[EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 12:51 PM 11/16/2010, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>I suppose Asset works by retaining the power that could not be 
>cleanly assigned to candidates, and then having the candidates who 
>could have won decide how to collect the numerous almost-seats into 
>fewer (compromise) seats.

Yes. In the simple example, of course, there was only one such seat.

Actually, those candidates have already won, themselves. What they 
are doing is advocating for all the voting power that wasn't 
represented in the choices already made.

Using the Hare quota leads to the interesting result that a balanced 
assembly has a motive to choose a chair who is neutral, and neither 
faction can elect a chair unilaterally.

The same thing happens with representation. There would be electors 
remaining who have, collectively, enough votes to elect a seat. If 
they must cooperate to elect the seat, they are highly incentivized 
to pick someone perceived by both sides as fair and neutral. A moderate.

It is possible to set a quota for the last seat that is somewhere 
between majority (Droop quota, effectively) and full agreement (Hare 
quota), to deal with truly extreme voting positions that will refuse 
compromise. I have not worked out all the details. I've assumed that 
it is simple enough to normally leave one seat vacant in the 
assembly. I.e., the assembly might normally elect N seats, but 
theoretically could elect more than that. A couple of extra members 
does no harm.

It's also possible, with asset to elect, using the Droop quota, that 
last seat, with reduced voting power according to actual support.

The basic Asset concept is extremely powerful and spreading the 
concept should not depend on the details of implementation. Asset 
worked, spectacularly, in the only known usage -- which was quite 
informal and without clear specification of rules, but it *was* asset 
and functioned like it -- to elect a three-member steering committee 
for the Election Science Foundation, from five candidates and 17 
voters. It was, effectively, a unanimous election, but you could not 
-- at all -- tell that from the actual votes without looking at what 
the electors subsequently did.

Asset deserves far more attention than it's gotten. It's extremely 
simple to use. In this case, it was vote-for-one, and it works well 
enough with vote-for-one that I'm not sure it's worth the 
complication of using ranked ballots. All a ranked ballot does is to 
say, effectively, "I trust A to make actual organizational decisions, 
but not to vote on who else makes decisions."

Which is a pretty weak kind of trust! In fact, one of the primary 
functions of representative bodies is to delegate authority. You want 
people on those bodies who can be trusted to do this well, so it's a 
bit of an oxymoron to vote first rank for someone, once you are 
totally free in this coice, and then not trust them to ... delegate 
(voting) authority!

However, Asset is an obvious tweak to STV, to deal with exhausted 
ballots, which was the original idea, Dodgson having realized that 
most voters simply did not have enough information to rank the 
remaining candidates, other than their favorite.