[EM] secret ballots and proxy voting

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 12:49 PM 4/8/2013, Bayle Shanks wrote:

>Typically when large numbers of people are voting you'd like to have
>secret ballots so that the Mafia can't buy votes or intimidate people
>and also so that people feel free to make unpopular choices.
>
>However, when the people voting are representing others, you often
>want to publish who voted for what so that the constituents can use
>the past voting records of their representatives to decide whether to
>vote for them in future elections.
>
>In a proxy voting system, where voters can allow other voters to vote
>for them 'by proxy', and particularly in a transitive proxy voting
>system, where the proxies can be re-proxied (e.g. Alice can give a
>proxy to Bob who can give both Alice's proxy and his own to Caroline),
>you want to satisfy both these objectives.
>
>You want everyone's vote to be secret, because you don't want the
>Mafia to intimidate them or buy their votes, and you want unpopular
>outcomes to be feasible.

This is why I've suggested delegable proxy in two contexts: one is 
Free Associations, which don't move power, as such. They are advisory 
in nature, and there are some fairly easy ways to handle attempted 
corruption. In Free Associations, generally, I recommend that the 
proxy assignments and discussions be (1) generally open (2) locally 
private by choice of participants.

However, in Asset Voting, we have created public voters. These are 
people who have chosen to participate *openly* in public discussions. 
At a large scale, there are definitely risks, but the small-scale 
electors move very little power, individually. Very dangerous for the 
Mafia to try to coerce them. The actual governmental power would be 
with the *seats*, and I'd expect the usual attempts at corruption. 
Same problem as today, really, except that the seats will be very 
closely connected with those electors who elected them, and the 
*communication* between seats and electors may be private.

For the accountability of electors, their *effective actions* -- 
i.e., their votes -- must be public.

>But you also want everyone's votes to be
>public, because you don't want to give your proxy to someone who says
>they'll do one thing with your proxy and then actually does another,
>without you ever knowing.

That's correct. But not "everone's votes." The votes of *electors* 
who voluntarily registered to serve as electors, as public voters.

>One fear is that the Mafia will say, 'You'd better give me your proxy
>or you'll be punished'. I think you can probably fix that by not
>giving proxy holders very precise information on how many proxies they
>hold, when they were given, or who gave them.

In Asset Voting, it's a secret ballot election. And the Mafia is not 
going to worry about one or two votes from voters.

>Even if each person casts their own vote secretly, but can see which
>way their own proxied vote was vast, the Mafia just has to
>secretly ally with a small number of proxy givers in order to see
>which way the proxied votes are being cast (note that even if the
>system let the vote caster know whose proxies they hold, they
>don't know which proxy-ers are allied with the mafia).

You can make up complicated scenarios that bear no resemblance to 
what would actually happen, and scare yourself with them.

The Mafia is just another interest group. Attempting to apply 
large-scale coercion tends to piss people off. They don't want that. 
No, classic corruption goes after a power node, a focus of 
substantial power. So ... does the Mafia in New York threaten City 
Council members?

I'm sure it's happened. In Asset, I generally assume that the 
election of seats will be accomplished by a direct assignment of 
votes by electors. That isn't delegated. However, a delegable proxy 
structure might be used to *suggest* such votes to electors, to allow 
coordination and efficiency. That's up to the electors, it would not 
be a formal part of the system.

>One idea is just to say, if you accept proxies your votes are
>public, otherwise they are secret.

You are trying to mix power structures (governmental) with the 
initial place where delegable proxy will be used, advisory associations.

>  This essentially reduces the
>transitive proxy system to ordinary voting however because
>it provides no way to have proxy holders who can cast proxied votes in
>a way that the Mafia can't control.

Strictly speaking, as we understand advisory association process, 
voters simply vote for themselves, and support structures provide 
information estimating how wide a consensus the results indicate, 
through indirect participation through the "proxy." In that sense, 
the proxy is *not* a classic proxy, it is simply a designation 
indicating some level of trust.

In Asset Voting, in the electoral college (and later, if direct 
voting is allowed on Assembly issues, which becomes possible), the 
elector is not casting their *own* vote, they already assigned that 
in the general election, to themselves or to someone else. They are 
voting to *represent* all those who voted for them, and they do so 
according to their own judgment. These are not "proxy votes" in some 
classic senses. They certainly are not directed votes.

>Here's an idea I had to deal with this problem.
>
>Give each person two ballots: a secret ballot and a public ballot.

And you make something *really complicated* that might not need any 
complication at all. You are trying to preserve direct voting by the 
general electorate, it seems, when that is precisely what breaks down 
with scale in democracy. Asset *allows* anyone who chooses to 
participate to do so; everyone else simply chooses whom to trust and empower.

I expect that Asset will first be implemented, for government, in 
some relatively small jurisdiction, perhaps for a Town Council. The 
point is to actually develop experience. Trying to anticipate all the 
problems is a fool's errand.

Before it is ever used for government, it will be used in various 
organizations. And it's important that it begin as being quite simple.