[EM] Kristofer, regarding Proxy DD

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

I'd said:

> No, the question of secret ballot isn't a problem. Your voter ID number is
> anonymous. No one knows what person has what voter ID number. Yes, the system 
> knows if you designate a proxy, but it only knows that the person with that _number_
> designated a particular proxy. It doesn't know the name of the person who voted
> a certain way or designated a certain other voter ID number as proxy. Of course neither
> does it know who has that number that you designate as proxy.

How are you supposed to know who you're subscribing to (and thus the
trust you put in him) if you don't know who he is? You would have to
know the mapping between a person (say a candidate of the party in
question) and his ID (which you'd need to subscribe).

[endquote]

Ok, I misleadingly said, in your quote above "No one knows what person has what voter ID number."

But, and I said this in previous text, of course you know who your proxy is, what
person s/he is, by name. How do you find out hir anonymous voter ID number? S/he
tells you, after you ask hir.

As I said before, that isn't a serious breach of anonynimity: Even now, you don't
keep your voting secret from family and best friends. Nor does any kind of representative
maintain representation anonymity.

But your proxy needn't share hir voter ID number with anyone other than those using hir as
proxy. The system doesn't know hir voter ID number, or what person has the voter ID number
which you've designated as proxy.

You continued:

The proxy could get around this by only giving his ID to the people he
trusted

[endquote]

Exactly. Or at least only to those using hir as proxy.

, but then the proxy would have to balance between the concerns 
of the additional votes he might get by saying "I'm 327923007, subscribe 
to me if you like my opinions"

[endquote]

Sure. Someone could advertise, publicly or within a party or organization, in
the manner you describe. 

You continued:

, and the attack resistance he gets by not 
saying anything.

There's no reason why your uncle should have to publicly advertise his
voter ID number, or tell it to anyone other than the few family-
members who use him as proxy.


> The ballot is entirely secret.

I'll grant that it is if you're not a proxy. It's easy to make a system 
that is proxylike

[endquote]

Proxy DD isn't "proxylike". It's proxy.

 yet secret for non-proxies

[endquote]

Proxy DD is entirely secret for non-proxies.

You continued:

: just have a traditional 
secret ballot where the proxies simply give suggestions the voter can 
follow (or not).

[endquote]

For one thing, Proxy DD already has those desired properties
you stated.

And the system you describe above is little if any different
from Proxy DD. The following-of-advice is automated, because the
voter has so designated. And you can depart from the "advice"
whenever you want to, because the proxy designation only applies
to issues or questions on which you don't vote.


> You continued:
> 
>> You would 
>> want a proxy with lots of power to be accountable
> 
> [endquote]
> 
> Accountable to whom? When designating the proxy, you do so because you agree with hir,
> and are willing for hir to vote for you on everything on which you don't vote.

Accountable to the people, in the same way that a politician is. 

[endquote]

There is no reason why the proxy should be accountable to anyone other than those
who use hir as proxy.

Unlike the politician, the proxy has no incentive to try to please everyone. S/he
votes as s/he believes in, and invites others to follow hir vote on issues on which
they don't, themselves, vote. But the proxy needn't invite you to designate hir. Maybe
you approached and asked hir.

You continued:

The 
usual argument for transparency at the high end is that the principals 
(the people) should know what the agents (the representatives) are 
doing, so a voter can vote for someone else if his representative fails 
to follow up on election promises, or reverses position for personal gain.

[endquote]

That's why I said that there's no reason why the voter couldn't request that 
the voting record of a certain proxy voter ID be posted in some publicy-
accessible web location.

But, also, of course your proxy can be someone whose views you know, and whom
you trust.

You continued:

Ideally, if we follow this reasoning, the proxy should be accountable to 
those who give him power in proportion to how much power they give him, 

[endquote]

The number of people who can check on hir voting record is equal to
the number who use hir as proxy.

You continue:

so that in the long run, the subscriber's ability to correct the proxy 
is no more and no less than if he decided to vote by himself.

[endquote]

Do you really want to try to correct hir? Just say:

"Uncle George, I don't agree with your new views, and so I'm
going to stop using you as proxy."

You have no right to ask him to change his voting for you.

You can always find someone whose views you do agree with. Of
course if there's no one with whom you agree, then you shouldn't
designate a proxy.

Proxy democracy has a more fine-grained feedback mechanism. However, it 
can't draw a line between "has power enough to be open to scrutiny" and 
"doesn't have enough power to be open to scrutiny" 

[endquote]

How so?? As I said, your proxy's voting is open to your scrutiny. You know
hir anonymous voter ID number. You can request that the voting of that
voter ID number be posted at a publicly accessible website, automated
phone number, etc.  

Every proxy's voting is open to scrutiny by those who use hir as proxy.

You continued:

beyond just the 
voter/proxy dichotomy. There isn't such a line, even: proxies come in 
all magnitudes of power.

[endquote]

And, for all of them, their voting is open to scrutiny by those using
them as proxies.

You continued:

So this may keep people from supporting proxy democracy, because the 
degree to which your actions are made (or can be made) public as soon as 
you're a proxy is out of proportion to how much power you wield. 

[endquote]

Not so. The more people using you as proxy, the more people can check on
your voting.

When they request such a check, your voting record is posted somewhere
public, accessbie to all. The number of people who know your voter ID
and who will thereby know how you voted is equal to the number of people
using you as proxy (because they're the same people).

But I hope that you're not saying that you think that the proxy's voting
record should be made available to the entire general public, including
the millions of people who haven't designated hir as proxy. 

No one other than those using hir as proxy have any reason or right to
know hir voting record. Of course s/he could voluntarily describe it to
prospective proxy-users, family-members or best friends, even if they
haven't designated hir as proxy.



(At 
least ordinary voters have privacy, so it's not as bad as I thought.)

> I hadn't considered this matter before, but, in order for the system to know how your proxy
> voted, of course you must designate hir by number. But then you know the voter I.D. number of
> a voter (your proxy), so hir secret-ballot is no longer secret. But that isn't as bad as it
> might at first sound: Have you ever told anyone how you voted. Your electoral system may have
> a secret ballot, but you probably don't keep your voting or your political opinions secret from
> your best friends and relatives.

Sure, I have told people how I voted, but they have no way to verify 
that I'm actually telling the truth. Were I in the United States, I 
could choose to tell my family that I voted, say, Democratic. I could 
also lie. If my family was of the religious right and I wasn't, I might 
feel forced to say Republican even when I voted differently. Similarly, 
I might not want to be a liberal proxy in a  very conservative town, 
unless I could somehow shield from the conservatives that I was a 
liberal proxy.

[endquote]

You're asking the impossible. You want accountability to proxy-users, and also secrecy.

Representatives should be accountable to those they represent. If you live in a
Republican town and vote Democrat, and if it's paramount that it not get around town that you're
a Democrat, then don't be a proxy. Don't give anyone your voter ID number. 
Someone who uses you as proxy might let slip that you're a Democrat.

Speaking for myself, as a progressive, I don't publicly broadcast my non-Republican opinions, 
or antagonize people or start arguments; but neither do I keep them secret if asked. 
I'd be willing to be a proxy for a few friends and family.

> As for accountability, since it was necessary to designate your proxy by number, and since the system
> knows how each number voted, then it could be allowed for you to inquire about how your proxy
> voted on a particular issue. You don't name hir by name. You can't do that for any voter ID number--
> only one that is your proxy. Of course you don't make the inquiry under your name, but only via 
> your number. Then, the vote of that proxy is posted somewhere, where you can read it anonymously.

You continued:

I could see two sorts of proxy structure. I don't know which is the one 
in your system.

In the first one, you have a broadcast system. Every proxy makes his 
suggestions public and then anybody who wants to copy the decisions. 
Obviously, proxy suggestions are visible to everybody here.

In the second one, you have a subscription model. Voters subscribe to 
the proxy's list and get proxy suggestions in return. If computerized, 
their software copies these suggestions to their own direct democracy 
response queue - so the subscribers automatically copy the proxy 
decisions.

[endquote]

That's the one, the 2nd one.


You continued:

The proxies can't actually know that the subscribers do copy 
their suggestions, though.

[endquote]

Correct. The proxy has no way of knowing when you do your own voting
on an issue or question, and when you let your vote follow hirs.

You continued:

Either arrangement makes it impossible for third parties to know who are
subscribing to a particular proxy. If the system is of a broadcast 
nature (one-to-many), then the proxy can't know how popular he is, 
either; but if it's like a mailing list, the proxy would know who are 
subscribing to him.

[endquote]

You continued:

It's the latter. The proxy knows to how many people s/he has given
hir voter ID number.

In any case, the suggestions would be informal. If they are formal 
(binding), then vote-buyers could buy votes by telling the voter to 
become a proxy of one, to whom one of the vote-buyers subscribe to 
verify that the "proxy" votes as desired.

[endquote]

I suppose that you could prove to the votebuyer that you've subscribed
to a proxy, by showing hir that you know the proxy's voter ID. But
that only proves that you _have_ subscribed to that proxy. 

It's probably possible to have a system in which there's no way to
prove to a votebuyer that you're currently subscribed to a particular
proxy.

In any case, as you said, there's also no way s/he can check up on
whether you've done your own voting on an issue, unless s/he is looking
over your shoulder when you vote. I suppose if s/he offered a voter enough
money, the voter would allow that--something that s/he couldn't do in
a public voting-booth.  

...But that wouldn't do the votebuyer any good,
if there's no way that you can prove to hir who your _current_ proxy
is, or even if you currently have one.

So vote-buying doesn't seem a problem.

You continued:

You could demand public ballots, but with voter IDs rather than voter 
names -- but then it would only take one slip to link ID to name. Unless 
the voter IDs changed regularly, everybody who were a public ("subscribe 
to me, I'm xyz") proxy at some time would have his identity revealed, 
and other identities could probably be narrowed down by analysis of 
election responses. If the elections are sufficiently frequent, buyers 
could tell sellers to vote this way on some minor question, then that 
way on another minor question, and so on to lock on to the name-ID 
relation through its "votes-over-time signature", and then start buying.

I don't suggest public ballots, even for voter ID numbers. I only suggest that
a proxy-user be able to request that hir proxy's voting record be publicly
posted.


> Anyway, your proxy may or may not have lots of power. It might just be your spouse, who isn't anyone's
> proxy but yours. And if you don't trust your political party or your candidate enough to choose them as
> your proxy, then you might want to reconsider about whether you want to vote for that party's candidates.

That would work for a small scale private proxy. A large scale proxy 
would be visible by his actions

[endquote]

...only to hir proxy-users. Maybe one of them would tell others, of course.

You continued:

 (though that's what we want), as would a 
public proxy. Would you say this is a tradeoff a proxy has to make 
anyway? That is, either to be public and thus accept potentially more 
voters, but open oneself to vote coercion/bribery - or to be private and 
secure?

[endquote]

Yes. Of course anyone who is the proxy of very many people could be offered bribes.
You just have to hope that, for instance, your political party-leaders
value principle and honesty too much to accept bribes. Otherwise, don't designate them as
proxy. But, as I said, if you don't trust your party leaders and candidates, then they shouldn't be your party.

Another thing--Bribery wouldn't be so tempting if, for a change, it were prosecuted as the serious crime that
it is, with bribe-takers and bribe-givers getting the long 
(preferably mandatory life-term with no parole) prison sentences that they
deserve. And not a "country-club" prison. White-collar criminals shouldn't have their own separate prison
or building-wing or conditions distinct from those that house the other criminals.

You continued:

You'd need to have serious crypto to make the proxy not know what voters
are subscribed to him

[endquote]

Well, my suggestion was that the proxy give hir voter ID to those who want to use hir
as proxy. I suppose maybe a system could be devised so that a certain kind of proxy
wouldn't know his clients, but I've never considered that necessary.

You continued:

, the voters not know how the proxy voted,

[endquote]

In my suggestion, the voters could request that the voting record of
a certain proxy voter ID be publicly posted.

You continued:

Even if you could, that would cut the feedback that lets the subscribers 
know if the proxy can still be trusted. 

[endquote]

That's why I suggest letting proxy-users request that a certain proxy
voter ID's voting record be publicly posted.

You continued:

I don't think the problem (or 
difficult part) is that the proxy system is everywhere too transparent 
as much as that it's trying to span a wide range of influence with the 
same amount of transparency. Representative democracy has two sets: the 
voter, where the vote is private, and the representative, where the vote 
is public.

[endquote]

The proxy's voting record could be available to hir proxy-users
when the request that a certain proxy voter ID's voting record
be publicly posted.

But there's no reason for the proxy's voting record, by name, to be
available to anyone else  (unless of course one of hir proxy-users
blabs).




 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20111208/0676c60b/attachment-0003.htm>