[EM] Stop Wasting Citizens’ Votes

[steve bosworth]

SUBJECT: Stop Wasting Citizens’ Votes

TO: All

FROM: Steve

Needlessly wasting citizens’ votes is one of the many imperfections that we can observe in all states currently claiming to be democracies. All the voting systems used sometimes waste more than 50% of the votes cast by citizens. As a result, my co-authors and I have developed a new voting method for electing legislative bodies -- evaluative proportional representation (EPR). We would very much welcome you all to test the following revolutionary claims we make for EPR: it is democratically superior to every existing voting method because it wastes no citizen's vote, and allows citizens to express their judgments more meaningfully.

How to Stop Wasting Citizens’ Votes

Like most elections of legislative bodies in the world, the election of the city council of Santa Cruz California needlessly wastes many citizens’ votes. For example, its seven-member council was elected in 2018 and 2020 only by 46% of all citizens’ votes cast, so 54% of the voters are not represented in the council. This means that any 4-to-3 majority decision in this council is only supported by a 26% minority of all the votes cast. This is not majority rule.

All this waste and violation of the principle of majority rule can be removed with the help of a law like California’s Voting Rights Act (CVRA). The CVRA aims to reduce, as much as possible, the number of votes wasted or “diluted.” It requires elections to give “members of the electorate” an equal “opportunity ... to … elect representatives of their choice” (52 USC 10301) –- including “voters who are members of a protected class” (CVRA 14027) – minorities of color or with a different first language.

The key flaw in the traditional method for electing this council, and most legislative bodies in the world, is that each citizen is allowed only to vote for the number of candidates equal to the number of vacancies available. This is called “plurality” voting because a single winner is the candidate who receives the largest number of votes – sometimes less than half the votes cast. This is illustrated by candidate C being elected if candidates A, B, and C receive 33%, 33%, and 34% respectively – 66% of the voters feel disenfranchised. While the Santa Cruz council was elected at large, the above illustrates why similar percentages of votes are frequently wasted when each member of a council is elected by plurality voting from a different district of the city.

In contrast, no citizen’s vote would be wasted if the council were instead elected at-large by the new voting method called evaluative proportional representation (EPR). EPR invites each citizen to grade the suitability for office of at least one candidate as either Excellent, Very Good, Good, or Acceptable. The same grade can be awarded to more than one candidate. Each ballot is counted to guarantee that its one vote is added to the elected candidate who received its "highest possible grade". The following paragraphs explain this more fully and briefly describe how your EPR vote would be counted:

Evaluative Proportional Representation

EPR invites you to vote most expressively by grading at least one candidate’s suitability for office as either Excellent, Very Good, Good, or Acceptable. You can grade Poor or Reject for any candidates you find unacceptable to hold office. You can award the same grade to more than one candidate. You are guaranteed that your one EPR vote of at least Acceptable will quantitatively increase the voting power (weighted vote) in the council of the elected candidate who you awarded the “highest possible grade” on your ballot as discovered according to the rules of EPR’s count.

How EPR Counts Grades

For an EPR at-large election of a seven-member council, each of the seven elected candidates must have received one of the seven largest numbers of grades of at least Acceptable from all the ballots cast. Your vote and every other citizen’s vote are added to one of the different weighted votes that will be held by one of the elected members of the council. The council represents 100% of the votes cast – no vote is wasted or “diluted.”

Except in two circumstances, your one vote adds to the weighted vote in the council of the highest-graded candidate on your ballot. If you awarded this highest grade to more than one candidate, it is exclusively added to the candidate who will have the largest number of these grades as a result. This is justified by the democratic assumption that, other things being equal, the candidate with a larger number of votes is probably better.

The first exception is when that candidate has received too few grades of at least Acceptable from all the ballots cast to be elected. In this event, your ballot is automatically transferred to the candidate on your ballot to whom you awarded your remaining highest grade. If no such eligible candidate is graded on your ballot, your ballot automatically becomes your proxy vote. This proxy is finally added to the weighted vote of the winner publicly judged by your highest-graded candidate to be most fit for office. You can prohibit this use of your proxy vote by specifying this on your ballot.

The second exception can result from your highest-graded candidate having received too many highest grades from all the ballots cast. To avoid the remote but anti-democratic possibility of an elected candidate being able to dictate to the council by retaining more than 50% of all the weighted votes in the council, the EPR algorithm does not allow a member to retain more than 20% of all the votes cast. This requires at least three members to agree before any majority decision can be made in the council. If the candidate to whom you gave your highest grade received more than 20% of the votes, your ballot could be selected by lot as one of the surplus ballots to be automatically transferred to the remaining highest-graded candidate on your ballot. If no such eligible candidate is graded on your ballot, your ballot automatically becomes your proxy vote and is transferred to the weighted vote of one of the winners as described earlier. As a result, your EPR vote equally adds to the weighted vote of the winner who finally receives your highest grade, remaining highest grade, or proxy vote – the winner you see as likely to represent your hopes and concerns most faithfully. As a result, each EPR council member has a different weighted vote in the council, exactly equal to the total number of ballots counted for them.

Also note that EPR is democratically superior to the more well-known alternative to plurality voting: single transferable voting (STV, also called proportional rank choice voting (RCV) – Voting System (2019). An STV at-large, seven-member council would be elected by about 88% of votes cast while wasting about 12%. Its 4-to-3 majority would be supported by about 50% of these votes. In contrast, an EPR council would be elected by 100% of all such votes, and its 4-to-3 council majority would be supported by 56% of all citizens’ votes cast.

Moreover, EPR is democratically superior to STV because it allows citizens to express their different judgments about each of the candidates more meaningfully and informatively than the existing plurality marks or STV preferences can. This advantage is also amplified by the fact that it enables analysts of each EPR post-election report most comprehensively to inform every citizen about the number and ordinal intensity with which each of the many different agendas is being pursued in their society.

Only if a legislative body is elected by EPR, will each citizen's vote continue really to count in a higher quality assembly, one most likely to make decisions only after discussions and debates between each of the different perspectives proportionally represented by each member.

Stephen Bosworth (Ph.D.) welcomes your questions and feedback: stevebosworth at hotmail.com.

Reference

Bosworth, S.C., Corr, A., Leonard, S. (January 2020). <https://www.jpolrisk.com/Elected-by-evaluative-proportional-representation-epr-an-algorithm-v3/> Legislatures Elected by Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR): An Algorithm. <https://www.jpolrisk.com/Elected-by-evaluative-proportional-representation-epr-an-algorithm-v3/> Journal of Political Risk.<https://www.jpolrisk.com/Elected-by-evaluative-proportional-representation-epr-an-algorithm-v3/>Retrieved from:<https://www.jpolrisk.com/Elected-by-evaluative-proportional-representation-epr-an-algorithm-v3/>https://www.jpolrisk.com/Elected-by-evaluative-proportional-representation-epr-an-algorithm-v3/.

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