[EM] Jameson's GOLD voting: the most practical PR proposal? "pride" and turnout

[steve bosworth]

From: Election-Methods <election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com> on behalf of election-methods-request at lists.electorama.com <election-methods-request at lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2017 7:04 PM
To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
Subject: Election-Methods Digest, Vol 157, Issue 30


Re: [EM] GOLD voting: the most practical PR proposal? "pride" and turnout


 Wed, 26 Jul 2017 12:23:27 -0700
From: Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com>
To: electionsciencefoundation <electionscience at googlegroups.com>,        EM
        <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>,         Mark Frohnmayer
        <mark.frohnmayer at gmail.com>,    Board of Directors <board at electology.org>
Subject: [EM] Messaging for voting activism: "pride" and turnout
Re: [EM] GOLD voting: the most practical PR proposal?


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More “Pride” Voting with EAPR than GOLD



To: Jameson and everyone

From:  Steve



Thank you Jameson Quinn<https://medium.com/@jameson.quinn?source=post_header_lockup> for your article (Make America (Proud to) Vote (Again?), #MAVA, 27 July 2017 ).  It expresses our common values very well.  Yes, ‘pride in democracy …. should be America’s legacy to all its citizens’.  Yes, GOLD would greatly improve our existing arrangements ‘for electing the House of Representatives and/or state legislatures’.  Also, thank you for being ‘interested in having as broad a dialogue as possible about practical PR reform proposals’.  Consequently, in response to an initial suggestion from Kristofer Munsterhjelm, I would now like to suggest that Evaluative Associational Proportional Representation (EAPR) would be even more efficient than GOLD in supporting these values.  EAPR seems entirely to accord with your preferences for ‘greater diversity of views in Parliament’, ‘MPs [being] more accountable to their constituents’, and ‘constituents [not needing to] … be defined by geographic area’.  However, EAPR may also conflict with some peoples’ fear of ‘too many small parties’.



In the following lists of your phrases and my responses to them, I briefly suggest how I see GOLD & EAPR agreeing and disagreeing with each other at different points. However, after these lists, I offer a step by step description of how EAPR would work.



I wonder if you will also see that EAPR would more completely and simply than GOLD, offer ‘Geographic Open List/Delegation’.  Also, EARP has other advantages over GOLD:

  1.  It asks citizens to ‘grade’ rather than to rank candidates.  Giving a candidate a rating of EXCELLENT, VERY GOOD, GOOD, ACCEPTABLE, POOR, or REJECT is both easier for voters to do and much more informative when electing representatives.  Grading prompts citizens to think about what qualities make a candidate ‘fit’ for the office.  Grades are more ‘discerning’ and ‘meaningful’ than numbers.

  2.  Unlike GOLD, EAPR does not eliminate any candidate until all the winners have been discovered.  EAPR does this by using the above mentioned Majority Judgment (MJ) type “grading” of candidates.

  3.  EAPR more efficiently than GOLD removes the anti-democratic consequences of ‘gerrymandering’ and ‘safe-seats’.  This results from all EAPR’s citizen’s evaluations of applicant organizations during its special ‘primary election’.  This primary determines all the electoral districts and non-geographically defined electoral ‘associations’ through which all the members of the legislature would be elected.

  4.  The ‘associations’ discovered by EAPR’s primary are likely to offer more attractive candidates to grade in the later general election.  This reduces the chances that votes will be wasted qualitatively (see below).

  5.  Unlike GOLD’s wasting your estimated 10% of the votes, 100% of the EAPR voters can guarantee that their vote will continue fully to count in their legislature’s deliberation through the ‘weighted vote’ of the one member whom they have helped to elect.  Thus, no citizen’s vote need be wasted quantitatively.  Consequently, what GOLD calls a ‘supermajority of votes’ would instead continue proportionately to strength the voting power in the legislature of each relevant member.

EAPR would also be more efficient at removing

  1.  the ‘risk [of] causing a spoiled election’;

  2.  ‘zero-sum thinking’;

  3.  the ‘penchant for mudslinging;

  4.  the arbitrary features and needless complications of GOLD, e.g. sometimes having a) to ‘split’ votes or to ‘transfer votes’ fractionally, b) to ‘assign additional territory to winners’; c) also:  ‘But in some cases this could leave more or less than 2 in a district; more, if a 3rd-place candidate locally got exceptionally many votes from out of the district while still having decent support locally, or if the top 2 in the district have less than 50% of the vote combined; and fewer, if the second-place candidate in a district has fewer than half of the local votes of the first-place’.

EAPR would also do more to help

  1.  each citizen to have ’a chance to vote for somebody from across the state who really speaks’ to them;

  2.   ‘new ideas getting a fair hearing’;

  3.  to provide the ‘geographic spread’ as explicitly requested by voters in EAPR’s primary election;

  4.  ‘increase turnout’;

  5.  give the ‘freedom for better candidates to run without spoiling the election, and with a viable path for new parties to grow (and thus also for voters to hold existing parties accountable and make them less complacent’; and

  6.  ‘The upshot is that the winners will have several good characteristics that voters can be proud of.’



EAPR EXPLAINED

Well before the general election, EAPR’s ‘primary election’ would help to provide EAPR’s benefits. Using the election of California’s Legislative Assembly as an example, EAPR’s special primary election would ask citizens to use their ‘evaluations’ rather than their ‘preferences’ to help society discover the group of applicant organizations statewide (e.g. political parties, interest groups, electoral districts, etc.) who are most likely to run attractive candidates in the later general election. These organizations would become the ‘associations’ through which all voters would elect the 80 Members of the Assembly later.  Each citizen would be asked to give one of the above ‘grades’ from EXCELLENT to REJECTED to as many of the applicant organizations as they might wish. Any such organization not evaluated explicitly by a voter would be counted as REJECTED by that voter.  In this way, each citizen would record the extent to which they see each applicant organization as likely to offer a list of attractive candidate for any Californian to “grade” in the later general election.



Each organization that receives at least 1/80 of all the registered voters in the state as giving it their highest available evaluations would become an ‘association’.  At the same time, each citizen whose evaluation had helped that ‘association’ to be so recognized would become a registered voter through that association during the later general election at the polling station nearest their residence.  If none of the organizations given a ‘grade’ of Acceptable or above by a citizen becomes an ‘association’ in this way, that citizen would instead automatically become a registered voter through the geographically defined ‘association’ in which they reside (i.e. their local electoral district).  The same would be true for any registered voter who did not participate in the primary.



Again, these EAPR “associations” would be composed of all the most valued organizations that had received at least the above threshold (1/80) of the registered voters in California) giving them their highest available evaluations. The primary’s discovery of these associations would start by counting only the number of Excellents received by each applicant organization.   If a voter has given more than one organization the same relevant evaluation, her evaluation will be added only to the organization whose total of evaluations would consequently be greater than the other organization(s) so graded at that stage of the count.  Any organization receiving the largest number of Excellents at or above the threshold number would be the first association to be discovered.  Again, each citizen who had evaluated this organization as Excellent would become a registered voter through this association during the later general election but still voting at their local polling station.  The total number of evaluations received by each association would help to determine the number of Members which must be elected later in the general election to represent it in the Assembly, e.g. an association receiving 1/80 would elect at least one Member, an association receiving 2/80 would elect at least two.  See the Endnote for more details.



For the discovery of each succeeding association, one by one, all the remaining evaluations given to all the remaining applicant organizations by each citizen who had already become a registered voter through one of the previously discovered associations would not be used to help discover any other association.  This guarantees that each citizen’s one vote in the primary will count only once, i.e. for the association in which they become a registered voter.  Consequently, the second association to be discovered would be the one, if any, which had received the next highest number of Excellents at or above the threshold.  Similarly, any other organizations who had received at least the threshold of the remaining Excellents would also be one of this first group of associations to be discovered.  The second group of associations to be discovered would be composed of all those remaining organizations that had received at least the threshold but only by also adding all the remaining Very Goods they had received.  Similarly, the third group would be composed of all the other organizations that had received at least the threshold but only by also adding all the remaining Goods they had received.  Again similarly, the fourth group would be composed of all the other organizations that had received at least the threshold but only by also adding all the remaining Acceptables they had received.



Any citizens who had not yet become a registered voter for the general election through one of these associations as a result of the above counts would now be added to one of these if they had given it at least an evaluation of Acceptable.  However, if none of their evaluations would allow them to become a registered voter in this way, they would instead automatically become a registered voter through their local electoral district (the geographically defined ‘association’ in which they reside).



During the later general election of the Members of the Assembly, each citizen would be asked to evaluate as many of the candidates in the state as they might wish, i.e. giving each, one of the above ‘grades’.  Any candidate not marked by a voter would be counted as Rejected by that voter.  Similar to the count in EARP’s primary, the first candidate in the state to be elected to the Assembly would be the one, if any, who had received the highest number of Excellents above or at the threshold, i.e. at least 1/80 of all citizens in the state who have voted.  If a voter has given more than one candidate the same relevant evaluation, her evaluation will be added only to the candidate whose total of evaluations would consequently be greater at that stage of the count than the other candidates she has given the same ‘graded’.  Equally, to honor the principle of one-person-one-vote, all the evaluations given to other candidates by voters who have already helped to elect an earlier candidate would play no part in electing any later candidate.  For the same reason, each elected candidate would have a ‘weighted vote’ in the legislature exactly equal to the number of citizens who had helped to elect them.  In this way, it will be seen that each EAPR citizen can guarantee that her one vote will continue fully to count in the deliberations of the Assembly.  To avoid the possibility of any one Member being in a position to dictate to the Assembly, any Member who might have received more than 10% of all the votes in the Assembly, must publically and non-returnably transfer her extra votes to the ‘weighted votes’’ of one or more of her trusted fellow Members.



The second candidate to be elected would be the one, if any, who had received the next highest number of remaining Excellents above or equal to the threshold.  The next candidates to be chosen, one by one, would be the ones, if any, who had received the next highest number of remaining Excellents above or equal to the threshold.  This would compose the first group of candidates to be elected.   The second group of candidates to be chosen, one by one, would be the ones, if any, who had received the highest number of remaining evaluations above or equal to the threshold as a result of also adding all the remaining Very Goods, then Goods (the third group), and then Acceptables (the fourth group).  If the total number of winners within these four groups proved to be less than the required 80 (i.e. the exact number to be elected to represent each and all associations as previously determined by EAPR’s primary), the fifth and final group would be composed of the remaining number of Members required to complete this number, i.e. those most highly evaluated candidates but those who had not received at least the above threshold number of evaluations.  Still, each such Member would have only a ‘weighted vote’ in the Assembly exactly equal to the total number of evaluations from citizens used to elect them.



Finally, the vote of any citizen whose vote had not yet been counted toward the ‘weighted vote’ of an elected candidate as a result of any of the above counts would now be added if possible to the ‘weighted vote’ of the Member to whom she had given at least an evaluation of Acceptable.  However, if a citizen’s vote still could not be added in this way to the ‘weighted vote’ of one of the candidates who has already been elected, EAPR’s ballot allows a citizen to require the non-elected candidate to whom she had given her highest evaluation to transfer her one vote to the ‘weighted vote’ of the Member he believes is the one most qualified for the office.  In this way, each citizen can guarantee that their one vote will continue fully to count within the deliberations of the Assembly – no citizen’s vote need be wasted.  This is similar to GOLD in that each candidate must publish an evaluative list of other candidates.  This requires each such most evaluated but eliminated candidate to most accountably transfer his own collected votes to the Member valued most highly on his list.  If a voter had given more than one candidate her highest evaluation, the one that would pass her vote on in this way would be determined by lot.



Again, all the above counts must be interpreted so as to guarantee the election of the exact number of Members to represent each association in the Assembly as determined by the results of EAPR’s primary.



Consequently, I now see EARP as democratically superior to all other known methods because:

  1.  It prompts citizens firstly to consider what qualities that are ideally required of the office being sought.

  2.  By allowing citizens to express the full range of their evaluations of as many of the candidates as they might wish, this makes the results of EAPR likely to be more discerning and informative than those provided by any other method, including GOLD (e.g. FPTP, APPROVAL, SCORE (RANGE), Condorcet (e.g. MAXIMIZE AFFIRMED MAJORITIES (MAM)).

  3.  Also, unlike other multi-winner methods, EAPR allows each citizen to guarantee that his or her vote will continue fully to count quantitatively and qualitatively in the deliberations of their elected legislature.

  4.   In addition to the above advantages, ‘grading’ candidates being easier than ‘ranking’ them makes it more like that each voter will see EAPR as more user friendly than the ‘ranking’ methods (e.g. GOLD).

  5.  In particular, unlike GOLD and Single Transferrable Voting (STV), EAPR does not eliminate any candidate before all the winners have been discovered.

  6.  As contrasted to all other methods, EAPR provides fewer incentives and less scope for citizens to vote dishonestly (manipulatively, strategically, tactically, etc.).

  7.  Finally, EAPR’s ‘associational’ element automatically and entirely removes all of the anti-democratic features of gerrymandering and of safe-seats.

Endnote

When initially discovered, each ‘association’ would immediately know the minimum number of Members it would be allowed to elect, e.g. 2 if it had at least two 80ths of the nation’s registered voters, 3 if at least three 80ths, etc.  However, if together all these associations had not yet been authorized to elect all 80 Members on this basis, the remaining number needed to complete the 80 would be distributed between these associations as follows: One by one, the right to elect an additional representative would be given sequentially to the association that currently has the “highest remainder’’.  A ‘remainder’ here is the number of electors beyond the minimum required to allow an association to elect one, two, three, or x number of representatives, as previously explained.  The second additional representative would be added to the association with the second largest remainder, and so forth.  This adding process would continue until the exact number of representatives that each association would elect as its contribution to the 80 had been discovered.

What do you think?

Best Regards,

Steve



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