[EM] Fwd: Question about "Voting System"

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 06:05 PM 4/23/2015, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>The general argument is that if you want majority rule, it's 
>possible to set up examples where any wider interval than only 
>considering the median can violate majority rule whereas median 
>always respects it. Intuitively, when you use something that is 
>closer to the mean, you let the strength of preference matter, so if 
>a minority feels strongly about an issue, they can override a 
>majority that doesn't feel quite as strongly about it.
>
>This might be what you want; I'm just saying that if you need to 
>respect majority rule in every situation, you can't use anything 
>wider than the median. My example was a way of showing the intuition 
>behind that :-)

The problem is created by an artificial restriction: a single ballot. 
Hence systems that move beyond the limitation required at least the 
possibility of multiple polls.

Are we considering "voting systems," or "decision-making systems"? 
Arrow came up with a bleak conclusion, in his impossibility theorem, 
by rejecting methods of determining social preference order that were 
not, as he defined them, "voting systems." Q.E.D.!

However, the standard methods of deliberative process, in use for 
centuries, handle the problem. They simply don't do it single-ballot. 
Every result must be approved by a majority of those voting, or there 
is no result. Thus the process continues. What prevails in such a 
system is very sensitive to preference strength.

However, at the same time, majority rule is rigorously respected. 
"Plurality" doesn't cut it. In Robert's Rules, a ballot with any mark 
on it, even if unintelligible, is counted in the basis for 
"majority." People often propose None of the Above for ballots, not 
realizing that under standard systems, in non-governmental 
organizations, it's easy to vote for None of the Above, and it's 
effective. Just write anything on the ballot, other than the name of 
an existing candidate.

In public systems, we became impatient for a result. I find it odd. 
Those elected by a voting system may be managing budgets in the 
billions of dollars, but we don't want to spend money on a second ballot.

And then when we consider multiple-ballot systems, we only look at 
the dumbest possible two-ballot system, ordinarily runoff voting, top 
two by plurality. And we exclude write-in votes in the runoff, 
because that might cause majority failure. As if causing majority 
failure is a Bad Idea when the majority doesn't perfer any of the candidates.

The single ballot system that works is the use of a single ballot to 
create a fully representative body that then uses as many ballots as 
necessary to find the required level of support. Asset Voting. Asset 
Voting has other possibilities as well, it can create a 
full-representative Assembly, or so close to that, that the 
difference isn't important.

In Asset Voting, there are no "wasted votes." There may be "stupid 
votes," i.e., if you vote for someone who you don't trust, or vote 
for someone likely to not participate in further process, you have 
disempowered yourself, but other than that natural consequence, you 
*will be represented* in a good Asset implementation.

So how to get from here to there? This is what I came to about a 
decade ago. Use Asset Voting in voluntary organizations, demonstrate 
it, as well as discovering the kinks or problems. Create a body of 
experience with it. We have only one known example, an election of 
the Election Science Foundation steering committee. It worked. 
However, the problem wasn't the voting system, the problem was that 
the ESF membership expected the steering committee to be the worker 
bees. The steering committee wasn't that, it was a body that could 
vet projects and proposals, to bless them with organizational 
agreement (or rejection). So, to sum it up, the steering committee 
didn't do anything, because nobody gave it proposals. Then, one of 
those not elected to the committee went ahead and, with one of the 3 
members of the steering committee, created the Center for Election 
Science, as a standard board-controlled organization, and no mention 
of the steering committee was made.

Behind that was some very personal politics.

The voting system worked, though, the elected steering commmittee did 
reflect the collected trust of the entire voting membership, that was 
validated.

The CES did not continue to use Asset Voting. Why? I described these 
effects years ago. Activists want to run activist organizations. They 
do not want to be responsible to a wider public. It's predictable, 
and it's not even wrong. It merely does not transform the world by 
demonstrating transformation. CES is doing great work. Just not that 
particular job.