[EM] (22) APR: Steve's 22th dialogue with Richard Fobes

[steve bosworth]

Re: (22) APR: Steve's 22th dialogue
with Richard Fobes

 

>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 18:12:57 -0800

> From: <Richard Fobes>  ElectionMethods at VoteFair.org

> To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com

> CC: stevebosworth at hotmail.com

> Subject: Re: (21) APR: Steve's 20th dialogue with Richard Fobes

> 

> On 11/3/2015 9:16 AM, steve bosworth wrote:

> > In this 21^st dialogue, let's return to the question of whether APR
or

> > VoteFair provides the fairer system for electing multi-winners, e.g.
the

> > 80 members of California’s legislative assembly. In this post, I wish
to

> > focus only on one element of your reply to our 20^th dialogue,
namely,

> > the question of whether or not your ‘VoteFair representation ranking’

> > needlessly wastes votes:

> > [... see below ...]

S: > > In this context and in the light of this clarification, do you
accept

> > that APR is ‘fairer’ than VoteFair?

> 

R: > If politics were one-dimensional – which I'll explain shortly – then 

> your APR method would work well.

S:  Later, I will argue that one of the advantages
of APR over other systems (including VoteFair) is that it allows more “dimensions”
to be represented and thus to become part of the binding majority synthesis
(laws) produced by the legislative assembly.

> 

[…]

> 

> > S: […] > > However, unlike APR, each of your larger electoral
districts from which

> > 2 ‘districtwide’ seats are elected do not entirely eliminate the

> > possibility of relatively safe-seats being produced by gerrymandering

> > or by chance. I understand (by using ‘cross-district popularity
ranking’

> > (page 5/20 of Chap. 20) that VoteFair representation elects the 2

> > statewide seats by discovering the most popular candidates for the

> > largest party underrepresent by the district elections alone.

> 

R: > VoteFair ranking is not vulnerable to gerrymandering, of either the 

> intentional or unintentional type. Any change in a district boundary 

> that helps one political party within a district will be offset by a 

> corresponding loss in the statewide seats.

> 

S:
Yes, VoteFair would probably “offset” such help to one party to some extent but
APR structurally never gives any special help to any party, “association” or
candidate.



R:>
Later you refer to an example in my book and then refer to a quote in my 

> book:

> > ... 'This leaves the 10 Democratic voters

> > appropriately unrepresented ….’ A similar flaw is repeated later on
page

> > 10/20 of Chap. 20 when the ‘10 voters for ‘White party’ receive no

> > representation. Here, you again admit that this application of
‘VoteFair

> > representation’ has not ‘proportionately’ produced the ‘ideal match’

> > between ‘voters with their party preferences’…..

 

S:  Do you now accept that these quotations are
admissions that VoteFair wastes some vote?

>


R: > All the examples in my book were chosen for use in the United States 

> where politics is very multidimensional (which I'll get to in a moment) 

> and where too many political parties would lead to a different kind of 

> corruption (compared to the kind that now exists).

 

S:  All politics outside the US is also “multidimensional”
and APR recognizes and represents this even more than does VoteFair.

 

R:>
If a large number of political parties were appropriate, then increasing 

> the number of statewide seats increases the closeness to a mathematical 

> "ideal." Near the end of the book I point out that if VoteFair
ranking 

> were used in European nations where such mathematical idealism already 

> dominates, then the number of statewide seats should be increased (which 

> results in a corresponding decrease in the number of district-specific 

> seats).

> 

>[….] 

> In other words, candidate-specific "safe seats" can only exist
when the 

> primary election (or nomination process) is unfair. Both VoteFair 

> ranking and your APR method eliminate this kind of unfairness.

 

S:  I agree that VoteFair would greatly reduce
such unfairness but only APR would “eliminate” it.



> 

R:> Now I'll explain the one-dimensional versus multidimensional issue.

 

S:  You seem to be correctly seeing APR as making
it easier for small parties to be proportionately elected.  This seems also to have led you incorrectly to
assume that all small parties are “one-dimensional” or single-issue parties.  I accept that small parties are more likely
to be single-issue parties and that some of these might be large enough to be proportionately
elected to the assembly by APR.  However,
the wider composition of an APR assembly would quickly convince any reps of
these parties that, in order for their narrow concerns to be addressed by the
assembly, they must present them as an essential part of the multi-dimensional
concerns of a majority of the other reps who constituted the assembly (please
see my last addition below to this post).

> 

R: > Using your example of electing representatives to the California 

> legislature, an example of one-dimensional politics would be if 

> everyone's only political concern was about one issue.

> 

> To borrow a high-profile issue from current Presidential-campaign news, 

> let's suppose that the one issue facing the California legislature is 

> whether or not to build a wall between California and Mexico. In this 

> case your APR method would produce very fair results. That's because it 

> simply transfers each voter's preference onto the voting that occurs 

> within the legislature.

 

S:
Yes!  If so, and given my newly added
response above, I do not then see why below you simply “recommend increasing
the number of statewide seats”?  APR
seems to address this problem more efficiently.

> 

R:> VoteFair ranking would also handle this situation well, although for 

> this one-dimensional situation I would recommend increasing the number 

> of statewide seats.

> 

> In real-life politics, there are many, many issues. This is what I 

> refer to as multidimensional.

 

S:
Yes, and APR would allow more of these dimensions openly and proportionately to
play their part in the legislative process (Please see my last addition to this
post).

> 

R:> Even if each issue were simplified into one dimension (which is, alas, 

> what many people do in their minds), those multiple issues still create 

> a multidimensional political situation.

 

S:
Yes, and this “situation” would be openly represented in the composition of an
APR assembly.

> 

R:> To better understand the jump from one-dimensional (single-issue) 

> politics to multidimensional politics, let's consider two-dimensional 

> politics.

> 

> In the United States -- and most European nations -- there is a 

> left-to-right dimension, and an up-versus-down dimension. These can be 

> thought of as a two-dimensional situation, although each of the two 

> dimensions is actually multidimensional.

> 

> The left-versus-right dimension mostly corresponds to ethical and 

> religious issues such as gender inequality, immigration, sexual 

> orientation, marijuana usage, access to assault weapons, etc.

> 

> The up-versus-down dimension corresponds to economic fairness, where the 

> voters are up above all the political parties and want economic 

> fairness, and the biggest campaign contributors are below all the 

> political parties and those biggest campaign contributors want to 

> preserve economic advantages for the businesses they own.

> 

S:  The many more “dimensions” that APR would
give a proportional vote to in the assembly would also include your up/down and
right/left agendas (please see the last addition to this post).



R:> ….not all rich people are in the group of people who supply the 

> biggest campaign contributions.)

> 

S:
  Also we agree, in general, about the
distorting and corrupting effect that big private money can have on the political
process.  Consequently, perhaps both of
us want all electoral campaigns to be limited to those which would be publically
financed and proportionately assisted by public media (e.g. like the BBC).  However, let’s save this issue for a separate
dialogue if we disagree about this.  Then,
I would contend that APR’s “associational” structure would at least make it no
more vulnerable to corruption by private money than is VoteFair.   Clearly, you have asserted the opposite but
I have not yet seen your explanation of exactly how APR’s features make it more
vulnerable to such corruption.  (Again,
please see the last addition to this post.)

 

[….]

R:> A big weakness of your APR method is that politicians would find it 

> easier to play this game of talking about left-versus-right
"positions" 

> and then acting according to unpredictable preferences (such as their 

> own opinions, the preferences of their biggest campaign contributors, or 

> the opinions of the people they associate with).

 

>
Why can this occur in your APR method? Politicians can behave as 

> "mavericks" without needing to be at least partially aligned
with a 

> well-understood political party whose actions have been watched for many 

> years. …

 

S:  No.  I
see APR as making it more difficult for an elected congressperson to display “unpredictable
preferences”.  This is because of the
closer average ideological fit it provides between each congressperson and his
or her electorate.  This “fit” would make
the electorate more likely to expect their rep’s behavior to conform to the
promises given during the election.  At
the same time, APR provides a ready way for voters to replace a disappointing (“maverick”)
rep by a better one during the next general election.

> 

R: >Yes, politicians under APR would be aligned with organizations, 

> but as I've explained before there would be "too many"
organizations for 

> the voters to keep track of.

 

S:  The number of “organizations” elected would
only be those seen by citizens as representing their own hopes and fears.  As now or with VoteFair, different APR citizens
would also have different capacities to “keep track”.  Also note that APR still allows a citizen, if
they so wish, to “keep track” of the behavior of only the one congressperson
she most favors and has helped to elect.

[….]



R: > … too-many situation occurs in U.S. politics where minor political 

> parties are mostly focused on a few would-be politicians whose views 

> dominate the party. In other words, minor parties are difficult to 

> characterize compared to large political parties where lots of 

> politicians have to work together in a coordinated way.

S:  Please see the last addition to this
post for how an APR assembly is likely to be one in which “lots of politicians [would]
work together in a coordinated way”.



R: > VoteFair ranking is intentionally designed to limit the number of 

> political parties who actually get their candidates elected. But it 

> does this in a way that lists a greater number of minor political 

> parties on the ballot. ….

 

S:  Limiting the number of political parties
arbitrarily is not a virtue when this prevents some citizens from being
represented most faithfully.  APR only limits
the number of “associations” (e.g parties) to the number that have received
sufficient support during APR’s primary election.

 

[….]

 

> >S: At both of these points, your

> > meaning of ‘fair’ seems to conflict with the more usual meaning you

> > appropriately seem to give to it in other contexts (and which I also

> > endorse), namely, each person must be treated equally and represented
as

> > accurately as possible. [...]

> 

R: > Both VoteFair ranking and your APR method "treats each voter
equally."

 

S:  Yes, VoteFair “treats each voter equally”
within the limitation of its own system. 
However, as illustrated by the above quotations from your book, it still
leads to some voters not being represented at all, i.e. it wastes some votes.  This contrasts with APR which allows each and
every voter’s vote to continue to count both mathematically and qualitatively
in the legislative assembly.

> 

R: > As for "[representing] each person as accurately as
possible," in my 

> biased opinion, VoteFair ranking produces more representative results. 

> Of course "representative results" is an ambiguous term, yet I
can 

> imagine that it's possible to measure "representativeness,"
although I 

> don't know exactly how this would be done.

 

S:  I assume we agree that that when a citizen
sees a member of the assembly as speaking and acting in the ways entirely
approved by that citizen, then we would say that that member represents that
citizen as completely as possible. As you know, APR allows each citizen to
guarantee this by adding her vote to the “weighted vote” of the member she most
trusts to speak and act in this way. 
VoteFair does not do this as efficiently.

>


R:> A measure of representativeness should NOT be done -- as it now is done 

> in Europe -- by simplistically assuming that each voter's position on 

> multiple issues can be categorized as fitting into one of the existing 

> political parties.

 

S:  Correct, but APR was constructed to correct
this “simplistic assumption” by party-list PR systems.

> [….]

 

S:  I hope the following last addition to this
post will help to explain why I see APR as most likely to help elect a
legislative assembly that would

1)     
be less corrupted by private money;

2)     
be composed of reps who could be more
easily held to account by their respective electorates,

3)     
be composed of reps more skilled at explaining
the merits of their own agendas to their fellow reps, and more determined to
form the alliances and to make the compromises necessary so as to be an
essential part of a majority that can legislate at least part of their own
respective agendas; and thus

4)     
and assembly that would be more likely
to make rational and evidence based laws.

This is because, and in addition to APR
offering both maximal proportionality and maximal representativeness for each
citizen:

APR: Finding
Common Ground and Forming a Working Majority Coalition

 

With regard to finding common ground and
forming a working majority in the assembly with ideologically different congresspersons,
paradoxically, the advantage that each APR member of the House is likely to
have is that he knows that he has been elected by citizens who expect and trust
him to work and vote to promote their common scale of values.  As elaborated below, this ideological bond
between each citizen and her rep would seem more likely to provide the kind of congresspersons
to engage in the kind of productive debates and negotiations in the House to
form a majority coalition to help solve the real problems facing the country.

This advantage is enhanced during APR’s
general election when each citizen guarantees that her vote will be added to
the ‘weighted vote’ in the legislative assembly of her most favored
representative (or the one most favored by her first choice but eliminated
candidate).  It should also be understood
that a foundation for the growth of this qualitative advantage would have been
provided earlier by the way APR recruits its candidates.

Firstly, APR’s primary election discovers the
voluntary organizations in the country that are most trusted by its citizens.
It then helps politically to energizes these organizations by recognizing them
as the official electoral ‘associations’ through which each citizen will later
elect their own congressperson.  This
recognition, in turn, should stimulate more attractive candidates to seek to
represent both one of these associations and the citizens with whom they have
an ideological bond.  In contrast to
other electoral systems, APR’s later election of the most favored of these
better candidates would seem also to combine to raise the average quality of
representation in the assembly even further, both from the points of view of
citizens and associations.

Additionally:

The growth of these closer bonds between citizens
and their representatives would seem to be assisted by another element of the
“bottom-up” primary election itself.  It
asks citizens to start to familiarize themselves with the existing members,
officials, and other potential candidates of their preferred organizations
months before each voter has to finalize her ranking of candidates during the
general election.  If so, the average
breadth and depth of knowledge so acquired by voters in order to rank individual
candidates would also seem likely to be greater than is generally acquired by
citizens using other electoral systems.

The average closer bond between each citizen
using APR and her rep would also seem to grow partly as a result of the time
between APR’s two elections.  These
months would allow each association, its candidates and its registered voters
to coordinate their thinking and planning about how best to run their common
campaign in the coming general election.

Because an APR congressperson would be more
clearly expected to work and vote to promote the scale of values he shares with
his largely homogeneous electorate, he would seem to be both more able and
likely to negotiate solutions to common problems together with fellow but
ideologically different congresspersons. 
This is because each APR rep would probably enjoy more trust from his
electorate.  Consequently, each member’s
explanation of why he and his electorate should support a given compromise
solution to a common problem is more likely to be accepted by this
electorate.  While no one may see the
compromise as being perfect, each congressperson and his electorate is more
likely to accept that it at least provides net benefits for each ideologically
different sponsor and his electorate.  A
trusting voter is more likely to believe her own congressperson’s claim that a
given compromise is necessary.

This closer bond between each rep and his
electorate would also seem to make each congressperson’s work in the assembly
more focused and known to be backed by his association and his electors. This
greater clarity and focus would seem to help each APR congressperson to present
the strongest possible case for his legislative proposals to the other members
of the House.  Consequently, an assembly
composed of such able, different, well informed, clashing, and focused reps
would seem to provide an optimal debating and negotiating chamber for the
production of creative and evidence based solutions to common problems. The
wisdom of any decisions resulting from this deliberative process is also likely
to be aided by the simple fact that it would take place in an assembly whose
composition most accurately reflects the real variety and intensity of the
concerns of all citizens.

The extra ability with which APR reps would
seem to be able to negotiate compromises, would also seem to make it more
likely that APR congresspersons would respond to the imperative to form a
working majority in the assembly. Without such a majority coalition, any wise
legislative solutions to problems that such rational deliberations might have
discovered could not be passed into law. 
Each APR rep is more likely to see that if he is not a part of the
majority that will shape the assembly’s binding decisions, his own agenda, and
that of his electorate, will not be advanced.

In a parliamentary system, the formation of
such a coalition also has the advantage that the assembly can ensure that the
government (the executive organ of the state) will be led by a chief executive
(prime minister) who can be most trusted to apply the laws as expected by the
assembly.

In summary, it is because APR is more likely
to produce, on average, a closer ideological fit between each citizen and her
congressperson that APR is more likely to help solve the real problems facing
the country.  They are more likely to do
this because of the greater expectation on the part of their different
electorates that progress must actually be made with respect to the goals of
each of the ideological different electorates who elected them. To do this,
compromises must be made and a working majority coalition formed.  The likelihood of this happening using APR
contrasts with the gridlock that is frequently produced by the more defuse,
vague, and often conflicting agendas held by the congresspersons and their
electors using existing electoral systems.

Finally, APR’s
primary elections and associations should also help to reduce the sometimes
anti-democratic power of great wealth, celebrity, and the mass media.  I see this as likely given the extent to
which APR’s ‘associations’ would emerge from previously existing voluntary
organizations in society. These associations could benefit from the loyalties
among the population such organizations had enjoyed prior to them being
recognized as 'associations'. 
Presumably, many of these organizations would already have some
communication and mobilization resources that are entirely independent of
celebrity, the richest sections of society, and the mass media. Thus, the
adoption of APR would probably help to reduce the relative power of these
sometimes anti-democratic forces in determining how people and their
representatives vote. APR’s official political recognition of these voluntary
organizations would seem to assist many citizens more firmly, securely, and
independently to see that their own abiding interests are best promoted and
protected through the associational and representational connections validated
by APR.

 

What do you think?

Steve

 

P.S.  If you are interested in considering how
certain additional constitutional understands 
might make it even more likely that APR reps would form themselves into
a working majority coalition, please ask me also to email to you my attachment
called, '15-secure-executive'.

 

 

 		 	   		  
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