[EM] Primary network effects and national dialogue

Mon Apr 15 07:56:38 PDT 2013

Dennis, Bruce and others, (was [NATL-DIALOGUE] convergence of possible
discussion topics.  CC others)

(For those unaware, please note that the National Dialogue Network is
the winner of the 2012 Catalyst Award for Civic Infrastructure,
http://ncdd.org/10940.)

Dennis said:
> ... You make some good points here.  I'd sure like to see some
> experiments with the approach you suggest.

The Pirate Party of Germany has a working group (AG Meinungsfindungs-
tool) that's roughly equivalent to the National Dialogue Network.  I'm
hopeful they can help us to get started.  They have lots of technical
resources.  The crucial task seems to be eliminating the network
effect in primary voting.  That network effect precludes the success
of open primaries, and probably also the success of the Pirates.
Please see the discussion thread "Helping the Pirate Party to vanish":
https://service.piratenpartei.de/pipermail/ag-meinungsfindungstool/2013-April/thread.html#2187

Bruce Schuman said:
> I'd probably want to embed this kind of flow-of-control in a big
> holistic container like Americans Elect, that takes on everything
> that arises within the motivations of the electorate -- and then
> arrange the output of the entire process as a "guiding influence" on
> the existing governmental system (i.e., it acts as an all-issues
> "citizens lobby")

http://www.americanselect.org/

Americans Elect seems to be roughly equivalent to the Pirate Party;
it's an organization based around a facility of primary voting.
That's also the technical definition of a modern political party.  As
such, it could not succeed except by destroying and replacing one of
the existing dominant parties.  Unfortunately, that means it cannot be
"nonpartisan" as claimed on site.  That's no doubt the hope, but the
network effect that forces the dominance of a primary duopoly also
forces the poles of that duopoly to be partisan.

Another way to view the problem is that a vote cast in an Americans
Elect primary is *also* a vote in favour of Americans Elect.  It is
this organizational "charge" on the vote that belies the promise of an
open primary and dooms it to failure in the stronger "magnetic fields"
of the dominant party organizations.  For the open primary to succeed,
the organizational charge on the vote must somehow be neutralized.

For example, suppose that each primary vote cast at an Americans Elect
site *also* appears at each National Dialogue site (say), and vice
versa.  Ditto for all the other sites where primary votes are cast,
viewed or counted.  This technical trick of mirrors effectively
neutralizes the organizational charge and eliminates the network
effect that favours bigger sites over smaller.  It no longer matters
where a primary vote is cast, viewed or counted.  Such a primary is
truly open.

Continuing with the example: the open executive primary we spoke of
earlier is now possible.  People are able to discuss and vote not only
for the President and Vice-President's offices, but also, and for the
first time, for all the appointments of the administration (as you
Americans call it).  The party primaries are now less interesting and
the parties themselves no longer seem to have much of a future ahead
of them.  Suddenly there is a lot to agree on, a lot to talk about.

Anyway, this is what we've been thinking recently.  I can answer for
the technical side.  We've long known about the trick of mirrors and
even prototyped it in the past.  Much depends, however, on the
feasibility and attractions of the open executive primary, both for
presidential (US) and parliamentary systems (Germany).  So I CC a list
of election experts and ask them to kindly point to possible errors or
oversights.  http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring

Discussions on the same are indexed here:
http://zelea.com/w/Stuff_talk:Votorola/p/power_structuring

-- 
Michael Allan

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

> Michael Allan said:
> > Bruce and Dennis, (cc Votorola, Election Methods)
> > 
> > About the over-complexity of the issue space in executive elections, I
> > wanted to share something we discovered last month.
> > 
> > Bruce Schuman said:
> > > ... dealing with this incredible simultaneity and complexity, that
> > > so totally overloads normal human thinking. ... Somehow, we need to
> > >  parse the issue space    using methods ... that can break down huge
> > > complexity and simultaneity into bite-sized and regionally-focused
> > > chunks people can comprehend .
> > 
> > Dennis Boyer said:
> > > ... I'm wondering if [Americans Elect] might have had better results
> > > by utilizing some qualitative and quantitative tools that would mesh
> > > with their issue responses, overlay them with candidate responses,
> > > and produce a candidate or candidates via that type of approach?
> > 
> > Last month, we came up with a new design for an open executive
> > primary: http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring
> > 
> > It enables the electors (i.e. voters) to form a prior consensus on a
> > power structure of appointments.  A power structure is still a complex
> > thing, of course (all the indirect appointments of a president), but
> > it seems to be the essential issue to be decided in the election.  It
> > probably ought to be discussed beforehand.  A primary like this might
> > offer the right supports for that kind of discussion.  Note how the
> > complex leaves of the primary reach out to the equally complex local
> > electorate in an attempt to "engage" with them, as they say.
> > 
> > Discussions on normative issues (gun control, say) could be moved to
> > separate primaries.  Those primaries would have a different structure
> > befitting the different form of their issues (texts rather than
> > offices).  Presumeably a competent executive is going to act on any
> > normative consensus that emerges, if it's at all possible.  (That
> > seems a good electoral platform, anyway.)  So norms could probably be
> > discussed separate of the election, even in parallel.
> > 
> > Technically this is called rationalization (you may know); breaking a
> > confused whole into separate pieces and bringing those pieces into new
> > and (frankly) more complex relations with each other.  But it might
> > not be so much the complexity that people can't handle, as the
> > confusion of issues that are irrationally glued together.
> > 
> > -- 
> > Michael Allan
> > 
> > Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
> > http://zelea.com/

Dennis Boyer said:
> Michael: You make some good points here. I'd sure like to see some experiments with the approach you suggest. Dennis Boyer
> 
> Dennis Boyer,JD,MPA
> Fellow of the Interactivity Foundation
> 3302 Bethlehem Rd
> Dodgeville,WI 53533
> cel 608 574 5704
> 
> www.interactivityfoundation.org

Bruce Schuman said:
> Really great diagrams on this page, Michael
> 
> http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring
> 
> And this piece is also very interesting: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2013-March/031647.html
> 
> >From my point of view, this is very much the high-precision down-to-the-pixel kind of engineering we need to be doing.
> 
> I'd probably want to embed this kind of flow-of-control in a big holistic container like Americans Elect, that takes on everything that arises within the motivations of the electorate -- and then arrange the output of the entire process as a "guiding influence" on the existing governmental system (i.e., it acts as an all-issues "citizens lobby")
> 
> That's a model that could arise spontaneously across the internet without legislation or any changes at all to the existing system -- and it could become influential just as any other political force becomes influential -- because it has big buy-in.
> 
> This begins to be a powerful integral model of "cybernetic democracy" -- where cybernetics is defined as Norbert Weiner originally intended the term -- "Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" -- where "control" implies "the self-regulation of society" -- "self-control".  That would be a kind of "homeostasis", where the input of the electorate was compiled to create a balancing effect on every point of controversy -- a balancing effect, I think, that would be fully consistent with the ideals and methods of NCDD.
> 
> Bruce Schuman
> (805) 966-9515 Santa Barbara
> http://interspirit.net | http://sharedpurpose.net | http://bridgeacrossconsciousness.net