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

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Mike,

answers in the text of your email below.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

2012/8/6 Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com>

> Peter Zbornik said:
> > 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.
>
> I guess there are three issues in this.  I'll try to unravel them as
> they bear on the public party.
>
>   * Party membership
>   * Human expression
>   * Vote counting
>
> The public party has no formal membership.  Its actual membership is
> assumed to be identical to that of the public.  Public membership is
> determined ad hoc by human expression *in* public.  Speaker and
> audience are made members by the fact of their participation.  In not
> assuming this mode of membership, Demoex is not a public party.
>
> The public depends on freedom of expression.  Voting is a form of
> expression.  Placing restrictions on who can vote and who cannot (or
> where they can vote, when, and how), Demoex is not a public party.
>
> Public votes may be tallied by anyone and the tallier alone decides
> which votes to count and which to discount.  A public party may tally
> votes, too, and may publish a count restricted to the local electors,
> or to any other subset of the voters.  Such a restricted count would
> not in itself disqualify Demoex from being a public party. [1]
>
>
Ok, so every citizen in every country in the world will be able to vote in
the election of the municipal council where I live?
I don't think I would like that and neither would the other people living
in this municipality too, I believe.


> > > ...  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. ...  I am not sure I make sense, here, as I am new to the
> > discussion.
>
> I'll share what I've learned about the secret ballot.  It's not what
> it seems to be.
>
>   (a) The enabling motivation behind the secret ballot, as with other
>       electoral reforms of the 19th century, was the consolidation of
>       power in the newly organized political parties.  Of particular
>       concern was control over the selection of primary candidates,
>       which could not be secured when the nominations and voting were
>       conducted in public, as before. [2]
>

Talking about history, I'll share what I learned about the secret ballot
too: "The use of a secret ballot in America was first deemed necessary to
protect the voting rights of recently freed slaves after the Civil War.
Voter intimidation during southern reconstruction was rampant, with African
American first-time voters being threatened with physical violence, even
lynching, based on how their publicly known ballots were cast. In 1892,
Grover Cleveland became the first United State president elected by secret
ballot."
http://www.sosballot.org/frequently-asked-questions/


>
>   (b) If all restrictions are lifted and public voters have complete
>       freedom of expression, then it is difficult to see how the
>       results could be manipulated except (as Conseo suggests) by
>       re-imposing systematic restrictions.  Isolated instances of
>       coercion, as with family, are unlikely to affect the overall
>       primary results.  And, in all cases, the individual is still
>       protected by the secret ballot at a later stage, in the official
>       election. [3]
>

"Complete freedom of expression" is a utopia, similar as the "classless
society".
It sounds good initially, but thinking of it a bit longer, the attraction
fades quickly.
If you claim, that coercion will be "unlikely to affect the overall primary
results".
Try to think about communism or fascism. Those were some efficient systems
of mass coercion.
But peer-to-peer coercion would have similar effects.
Your claim that, that a little peer-to-peer coercion here and there,
actually is not much to talk about, is unacceptable to me and not a
statement supported by any argument - imagine how these "isolated cases"
could look like in reality.
"If all restrictions are lifted and public voters have complete freedom of
expression", even then would coercion not disappear, as vote-buying will be
absolutely legitimate, and vote-buying is a form of coercion which would be
under the protection of the "freedom of expression".
Different rules for ballot secrecy between primary and official election
are likely to give you two very different results, even if the same voters
voted for the same candidates at the same time.


>
>   (c) It is impossible to generally enforce a secret ballot in primary
>       elections, or to impose any other sweeping restriction on
>       freedom of expression.  It would require a power that does not
>       exist in our societies.
>

I don't understand that point at all, please show how "It is impossible to
generally enforce a secret ballot in primary elections".
I think you can regulate primary elections by law, in order to avoid
manipulations, just as we do in public elections or in stock companies.
In any case, in the Czech Green party, the secret ballot is used in primary
elections and I consider the elections being fair.
The votes can even be counted publicly, so I don't really see the problem
here.
Claiming that a secret ballot is a restriction on the freedom of
expression, is similar to saying that banning "hate speech" and "physical
threats" or why not even "sexual harassments" are similar restrictions to
the freedom of expression.
In fact, any law can be seen as a "sweeping restriction on freedom of
expression".
I didn't understand the sentence "It would require a power that does
not exist in our societies."
Doesn't legislative power exist in our societies?


>
> > I am not sure I have understood this vote-mirroring thing.
>
> Vote mirroring is basically freedom of information.  If I cast a vote
> at site S, then I contribute information to S, but that information is
> made public.  Others are free to copy it.


I am ok, with this, just as long as only my voting behaviour is public, but
not my identity (name, surname, photo, home town etc.).


> So my vote appears at sites
> T, U and V, which are not only independent of S, but also based on
> different voting methods.
>
> But this freedom of information underpins other freedoms.  Now suppose
> I go to site T and shift my vote.  That same vote shift appears at S,
> U and V.  So I gain the freedom to vote anywhere, by any method.  If
> it happens that none of the provided methods suits my needs, then I am
> free to design a method of my own and build a site to host it.  If I
> do build it, then I know the voters will come (at least in spirit!)
> because I am free to copy their votes. [4][5]
>
>
>   [1] No doubt many public parties will publish counts restricted to
>       the local electors.  But I think we may also expect alternative
>       parties that dedicate themselves to marginalized people such as
>       children, convicts and the mentally infirm to publish more
>       inclusive counts.  Marcus Pivato has predicted that people of
>       any age or ability could make a positive contribution to the
>       overall results, if the voting method were properly designed.
>
>       Marcus J. Pivato.  2007.  Pyramidal democracy.
>       http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/3965/
>
>   [2] Frank O'Gorman. 2007. The secret ballot in nineteenth century
>       Britain.  *In* Cultures of voting: the hidden history of the
>       secret ballot.  pp. 16-42.
>
>       See also my gloss in the footnote here:
>
> http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-July/030836.html
>
>   [3] http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#vote-buy
>
>   [4] Mark Murphy was maybe the first to attempt the design of an open
>       voting network.  See his prize winning essay:
>
>       Mark Murphy.  2008.  The 'killer app' of public participation.
>       *In* Rebooting America.  Edited by Allison Fine, Micah
>       L. Sifrey, Andrew Rasiej and Joshua Levy.  Personal Democracy
>       Press.  http://rebooting.personaldemocracy.com/node/5499.
>
>       See also his later post to the Metagov list:
>
> http://metagovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2009-February/001195.html
>
>   [5] Past discussions of vote mirroring are indexed here:
>       http://zelea.com/w/User_talk:ThomasvonderElbe_GmxDe/Vote_mirroring
>
> --
> Michael Allan
>
> Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
> http://zelea.com/
>
>
> Peter Zbornik said:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > some comments below
> >
> > 2012/7/21 Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com>
> > > 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.
> >
> > 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
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20120806/1e230499/attachment-0004.htm>