[EM] Public parties: a Trojan Horse in the party system

Peter Zbornik pzbornik at gmail.com
Sun Aug 5 03:30:28 PDT 2012


Dear all,

some comments below

2012/7/21 Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com>

> Paul, Ed and Kristofer,
>
> Paul said,
> > indeed Demoex voting was restricted to members but membership was
> > not restricted. ...
>
> This is like a political party, but unlike a public party.  A public
> party will not restrict voting to its members.
>

To become a member, you actually have to be a citizen in the municipality
where Demoex works (being from Sweden, I checked it out).
This is a reasonable condition, and thus, unless we have a wold-wide public
party, there needs to be some voter qualifications (except for being human,
above 16/18/21 years of age, not seriously mentally impaired etc.


> > ... to show the citizens that they have the real decisive power if
> > they want to. And that is probably the most challenging part, they
> > have to want to. The idea has to be sold and until this moment a
> > positive response is indeed very hard to get. ...
>
> Michael Allan wrote:

> We want people to take the reins, but we put barriers in front of
> them.  It's a barrier to join a party; a barrier to accept someone
> else's vision of democracy; to be told where and when to vote, with
> whom, and by what method.  Even if these restrictions *seem* to be
> necessary, they are effective as barriers.  Do you agree?
>
>
> Ed said,
> > ...  I think I get stuck here:
> >
> > > The public party strives to increase its primary turnout by all
> > > means.  This includes mirroring the votes of would-be competitors
> > > (other public parties) such that turnout is effectively pooled
> > > among them. *
> >
> > How can this mirroring be accomplished without duplication of votes?
> > Most current formal elections (including primaries) are anonymous,
> > and rely on a controlled registration process. If you are
> > aggregating these controlled elections along with less-controlled
> > input from many other sources, isn't it possible for some people to
> > vote many times (or at least twice), while others with less
> > energy/time/knowledge/etc. would have fewer votes (or perhaps just
> > one)?
>
>
Michael Allan wrote:

> Yes, that's correct.  We cannot image anonymous votes.  We must know
> the identity of the voter and the time at which the vote was cast.
> Only the latest vote is valid.
>

If the identity of the voter will be public, then you open up for voter
coercion - the employer, husband, political party, "secret society", church
etc. etc. might be tempted to buy your vote or threaten you to vote as they
want (sticks and carrots). That is why voting is secret, except for the
voting of elected representatives. I do not think we can dispose of voting
secrecy today.

Personally I thought, that in a delegative proxy system, only the voting of
a person, which has more than, say 1000 votes will be public.
If I give my vote to a candidate with less than 1000 votes, using a ranked
ballot, he is eliminated and the candidate who is next in ranking gets my
vote.
I am not sure I make sense, here, as I am new to the discussion.

In an ideal world with no coercion, all voting could be public, but now, we
don't live in an ideal world.

I think cryptography might give us a possibility to retain the secrecy of a
vote, and allow the voter to reallocate his/her votes.
After all, stock markets function the same way.
The stock-owner knows what he owns, and can buy or sell assets anonymously.
The buyer and seller however do not know to whom they sell.
The same way, the voter could change vote allocation, but nobody would know
to whom.

I am not sure I have understood this vote-mirroring thing.

Best regards
Peter Zborník


> Paul Nollen said:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > indeed Demoex voting was restricted to members but membership was not
> > restricted. At the time they started (2002 ) and place this was the only
> > possibility to make a list of people with voting rights.
> > Here in Belgium, today, we can use our electronic ID card for voting. The
> > only problem with that is that we can't exclude people who lost their
> voting
> > rights by a court conviction. That list is not publically available.
> > And the purpose is indeed to use the system in the way it is (elected
> > representatives in a representative system) , because it is nearly
> > impossible to change it, and act as a Troyan horse with a direct
> democratic
> > initiative in a purely representative system.
> > Of course this can be only a temporary action, just like the Troyan
> horse,
> > to breach the power of the representative system and to show the citizens
> > that they have the real decisive power if they want to. And that is
> probably
> > the most challenging part, they have to want to. The idea has to be sold
> and
> > until this moment a positive response is indeed very hard to get.
> > On the other hand, the same idea is emerging, even here in Belgium, in
> other
> > groups who never heard about us and Demoex. We can say that it seems to
> be a
> > more or less natural proces when people become aware of the possibilities
> > offered by the technological developments.
> >
> > Paul
>
> Ed Pastore said:
> > Michael, I am re-reading your original proposal more carefully, and I
> think I get stuck here:
> >
> > > The public party strives to increase its primary turnout by all means.
> > > This includes mirroring the votes of would-be competitors (other
> > > public parties) such that turnout is effectively pooled among them.
> >
> > How can this mirroring be accomplished without duplication of votes?
> Most current formal elections (including primaries) are anonymous, and rely
> on a controlled registration process. If you are aggregating these
> controlled elections along with less-controlled input from many other
> sources, isn't it possible for some people to vote many times (or at least
> twice), while others with less energy/time/knowledge/etc. would have fewer
> votes (or perhaps just one)?
> >
> > Alternately, if the anonymous election is assumed to always be redundant
> with other mirrored systems, then isn't it meaningless to the vote mirror?
>
> Kristofer Munsterhjelm said:
> > On 07/09/2012 03:29 AM, Michael Allan wrote:
> >
> > > Kristofer Munsterhjelm said:
> > >> We don't really have primaries here, at least not in the sense of
> > >> patches to make Plurality work, because we don't use Plurality but
> > >> party list PR. There are still internal elections (or appointments,
> > >> depending on party) to determine the order of the list - those are
> > >> probably the closest thing to primaries here.
> > >
> > > Imagine a PR party that invites all residents (even members of other
> > > parties) to participate in the "primary election" of its party list.
> > > It is not an ordinary party with an ideology, or platform.  Its only
> > > concern is primary *inclusivity*.  It calls itself the "Public List"
> > > and it strives to be just that, and nothing more.
> > >
> > > Hypothesis: the Public List will have a lower attrition rate than any
> > > other party.  Unlike other parties, it cannot easily offend the voters
> > > because all it does is open its list to their participation.  Nor can
> > > it easily offend the nominees and candidates, because it is equally
> > > open to them.  It will therefore come to win all elections.
> > >
> > > Is this likely to be true?  What could work against it?
> >
> > There are two areas of difficulty. First, this party would have to have
> > some kind of administration (that would publish the lists, and so on).
> > One would have to be sure the administrators don't co-opt the party and
> > transform it into an ordinary party. Such things have happened, to
> > lesser degrees, with small parties that have become large. Novel forms
> > of voting, or consensus based systems, disappear because they're not
> > effective enough, for instance.
> >
> > Second, the Public List just reproduces the thing elections are supposed
> > to solve in the first place - which is finding good candidates. In the
> > actual election, the "good candidates" are the winners, and get
> > parliamentary seats or executive positions. But the Public List doesn't
> > have any people deciding upon the internal election, so it has to have
> > some kind of primary to construct the list to begin with. And for that
> > primary, it needs a way of winnowing the field so that voters aren't
> > faced with having to rank a million candidates in the primary. Making a
> > primary for the primary could get unwieldy.
> >
> > So the Public List needs some kind of logic. If it has that - e.g. if it
> > used Gohlke's triad system - then it could be used to change the
> > political system without actually changing the general election method.
> > But if the system isn't part of the general election, then there may be
> > incentive not to bother. Say that the internal selection process
> > produces a list of centrists. Left-wingers (who didn't win) may decide
> > to just vote for a left-wing party instead of the Public List in the
> > general election. People taking part in the internal election may,
> > anticipating this, think that "we'll go through all this work and then,
> > because we're a centrist party, few people will put us first, so why
> > should we?". This suggests the internal method should be proportional as
> > well.
> >
> > >
> > >> I imagine that the primary link is even weaker in STV countries. Say
> > >> you have a multimember district with 5 seats. To cover all their
> > >> bases, each party would run at least 5 candidates for that election,
> > >> so that even if they get all the seats, they can fill them. But that
> > >> means that people who want members of party X to get in power can
> > >> choose which of the candidates they want. There's no predetermined
> > >> list, and there's less of a "take it or leave it" problem than in
> > >> single member districts.
> > >
> > > Wouldn't the Public List also have an opening here?
> >
> > Yes, but STV also supports independents. Even more than in party list,
> > the Public List's advantage rests only in finding good candidates before
> > the real election.
> ----
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