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<pre>I'd said:<br><br>><i> No, the question of secret ballot isn't a problem. Your voter ID number is<br></i>><i> anonymous. No one knows what person has what voter ID number. Yes, the system <br></i>><i> knows if you designate a proxy, but it only knows that the person with that _number_<br></i>><i> designated a particular proxy. It doesn't know the name of the person who voted<br></i>><i> a certain way or designated a certain other voter ID number as proxy. Of course neither<br></i>><i> does it know who has that number that you designate as proxy.<br></i><br>How are you supposed to know who you're subscribing to (and thus the<br>trust you put in him) if you don't know who he is? You would have to<br>know the mapping between a person (say a candidate of the party in<br>question) and his ID (which you'd need to <a href="http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2011-December/029353.html#" style="text-decoration: underline;" id="_GPLITA_3" title="Powered by Text-Enhance">subscribe</a>).<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Ok, I misleadingly said, in your quote above "No one knows what person has what voter ID number."<br><br>But, and I said this in previous text, of course you know who your proxy is, what<br>person s/he is, by name. How do you find out hir anonymous voter ID number? S/he<br>tells you, after you ask hir.<br><br>As I said before, that isn't a serious breach of anonynimity: Even now, you don't<br>keep your voting secret from family and best friends. Nor does any kind of representative<br>maintain representation anonymity.<br><br>But your proxy needn't share hir voter ID number with anyone other than those using hir as<br>proxy. The system doesn't know hir voter ID number, or what person has the voter ID number<br>which you've designated as proxy.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>The proxy could get around this by only giving his ID to the people he<br>trusted<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Exactly. Or at least only to those using hir as proxy.<br><br>, but then the proxy would have to balance between the concerns <br>of the additional votes he might get by saying "I'm 327923007, subscribe <br>to me if you like my opinions"<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Sure. Someone could advertise, publicly or within a party or organization, in<br>the manner you describe. <br><br>You continued:<br><br>, and the attack resistance he gets by not <br>saying anything.<br><br>There's no reason why your uncle should have to publicly advertise his<br>voter ID number, or tell it to anyone other than the few family-<br>members who use him as proxy.<br><br><br>><i> The ballot is entirely secret.<br></i><br>I'll <a href="http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2011-December/029353.html#" style="text-decoration: underline;" id="_GPLITA_1" title="Powered by Text-Enhance">grant</a> that it is if you're not a proxy. It's easy to make a system <br>that is proxylike<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Proxy DD isn't "proxylike". It's proxy.<br><br> yet secret for non-proxies<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Proxy DD is entirely secret for non-proxies.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>: just have a traditional <br>secret ballot where the proxies simply give suggestions the voter can <br>follow (or not).<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>For one thing, Proxy DD already has those desired properties<br>you stated.<br><br>And the system you describe above is little if any different<br>from Proxy DD. The following-of-advice is automated, because the<br>voter has so designated. And you can depart from the "advice"<br>whenever you want to, because the proxy designation only applies<br>to issues or questions on which you don't vote.<br><br><br>><i> You continued:<br></i>><i> <br></i>>><i> You would <br></i>>><i> want a proxy with lots of <a href="http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2011-December/029353.html#" style="text-decoration: underline;" id="_GPLITA_2" title="Powered by Text-Enhance">power</a> to be accountable<br></i>><i> <br></i>><i> [endquote]<br></i>><i> <br></i>><i> Accountable to whom? When designating the proxy, you do so because you agree with hir,<br></i>><i> and are willing for hir to vote for you on everything on which you don't vote.<br></i><br>Accountable to the people, in the same way that a politician is. <br><br>[endquote]<br><br>There is no reason why the proxy should be accountable to anyone other than those<br>who use hir as proxy.<br><br>Unlike the politician, the proxy has no incentive to try to please everyone. S/he<br>votes as s/he believes in, and invites others to follow hir vote on issues on which<br>they don't, themselves, vote. But the proxy needn't invite you to designate hir. Maybe<br>you approached and asked hir.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>The <br>usual argument for transparency at the high end is that the principals <br>(the people) should know what the agents (the representatives) are <br>doing, so a voter can vote for someone else if his representative fails <br>to follow up on election promises, or reverses position for personal gain.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>That's why I said that there's no reason why the voter couldn't request that <br>the voting record of a certain proxy voter ID be posted in some publicy-<br>accessible web location.<br><br>But, also, of course your proxy can be someone whose views you know, and whom<br>you trust.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>Ideally, if we follow this reasoning, the proxy should be accountable to <br>those who give him power in proportion to how much power they give him, <br><br>[endquote]<br><br>The number of people who can check on hir voting record is equal to<br>the number who use hir as proxy.<br><br>You continue:<br><br>so that in the long run, the subscriber's ability to correct the proxy <br>is no more and no less than if he decided to vote by himself.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Do you really want to try to correct hir? Just say:<br><br>"Uncle George, I don't agree with your new views, and so I'm<br>going to stop using you as proxy."<br><br>You have no right to ask him to change his voting for you.<br><br>You can always find someone whose views you do agree with. Of<br>course if there's no one with whom you agree, then you shouldn't<br>designate a proxy.<br><br>Proxy democracy has a more fine-grained feedback mechanism. However, it <br>can't draw a line between "has power enough to be open to scrutiny" and <br>"doesn't have enough power to be open to scrutiny" <br><br>[endquote]<br><br>How so?? As I said, your proxy's voting is open to your scrutiny. You know<br>hir anonymous voter ID number. You can request that the voting of that<br>voter ID number be posted at a publicly accessible website, automated<br>phone number, etc. <br><br>Every proxy's voting is open to scrutiny by those who use hir as proxy.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>beyond just the <br>voter/proxy dichotomy. There isn't such a line, even: proxies come in <br>all magnitudes of power.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>And, for all of them, their voting is open to scrutiny by those using<br>them as proxies.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>So this may keep people from supporting proxy democracy, because the <br>degree to which your actions are made (or can be made) public as soon as <br>you're a proxy is out of proportion to how much power you wield. <br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Not so. The more people using you as proxy, the more people can check on<br>your voting.<br><br>When they request such a check, your voting record is posted somewhere<br>public, accessbie to all. The number of people who know your voter ID<br>and who will thereby know how you voted is equal to the number of people<br>using you as proxy (because they're the same people).<br><br>But I hope that you're not saying that you think that the proxy's voting<br>record should be made available to the entire general public, including<br>the millions of people who haven't designated hir as proxy. <br><br>No one other than those using hir as proxy have any reason or right to<br>know hir voting record. Of course s/he could voluntarily describe it to<br>prospective proxy-users, family-members or best friends, even if they<br>haven't designated hir as proxy.<br><br><br><br>(At <br>least ordinary voters have privacy, so it's not as bad as I thought.)<br><br>><i> I hadn't considered this matter before, but, in order for the system to know how your proxy<br></i>><i> voted, of course you must designate hir by number. But then you know the voter I.D. number of<br></i>><i> a voter (your proxy), so hir secret-ballot is no longer secret. But that isn't as bad as it<br></i>><i> might at first sound: Have you ever told anyone how you voted. Your electoral system may have<br></i>><i> a secret ballot, but you probably don't keep your voting or your political opinions secret from<br></i>><i> your best friends and relatives.<br></i><br>Sure, I have told people how I voted, but they have no way to verify <br>that I'm actually telling the truth. Were I in the United States, I <br>could choose to tell my family that I voted, say, Democratic. I could <br>also lie. If my family was of the religious right and I wasn't, I might <br>feel forced to say Republican even when I voted differently. Similarly, <br>I might not want to be a liberal proxy in a very conservative town, <br>unless I could somehow shield from the conservatives that I was a <br>liberal proxy.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>You're asking the impossible. You want accountability to proxy-users, and also secrecy.<br><br>Representatives should be accountable to those they represent. If you live in a<br>Republican town and vote Democrat, and if it's paramount that it not get around town that you're<br>a Democrat, then don't be a proxy. Don't give anyone your voter ID number. <br>Someone who uses you as proxy might let slip that you're a Democrat.<br><br>Speaking for myself, as a progressive, I don't publicly broadcast my non-Republican opinions, <br>or antagonize people or start arguments; but neither do I keep them secret if asked. <br>I'd be willing to be a proxy for a few friends and family.<br><br>><i> As for accountability, since it was necessary to designate your proxy by number, and since the system<br></i>><i> knows how each number voted, then it could be allowed for you to inquire about how your proxy<br></i>><i> voted on a particular issue. You don't name hir by name. You can't do that for any voter ID number--<br></i>><i> only one that is your proxy. Of course you don't make the inquiry under your name, but only via <br></i>><i> your number. Then, the vote of that proxy is posted somewhere, where you can read it anonymously.<br></i><br>You continued:<br><br>I could see two sorts of proxy structure. I don't know which is the one <br>in your system.<br><br>In the first one, you have a broadcast system. Every proxy makes his <br>suggestions public and then anybody who wants to copy the decisions. <br>Obviously, proxy suggestions are visible to everybody here.<br><br>In the second one, you have a subscription model. Voters subscribe to <br>the proxy's list and get proxy suggestions in return. If computerized, <br>their software copies these suggestions to their own direct democracy <br>response queue - so the subscribers automatically copy the proxy <br>decisions.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>That's the one, the 2nd one.<br><br><br>You continued:<br><br>The proxies can't actually know that the subscribers do copy <br>their suggestions, though.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Correct. The proxy has no way of knowing when you do your own voting<br>on an issue or question, and when you let your vote follow hirs.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>Either arrangement makes it impossible for third parties to know who are<br>subscribing to a particular proxy. If the system is of a broadcast <br>nature (one-to-many), then the proxy can't know how popular he is, <br>either; but if it's like a mailing list, the proxy would know who are <br>subscribing to him.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>You continued:<br><br>It's the latter. The proxy knows to how many people s/he has given<br>hir voter ID number.<br><br>In any case, the suggestions would be informal. If they are formal <br>(binding), then vote-buyers could buy votes by telling the voter to <br>become a proxy of one, to whom one of the vote-buyers subscribe to <br>verify that the "proxy" votes as desired.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>I suppose that you could prove to the votebuyer that you've subscribed<br>to a proxy, by showing hir that you know the proxy's voter ID. But<br>that only proves that you _have_ subscribed to that proxy. <br><br>It's probably possible to have a system in which there's no way to<br>prove to a votebuyer that you're currently subscribed to a particular<br>proxy.<br><br>In any case, as you said, there's also no way s/he can check up on<br>whether you've done your own voting on an issue, unless s/he is looking<br>over your shoulder when you vote. I suppose if s/he offered a voter enough<br>money, the voter would allow that--something that s/he couldn't do in<br>a public voting-booth. <br><br>...But that wouldn't do the votebuyer any good,<br>if there's no way that you can prove to hir who your _current_ proxy<br>is, or even if you currently have one.<br><br>So vote-buying doesn't seem a problem.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>You could demand public ballots, but with voter IDs rather than voter <br>names -- but then it would only take one slip to link ID to name. Unless <br>the voter IDs changed regularly, everybody who were a public ("subscribe <br>to me, I'm xyz") proxy at some time would have his identity revealed, <br>and other identities could probably be narrowed down by analysis of <br>election responses. If the elections are sufficiently frequent, buyers <br>could tell sellers to vote this way on some minor question, then that <br>way on another minor question, and so on to lock on to the name-ID <br>relation through its "votes-over-time signature", and then start buying.<br><br>I don't suggest public ballots, even for voter ID numbers. I only suggest that<br>a proxy-user be able to request that hir proxy's voting record be publicly<br>posted.<br><br><br>><i> Anyway, your proxy may or may not have lots of power. It might just be your spouse, who isn't anyone's<br></i>><i> proxy but yours. And if you don't trust your political party or your candidate enough to choose them as<br></i>><i> your proxy, then you might want to reconsider about whether you want to vote for that party's candidates.<br></i><br>That would work for a small scale private proxy. A large scale proxy <br>would be visible by his actions<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>...only to hir proxy-users. Maybe one of them would tell others, of course.<br><br>You continued:<br><br> (though that's what we want), as would a <br>public proxy. Would you say this is a tradeoff a proxy has to make <br>anyway? That is, either to be public and thus accept potentially more <br>voters, but open oneself to vote coercion/bribery - or to be private and <br>secure?<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Yes. Of course anyone who is the proxy of very many people could be offered bribes.<br>You just have to hope that, for instance, your political party-leaders<br>value principle and honesty too much to accept bribes. Otherwise, don't designate them as<br>proxy. But, as I said, if you don't trust your party leaders and candidates, then they shouldn't be your party.<br><br>Another thing--Bribery wouldn't be so tempting if, for a change, it were prosecuted as the serious crime that<br>it is, with bribe-takers and bribe-givers getting the long <br>(preferably mandatory life-term with no parole) prison sentences that they<br>deserve. And not a "country-club" prison. White-collar criminals shouldn't have their own separate prison<br>or building-wing or conditions distinct from those that house the other criminals.<br><i><br></i>You continued:<br><br>You'd need to have serious crypto to make the proxy not know what voters<br>are subscribed to him<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Well, my suggestion was that the proxy give hir voter ID to those who want to use hir<br>as proxy. I suppose maybe a system could be devised so that a certain kind of proxy<br>wouldn't know his clients, but I've never considered that necessary.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>, the voters not know how the proxy voted,<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>In my suggestion, the voters could request that the voting record of<br>a certain proxy voter ID be publicly posted.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>Even if you could, that would cut the feedback that lets the subscribers <br>know if the proxy can still be trusted. <br><br>[endquote]<br><br>That's why I suggest letting proxy-users request that a certain proxy<br>voter ID's voting record be publicly posted.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>I don't think the problem (or <br>difficult part) is that the proxy system is everywhere too transparent <br>as much as that it's trying to span a wide range of influence with the <br>same amount of transparency. Representative democracy has two sets: the <br>voter, where the vote is private, and the representative, where the vote <br>is public.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>The proxy's voting record could be available to hir proxy-users<br>when the request that a certain proxy voter ID's voting record<br>be publicly posted.<br><br>But there's no reason for the proxy's voting record, by name, to be<br>available to anyone else (unless of course one of hir proxy-users<br>blabs).<br><br><br><br><br></pre> </div></body>
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