[EM] secret ballots and proxy voting

[Michael Allan]

Bayle, Abd and Kristofer,

Bayle Shanks wrote:
> Give each person two ballots: a secret ballot and a public ballot.

Or two kinds of election.  Proxy voting is well suited to advisory
elections, as Abd calls them.  He's written eloquently on the secret
ballot as a red herring in this context:
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2013-March/031615.html

In the same context, other, more rational mitigations against coercion
and vote buying include continuous voting (votes are a poor
investment), full disclosure (easy to get caught) and separation of
advisory from decision systems (again, the two kinds of election).
See: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#vote-buy


Abd ul-Rahman Lomax said:
> You can make up complicated scenarios that bear no resemblance to
> what would actually happen, and scare yourself with them.

Likewise one can imagine scenarios that bear no resemblance to what
did actually happen in the past.  Vote buying and coercion were not
the primary motivations behind the introduction of the secret ballot.
While the reasons put forward at the time ranged from the laudible
(ending corruption) to the deplorable (disenfranchising the negro and
other illiterate people), the real motivation, as with other electoral
reforms of the 1800s, was to consolidate power in the newly organized
political parties.  They were gearing up for a newly enfranchised mass
electorate and they wanted to centralize control over the selection of
primary candidates.  The secret ballot would help them in this regard
by eliminating the local hustings where candidates were openly
nominated and affirmed (Britain), and eroding the power of the local
political machines such as Tammany Hall (US).

See 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.

> 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?

Kristofer Munsterhjelm said:
> Isn't that just what a protection racket is - large-scale coercion?
> It seems to work for the Mafia, inasmuch as they're still being
> involved in protection rackets... and the presence of organizations
> like Addiopizzo seems to show that they are.

Usually a protection racket goes after business firms (equivalent to
what Abd calls "power nodes").  It extorts money from those firms, not
directly from their customers.  The customers are too numerous, too
mobile and generally too difficult to control (too "large-scale" as
Abd says).  For similar reasons, election racketeers wouldn't go
chasing after individual voters.  I think this is what Abd means.

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/