied.

Had Clay not transferred his votes, Sean might have worked with me to 
decide who the final seat would be, but we had elected two members, 
and it's possible for a short-committee like that to make fair 
interim decisions with unanimity, a third member wouldn't be able to 
outvote that agreement, and it's fully fair if any deliberation 
included all the electors. Basically, Warren and I could have settled 
on any fair process we could agree upon to complete the board, and, 
given that this was the election science foundation, I think we'd 
have allowed the electors to vote in that. Majority rule, with 
consensus being sought first.

Unanimous election of a three member board from five candidates. 
That's a pretty good trick for the first known asset election. Sure, 
it was a small group. But ... there were already factions, 
effectively. I was astonished, frankly, to get 7 votes. I'd not been 
particularly active for quite some time....

Until the next Asset election, the steering committee can, if it 
wishes, consult the other electors as well. Clay obviously represents 
a substantial faction of members, so no way would we ride roughshod 
over Clay's ideas. He'll have almost as much clout as he'd have as an 
elected member, in reality.

>2. In which order should the election of the board members be
>performed in order to insure that all the voters will be reasonably
>satisfied with.
>a] how should the elections be done, it the current election order
>should be preserved (i.e. first you elect the president, then the vice
>presidents etc.)?

As I wrote, bad idea to elect the president in a general election. 
What I'd do, in fact, is probably to create a robust party member 
definition that doesn't allow someone to simply pack a local group 
with some friends, perhaps some donation is required every year, or 
some history of service. (I.e., there can be general members and 
voting members, membership-at-will can be abused if you have open 
voting rights: someone wants power in the party, they get every 
friend and relative to "join" the party by registering as members, 
even if those people won't cast any votes in real elections or make 
other donations. They just help their friend or relative get some 
power. But you do want people seriously interested in helping the 
party, who intend to support the party, to easily become voting members.)

Then you have a local meeting where delegates to a national 
convention are selected. And what happens here is that delegates are 
*selected*, not *elected.* They basically are assigned proxies from 
members who don't plan to attend. This can be done through an Asset 
election. The election results would be reported to the national 
organization: N voting members of the party, named, voted. The 
results are reported, and each delegate who shows up can exercise, at 
the national party conference, as many votes as they received. 
Obviously, not more than N votes can be exercised by the entire 
group! These delegates, though, may also name a proxy to vote for 
them, as well as exercising all the votes they "own," should they not 
be present. So collectively, if the group wants to, they can send a 
single delegate with proxies for the entire group. I bet it would 
happen a lot. But if anyone wants to go, as long as they got one 
vote, they can attend with voting rights.

(Any member who voted in a local Asset election cannot vote on their 
own at the national conference, because they already gave their vote 
to someone. But a local member who did not vote could go and, if a 
voting member of the Party, could vote directly at the national 
conference. Or these members would also be able to name a proxy. And 
to prevent possible problems with proxy voting, the Party would 
seriously encourage all voting members to name a proxy expected to 
attend. These are open proxies, though, and if the member then 
attends and votes, they are not effective. Decisions at a national 
conference like this will be fully democratic, representing the 
entire membership, as long as a majority is required for any decision.)

The big problem with proxy voting, as experienced by the Libertarian 
Party in Colorado, is if proxy voting is allowed but it isn't 
actively encouraged. Then someobody figures out that they can go 
around locally soliciting proxies, and they show up at the state 
conference with a pile of proxies and can outvote everyone else, who 
didn't collect proxies. In other words, if proxies arrive 
unexpectedly, it can warp the decisions. The problem wasn't proxies 
themselves, but a habit of not using them!

One of the European Green parties had a supposed problem with 
proxies. Proxies were being used there. The anarchist faction came 
out in force for the national party meeting, and had more direct 
votes than others, but when proxies were considered, more centrist 
Greens prevailed. The anarchists screamed that this was unfair. But 
it actually was fair, more fair than assuming that those who have 
more time to show up and attend are the true representatives of the 
party members.....

This participation bias is one reason why straight voting at meetings 
causes extremist factions to prevail in orgranizations, the 
extremists are often much more highly motivated. But as they take 
over a party, the party loses strength, as more moderate members 
desert it. Winning is losing.


>b] Is one election enough to give an unambiguous winner, even if the
>president is elected by the margin of one vote?
>The talk about RRV not electing the Condorcet winner makes me a 
>little nervous.
>The election of the president has to be unambiguous, and several
>elections is not a problem.

If you are going to hold a single-winner election, I highly recommend 
Bucklin-ER with runoff if there is no election in the first round. 
And, in fact, if you are doing elections at a meeting, Bucklin simply 
is more efficient, and you can hold all the rounds you need.


>c] if you reverse the election order, i.e. first you elect the board
>members, then the president and the vice presidents, and lastly you
>elect the president? This order of election seems to be more simple to
>conceptualize.

Sure. But you can, in fact, let the board elect the president. Just 
make sure that the board is accurately representative!

>d] what are the main advantages of the your preferred method to the
>current election system?

Bucklin is really the same as a series of simulated approval 
elections. Approval can fail to elect a Condorcet winner, but only to 
elect a more-widely-approved winner. If Bucklin is terminated with 
having found a majority for only one candidate, this must be a 
Condorcet winner, if there is one. Range is more complex; if you are 
going to use Range (and you can do Bucklin using a Range ballot, and 
I'd recommend it), then make sure that there is an explicit Approval 
cutoff. Note that some systems using Approval, such as Papal 
elections for a long time, required a supermajority. If you are 
voting at a meeting, you can elect with a supermajority on a ballot, 
or the meeting can, at any time, by majority vote, decide what it 
wants, understanding that an election by a bare majority can, under 
some conditions, harm the unity of the party. If a majority don't 
mind that, then either it isn't going to be a problem, or you have a 
problem with the party itself, a majority don't care about its unity!

What Bucklin does in simulating multiple rounds of approval is to 
lower the approval cutoff. The input ballot is really a kind of Range 
ballot, and you can allow the approval cutoff to slide down as low as 
you want. With standard Bucklin, the lowest rank is "bare approval," 
more or less "I don't mind rating, I'm (minimally) willing to accept 
this result." On a pure Range ballot, you'd want to set an explicit 
approval cutoff, which I recommend as mid-range. The ballot, then, 
allows determination of majority approval, and ratings below a 
majority are used when needed to assess how far short of approval 
some candidates are, when compromises must be made to complete the election.

You can do anything you want if a ratification vote is held and 
passes by a majority. I.e., you could use, even, Plurality and then 
someone could move the election of the leader, and if a majority 
accept that, it can be considered done. But I've mentined the risks.

You can use a Range ballot in the same way.

With maximized strategic voting by a faction, single winner, it's, 
for the faction, the same as a plurality ballot. They may simply vote 
for their favorite, and if they are big enough, that's it. You cannot 
prevent a majority from controlling; any device which attempts to do 
this, in my experience, ends up creating a kind of minority rule. It 
backfires, producing the opposite of the intended effect. So what's 
needed is an understanding of the value of consensus, combined with 
majority rule. The majority decides how much consensus is enough to 
go ahead, and it decides it with each situation, it can continue to 
discuss and debate as long as it wants. Generally, under standard 
deliberative procedure, a supermajority is required to close debate.

>e] (optional question) if a member of the board leaves his/her
>position before the end of the election period, and a new member of
>the organ has to be elected, how should this election take place in
>order to insure proportionality is retained?

If you have elected with Asset, that vacancy frees up some of the 
votes. The Asset electors who elected that board seat can now elect a 
new one. The details generally would depend on the nature of the board.

Let me assume that the original board was elected using Asset and the 
Hare quota. Typically, there could be an unfilled seat, caused by 
"dregs" or electors who for whatever, so there will be Q votes 
floating around. In a good system, those votes have some power, the 
board can (and should) consult those electors regularly. When a seat 
is vacated, there should be another Q votes freed up. So 2*Q electors 
can elect one seat, all it takes is for half of them to agree. Pretty 
easy, I'd think. If they don't agree, the seat remains vacant.

With Asset, if you want N seats, you might set the quota based on 
N+1. If you get very lucky, you might end up with two extra seats, 
but the benefit is *total representation*! If you are unlucky, you 
might have more than one seat empty, but the unused votes represent a 
kind of faction that can't come to agreement within itself.... (Droop 
quota *enforces* N+1 but elects only N).

If you did fill the board originally, representing everyone, you'd 
only have Q votes left. If these electors, holding these votes, can 
all agree, you can fill the seat. If they can't all agree (or some 
are unavailable, which is one reason why you really do want electors 
to name a default proxy!), then you have a choice: you can leave the 
seat vacant, or you can elect a "short seat," which might only be an 
observer who is allowed to participate in deliberation but isn't 
allowed to vote. Or that is given a proportional vote.

Note that if law requires all members of the board to have a full 
vote, you can go the "observer" route -- a non-voting member -- but 
then by tradition respect the vote of the member. Remember, you want 
a board that wants party unity, don't elect people who just want 
their own power! As long as the majority want unity -- which means 
consensus -- it's safe. And when the majority wants something other 
than this, I highly recommend jumping ship, it's hopeless. Do 
something better with your life, you won't regret it.

Educate majorities, don't fight them.

>Specific questions for RRV:
>f] what is the minimal number of votes a person needs in order to be
>elected (if all voters except for one put an "X" for the candidate and
>the last voter puts maximum points, is this candidate normally
>elected?)
>
>3. If the following exists for your selected election method, could
>you please provide a reference to:
>a] a text which describes the election procedure and can be used in
>statutes (preferably a text in existing statutes)
>b] an explanation of how the voting system works and an explanation of
>the vote counting procedure for a person who knows nothing about
>election methods. For RRV I do not understand the d'Hondt style
>re-weighting. Why d'Hondt? Why does it give proportional
>representation?
>c] an open-source program for windows which makes it easy to count the
>votes, once you have entered the data in the computer.
>d] a list of organizations, which use the method

Basically, if you do what others do, you will end up like them! So, 
to simplify this, you can look around and see who you want to 
imitate, and then use their structure. If there isn't anyone you 
would like to imitate, then understand that if you adopt existing 
structure, you will become like existing organizations. Your 
"superior political philosophy" won't protect you from the nature of 
organizational structures, which create persons to fill the roles 
they facilitate.

>4. As we have to count the ballots quickly, I would appreciate a tip
>on the following:
>a] A tip of a good and cheap and open source system for creating and
>digitalizing paper ballots.
>b] Alternatively a free electronic voting system with the same
>security level as a paper ballot system could be used, preferably with
>paper ballot receipts, which would be counted later for confirmation
>of the vote.
>If you know of any such system, please let me know.

For the number of voters you are describing, and for usage once a 
year, say, or less, you are trying to set up a sophisticated system 
to do a simple job. There are on-line services which offer voting 
systems, I believe, and some might describe some here, some of thse 
may be free.

Using a sophisticated voting system to try to amalgamate some ideal 
representation from an instant set of ballots misses the opportunity 
for the election process to be a broad discussion involving all the 
members, so that those elected do know the views and opinions of the 
entire membership. The model, then, becomes, in effect, if you just 
elect by rapid amalgamation, is the strong-leader model, which will 
create the sheep you described.