At 07:34 AM 3/30/2006, James Green-Armytage wrote: > Overall, I'll say that delegable proxy, or indeed anything > approaching >direct democracy, is not a very natural fit with very strong >confidentiality. Perhaps accommodations can be made to provide this, but >the system probably works best in a society where this kind of >intimidation is not a major problem.
This is one of the reasons for my proposal to start DP (Delegable Proxy) with NGOs, and in particular with Free Associations, which, as I define the term, implies no collection of central power beyond the power to persuade by generating consensus (which can be very powerful indeed, but which is not necessarily centralized); so it is relatively safe. This is possible in any reasonably free society; indeed, it is my opinion that it is possible in China now, immediately, for another major aspect of FAs is that they don't take positions on issues of controversy. So an FA would *not*, as an organization, take any position likely to offend the dragon. Instead, it would work *with* the dragon, it would simply be patriotic citizens, for the most part, communicating and cooperating toward a better China. So far, I've seen no sign that the central power in China wants to discourage such communication; it simply wants to avoid the chaos of uncontrolled mob power, it was quite frightened by Tiananmen Square. (And I don't know how much the readers of this list know about that event: there really was a massive rebellion of the citizens of Beijing, and it took bringing in troops from other areas of China *who did not speak the local language* to quell it. Local troops sympathized with the workers, as one might expect in a Communist country!) It is my opinion that DP organizations will select for trustworthiness and that such organizations will be quite capable of dealing with local conditions and all the necessary subtleties. They really will create democracy without offending the dragon. But, of course, it is for the Chinese to work all this out. I'm working on FA/DP here in the United States and for the English-speaking community. Direct democracy, in the past, has required open participation. I've not seen a town convert from town meeting to elected mayor-council based on fear of intimidation. Rather the reason is that the meetings have become tedious and tendentious, and mayor-council is perceived as more efficient. As it is, compared to raw direct democracy without proxy voting and without appropriate participation rules. Given that proxy representation is a common-law right, it is amazing to me that I find no historical record of attempts to apply it to government in a direct democracy. Proxy representation *is* used, for example, in the New York legislature, where representatives may cast votes in committee by proxy, if I've got it right. I'm not convinced that that application is a fair test of proxy representation, it is happening at a high level in a fairly dysfunctional system, in my opinion, that leaves most people unrepresented. Anyway, I think we need to test DP in NGOs before we can seriously propose it for governmental use. Fortunately, this is easy, at least in theory. In fact, it is quite hard to get people to try it. Why? I have my theory: it is a variation of what I called, in the past, the "Lomax effect," more descriptively "the persistence of inequities" effect. If a power structure is inequitable in some way, restoring it to equity will remove power from those who currently enjoy excess power. They will see this as a threat and will act to prevent it from happening. And, by the terms of the problem, they have excess power. It takes no evil conspiracy to explain this. Have you ever noticed that those who are active and hold positions in an organization often believe that they know and understand more about how the organization should function than do the rank-and-file? I have seen again and again such people fear that if the rank-and-file gain power, they will ruin everything. And indeed they might. Which is why power shifts must be done very, very carefully. Delegable Proxy is a specific answer to this problem, by concentrating trustworthiness. It is representative democracy without elections, but through free choice. It is a solution to the problem of scale in democracy. If it is first implemented in FAs, the problems of corruption, as one example sometimes raised as an objection to DP, do not have to be addressed until a time when we know much more about how DP will actually work. > Also note that there is sometime a tradeoff between > confidentiality and >the transparency, or integrity, of the process. When information about who >voted for whom is not available, it becomes harder to verify that the >final count is correct. Absolutely. In an open DP system, with an open assignment list, anyone can at any time analyze the structure and verify vote counts. However, DP with base-level secret ballot can be pretty safe and almost as good. To understand this, I think we have to look at exactly what is and what is not dangerous, and what risks can be, and routinely are, accepted in secret-ballot systems. In particular, we have no problem with identifying the members, for example, of a city council. Yet these are the people who are actually voting on matters of substance, who, one might think, would be most vulnerable to pressure. But they are not, of course, for a simple reason: there are a relatively small number of them, so police protection can be provided for them at an affordable cost. You could not provide this level of protection for someone who only represents a few neighbors, nor for individual voters. So the solution is fairly simple: a governmental DP system under difficult conditions would be secret ballot until a certain number of votes have been collected. Essentially, the secret ballot system would function in a hidden way until it collects enough votes to qualify a candidate for open identification. Yes, this requires a trusted mechanism. A trusted mechanism is essential to secret ballot, if it is not to be merely one way in which a dictatorship pretends to have the support of the people. Consider Iraq. Those who actually have power there, I will not presume to name them, if they are interested in democracy, could set up a system where every citizen is invited to name a proxy, the person they most trust. This would be done secretly and privately, and in the process the citizen would be asked if they were being coerced. If they were being coerced, their vote would be discounted, but not in a way that could let it be traced back to them. I won't give details, it can be done, such that, if people trust that they will not be betrayed, the vote counts will not betray them individually, and would only indicate to a coercer that something went wrong. And, of course, with a high level of credible reports of coercion, that coercer might be arrested.... Such a single assigment can create loops, but a community, understanding this, can decide to give enough votes to at least one rep to put that rep over the participation threshold for the open level. The point of such a secret-ballot designation is that it would select a representative who actually did represent a significant constituency. He would largely know who they are, not in specific detail, but he would be local and would generally be relatively accessible (though, once elected, security concerns might make him much less accessible). And then the rest of the system functions openly. Iraq is a tribal society, largely, and so what we would see at a high level would largely be tribal representatives, but chosen freely by their communities, rather than through pure power and intimidation (as well as more legitimate tradition and respect). The key to delegable proxy is that it brings everyone to the table. In open DP, it is literally everyone who cares at all to participate. (My own proposals would allow direct voting at any level, but not direct full participation: the right to take up everyone's time must be limited in a large organization, or it breaks down. That's what happens at Town Meeting as the town grows.) > Variation 1: If you do not choose the secret ballot option > (mentioned in >the proposal linked to above), then your choice of proxy is recorded on a >public list, which you or anyone else can view at will. As you have realized, this is transparent to a coercer, who will simply require that the voter elect to be open. If you need secrecy, and you need a simple system, it must be secret for everyone *except* for people whom the society can afford to protect. Which means a relative few under difficult conditions. Under good conditions, coercion has become rare enough that police resources can be brought to bear on the few exception. I don't think, for example, that there would be any significant problem with open DP in the U.S. It is enough that extortion is illegal. Someone trying to coerce a voter would be taking a huge risk, for a very small gain. One vote is just one vote. And if you try to coerce thousands of votes, discovery becomes practically inevitable. But, again, we can find out. We don't have to jump off the cliff. We can do it outside of government. > Variation 2: Base level voters can choose between secret ballot (no >direct vote option), having their vote listed publicly, or having their >vote known by the election authority but not listed publicly. Proxies must >have their votes listed publicly. > Drawbacks >* Doesn't really solve the problem of people being pressured to vote for a >particular candidate. Yes. This leaves the same problem in place. Direct vote, in my view, is desirable but not essential. It is enough that relatively low-level proxies have direct voting privileges. The people in general will have good access to those people, because they will not represent many. Through them the people will have access to the top level. Yes, blocks of opinion below a threshold will be off the radar. But a society which needs secret assignments has much more serious and urgent problems to deal with. It's enough, under those conditions, that every major group be represented proportionally. Asset Voting, by the way, accomplishes much the same thing, producing a peer assembly. Ultimately, though, I think DP is simpler, and would transition quite easily into full, open DP. Which is much, much more than an election method. > Variation 3: As long as you do not declare yourself as a proxy, the >identity of your proxy is known to the election authority, but it is not >publicly available. You can request a paper receipt for your proxy >delegation, should you be unsure that your vote is being recorded >accurately. And, as you went on to note, this does not solve the secrecy problem, for several reasons. If you request a receipt, you can then prove that you voted as demanded. It must be impossible for you to prove that, or small-scale coercion can work. Essentially, all secret-ballot designations must be secret, and everyone must designate by secret ballot. Secret-ballot DP elects representatives, it cannot be ongoing. However, those representatives will ideally be serving on a relatively small scale; the number of votes they have received will be public record, but not who gave them those votes, and their subsequent choice of proxy will be public. And changeable at will. It is a direct democracy of those elected in the first round. Simple open DP is *much* more straightforward. I think it has implications that few, so far, have noticed, though I keep harping away at them.... >Drawbacks: >* Although the information about base level is not officially public, it >is known, and thus can potentially be leaked. The problem only exists if you want to have specific interactivity between base-level voters and the proxies they choose, and if you want to allow direct voting on issues. Clearly, if you allow direct voting, you would need to know who chose whom, so that the votes would not be counted twice for some. Direct voting as a routine matter, on all issues, which would be one possible solution, with the proxies only serving to negotiate consensus, is a possible solution, but it does require frequent voting with everyone participating, which, in my view, is largely impractical and even inadvisable, for reasons that I don't think I have to elaborate. >* It is still possible for someone to put pressure on you to declare >yourself as a proxy, and thus make your delegation a matter of public >record. Those who act, subsequent to the secret ballot, must be willing to be public, and perhaps should be declared candidates. But that they are willing to be public should not be enough for their identities to be confirmed by the voting agency. All that will be announced by the agency is the identity of those receiving a threshold level of votes, and the number of votes they received. In one implementation, even the agency would not know who actually voted. So pressure on a voter to declare consent to serve will not be sufficient to make that voter's actions visible. The voter would have to actually *receive* the required votes, and since the ballots would be secret and thus presumably not coerced, what would have happened is that the coercer would simply have created a candidate with votes. Coercion is not necessary for that! However, there is one problem, which is loops. In standard DP, loops are easy to deal with. It is commonly overlooked that loops in full DP are necessary, for if everyone designates a proxy, then a top-ranked proxy designates someone of a lower rank. The relationships could get quite complex; but what has happened in this case is simply that a top "official" has designated a stand-in, to serve in his absence, which is what a proxy is, anyway. But in secret ballot DP, how could we deal with "wasted votes"? i.e., votes that do not end up being assigned to a candidate with sufficient votes to be identified publicaly and to act at a higher level. In open DP, one simply informs those "trapped" in such a loop. Any member of the loop may break or at least enlarge it by designating someone outside the loop. Loops are harmful only when they result in lack of representation, which is much less of a problem in open DP because all can review the record and vote directly, and it is simple to join a proxy group by designating the proxy. (Actually, in the FA/DP implementations I'm working on, proxies must be *accepted* to be effective. A proxy is like a professional, and the constituents are like clients. Indeed, I'm coming to use the word "client" for the one who is served by a proxy. Anyway, it may not be so easy to just grab a proxy when needed. The proxy must agree to serve, and service means much more than voting.) > Comments: Perhaps this is what Abd had in mind? Seems like > a reasonable >compromise if there is some worry about coercion, but not an intense >amount of worry. I think it is easy to adjust the level of secrecy to the need. FA/DP implementations will almost certainly not require secrecy, though, paradoxically, secrecy becomes much easier to obtain with little or no harm. This is because FAs don't really make binding decisions; for FAs, what is important is communication and measurement of consensus, and when you are trying to measure consensus, a few votes here or there don't really matter. And even if someone fakes a whole slew of votes, even a *majority* of votes, they end up with a handful of straw, because nobody will actually salute the flag they raise. FAs don't collect power to be grabbed through fraud. Rather, they communicate, and someone who creates a whole fake caucus in an FA in order to appear strong will be spending tremendous effort for a tiny gain, if any gain at all. So participants in FAs can be anonymous. The proof that one is not dealing with an illusion of a large number of people will come when a caucus has gathered the support of supposedly 10,000 people to contribute to a PAC, with polls indicating they will contribute an average of $50 each. And what actually shows up at the PAC is what the fraud behind the show can afford to personally contribute.... FAs do not leverage power, which is where they differ radically from traditional organizations, and which is why they may be able to accomplish things that have so far eluded us. The power remains with the people, until they individually choose to collect it and apply it for a specific purpose. That purpose may create a traditional board-controlled organization with a charter as chosen and supported by the voluntary donations. And there is a whole history behind this, it does work, quite well. >[...] > Variation 5: Non-proxy voters vote by strictly secret ballot, thus >ensuring anonymity, but also losing their ability to cast direct votes. >(If it isn't known who your proxy is, then your vote can't be subtracted >from his usual total if you vote directly, and thus direct voting can't >work.) Exactly. > Drawbacks: >* Direct voting can't work >* It is still possible to pressure someone into declaring themselves as a >proxy and voting for the favored candidate. Not if the declaration alone is not sufficient to allow participation uplevel. The wasted-vote problem does exist, possibly, but there are ways around that, which can get more complex; again, I won't get into it now. The major thing to realize is that secrecy is not a normal condition. It is only necessary under circumstances of great instability and the breakdown of the social fabric, where lawlessness is rampant. We institutionalized the secret ballot, and I suspect it has been useful, but I have never heard of an attempt at vote coercion at a Town Meeting. I've never seen a recorded vote at Town Meeting, but anyone who cares can see how people vote. Cummington is a very liberal town; from what people say publicly, you'd never know that Bush got one-third of the vote here. A town resolution to advise Massachusetts representatives to act to remove the national guard from Iraq passed with, I think, only one or two dissenting votes. I sensed no pressure at that meeting. But, then again, there may be subtle pressure. But there will always be subtle pressure, and periodic secret ballot validation of what is going on may well be advisable. Indeed, if FA/DP in Non-Governmental Organizations does what I expect it can and will do, the existing structure does not have to change at all. FA/DP will have organized the electorate, which can then manage the existing electoral structure. You can do practically anything you want if you can find consensus (including change the constitution, which really only takes a distributed plurality), and if it is working correctly, there is no harm in periodic secret ballots for the selection of officers. I'd expect them to rubber-stamp the extra-governmental consensus (or, if there is no consensus, to match quite closely the FA/DP poll results). If they did not, something is drastically wrong, and we'd be grateful to find out! (For close match with secret ballot, the FA/DP organization would require identity validation, which is relatively easy. We would know if it was necessary by such results. There would also be a skewing of ballot results from the difference between the FA voting body and the registered and actually voting public in the secret ballot, but that should be relatively easy to compensate for.) > Comments: I can't really recommend this, as the direct vote > option is one >of the major benefits of the system. Absolutely. Many critics of DP don't seem to get that what we are recommending is direct democracy, but with something added: the option to vote by proxy, plus, with DP, the routine delegability of such proxy assignments. Nobody has to exercise that option, but everyone who does so potentially gains flexibility and access. > Variation 6: Give up on delegable proxy altogether and just > use STV with >the entire nation as one district. > Comments: This, the actual legislators are the only people > whose votes >are formally recorded; hopefully at least the members of the legislature >can be protected from coercion! If not, then I guess the next step is just >to give up on democracy altogether, which resolves the problem by >realizing its worst consequence. Asset Voting accomplishes the creation of an almost perfectly proportional assembly, if the assembly is large enough. Asset Voting is really a variation on DP, creating a set of proxies who have equal voting power. I don't know what legal system we will end up with. It is enough for me that I can see how to create the structures that will allow us to manage the system. They do not have to be part of the legal structure, it is enough that the electorate be organized *outside* the legal structure, voluntarily, by free choice, without coercion of any kind, including the common coercion of "our way or the highway," that is, "agree with us or form your own damn organization," which is so difficult that most people will give up. (This is a form of the dictatorship of the majority, but it is not necessarily even the majority, merely the first to open shop.) But FA/DP, theoretically, should make it extremely easy to "form your own organization," while, at the same time, creating the potential of a superstructure that could negotiate broad consensus. And implement it. BeyondPolitics.org, an FA/DP organization dedicated to the development of FA/DP concepts and the facilitation of the use of these concepts by all kinds of peer associations. Wiki at http://beyondpolitics.org/wiki ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info