At 01:02 AM 3/30/2007, Dave Ketchum wrote: >On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 02:52:20 -0400 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: >>That's correct. What I'm suggesting is that voting rights >>immediately respond, but that deliberation rights float to some >>degree. You've travelled to the capital, you rented an apartment, >>and then somebody changes their proxy and you lose your seat? > > >The proposal here is that proxies become effective (both as to floor >rights and voting power) some time after filing - I suggest 10 >days. Thus you would know your future status for the next 10 days.
I'm going to imagine that we actually make decisions here, that we will vote on things. It can be a useful fiction. Or we can actually set up polls.... Okay, so Mr. Ketchum's motion is on the floor. It has not been seconded. Ignoring standard deliberative rules, I go ahead and propose an amendment, which is that proxy rights become effective immediately, and that floor rights depend on the rules established by the assembly. Might be 10 days, might be some other number. Because this is an online list, it is possible to have two motions on the floor at the same time, and to vote for both simultaneously. I'm not entirely comfortable with that, preferring the Condorcet-compatible standard deliberative process (which functions as a round-robin between alternate motions, through the amendment process). Mr. Ketchum seems to think that he can define "the proposal." Sure, he can define *his* proposal. We know that is what he has proposed, it has been clear from the moment he proposed it. He tends to object to suggestions for change as "not *the* proposal, which he has just done again here. Instead of debating the suggested changes. Once again, he has not given a reason for delaying voting right changes, beyond an assumption that voting rights and participation rights are rigidly and immediately connected. Yet he elsewhere allows the assumption of voting rights upon 10 day delay at reaching a specific vote level, with deliberation rights being assumed at double that vote level. In other words, he does separate voting rights from deliberation rights, using a fixed but different level of proxy counts for each. Having done that, the question is then why voting rights have any delay whatever. And he hasn't given one single reason for this, other than it is not "the proposal." Given that neither Ketchum's proposal and my own version have been seconded, the whole thing is moot. Until someone chimes in and says, I think "this" -- whichever one is preferred -- is a good idea, the best raised so far. Still, because I have another purpose here, which is to examine the issues around proxy democracy, something which has seen far too little discussion, I'm going ahead and commenting, understanding that all of this is dicta. >Now, if you were on the edge of losing your seat, renting an >apartment is a bit dumb. More profitable activities right now would be: > Campaign to round up some more proxies. > Concede that you do not have that much support from the voters > and give up. > Do a sideways proxy to give a legislator who shares most of > your goals your votes. But the conditions of the problem are that you *have* enough votes. You just obtained them. And it is becoming clear that "sideways proxy" means, simply, that you delegate your proxy. Since you aren't exercising the votes yourselves, I fail to see why this is different. Nor why it is called "sideways." It is upward, that is, it is a transfer of votes from one with fewer votes to one with more votes. Now, in Ketchum's system, proxy's don't take effect for ten days. So you can't delegate your votes "sideways" for ten days. Look, it's Rube Goldberg. There is utterly no reason to delay voting rights, beyond an *assumption* that they go with participation rights, and there are reasons to delay them. Sometimes. The necessary delay depends on so many variables that it is wisest to leave it to the assembly rules, and the assembly, by common law, already has the right to regulate its own debate. Standard proxy, but delegable. Standard assembly rights. That's it folks. It does not need to be complicated by a priori rules that do nothing but gum up the works. (It is arguable that standard proxy *is* delegable, unless the proxy assignment forbids it or limits it to direct exercise. If I'm on vacation, and I give a power of attorney to someone to sell my house -- usually it would be my attorney, but it can be anyone -- and then, on the day of closing, that attorney is unavailable, he or she can designate someone else to sign the documents, as I understand it. What we are doing is make delegability a clear assumption. Yes, the voters could provide in their assignment that proxies cannot be passed on. A foolish idea, but people, when it comes to voluntary, free-choice representation, which is the goal, should be free to be foolish. And the default systems set up organizationally might not take this restriction into account, in which case it would be up to the proxy to satisfy the restriction. There are many problematic details of delegable proxy, and, though it seems to me that they are all soluble, I prefer to start with the Free Association context because proxies can do little or no harm in such a context. They serve to discover and measure consensus, not to actually implement it. Implementation, unless specific powers have been granted to the proxy -- typically independently of the FA -- is not decided or determined by the proxies, it is the prerogative of the members directly. (As an example of a specific power, a member could set up a special bank account and give the proxy the right to transfer funds from it. FAs might be interested in such accounts -- they add weight to votes, in the free interpretation of proxy expansions that I propose -- but they aren't a part of the formal FA process. The FA is not going to collect funds and spend them, beyond nominal sums for its own operating costs, which should be very, very low. So low that they can typically be satisfied by direct payment by members, as donations. For example, I pay the $8.95 per year domain registration for beyondpolitics.org. Big whoop! I also provide the storage space and bandwidth, and the extra bandwidth that beyondpolitics.org consumes might actually be costing me $5 or $10 per month, I haven't looked at it. Donations accepted. But you'll notice there is no fund-raising campaign.) >>>If a change in proxies means different delays between the old >>>proxy ending and the new one taking effect, the legislature will have either: >>> A period with no support for those voters, or >>> A period when those voters will have double representation. > >Abd disagrees, but not convincingly. Ketchum reports the obvious. Obviously, I have not convinced him. So we should care? He has not argued the point. He merely proclaims, again and again, that he is not convinced. Yet he has not even attempted to establish his proposal as having any necessity at all. What is the reason for delaying voting rights, given that we have already separated them from participation rights, i.e., floor access rights? >>DP and other proxy assemblies can be smaller, ordinarily, than >>standard peer assemblies, for a given level of completeness of >>representation. Having ten percent more seats would mean, probably, >>less than ten percent more communication traffic. Not a drastic >>change, particularly if temporary. > > >Interesting thought, and size is a topic for careful thought. For me, this thinking entirely preceded the question of how to solve the problem. And a solution, it turns out, is *extremely* simple. > I suggest two limitations: > Number of seats in the legislature, filled by the candidates > with the most proxies. Sure. Asset Voting does it. Then take Asset and allow the voting rights of those elected to float. Which makes, among other things, representation more accurate, it removes even the small digitization noise from making vote transfers in precinct blocks. (This is proposed because it creates district-based representation, *mostly*. Normally, a citizen, even though the citizen has voted secretly, will know exactly who was elected with his or her vote, and this member will by local if there are sufficient local votes assembled to justify it. I assume that when Asset holders are distributing them, they will do it in precinct blocks, especially if the rules allow a little slop.) However, this initial proposal, while a vast improvement over standard practice, still involves terms of office. Not a great deal of harm would be done by this, because if votes can be reassigned by the electors (the initial holders of assets), then in an assembly of reasonable size, *views* with snowball's chance of being accepted will rather easily find someone to incorporate them in motions and to discuss them. However, once we have floating voting rights, it becomes possible to consider floating deliberation rights. This essentially abolishes the fixed terms. However, there are some obvious problems with that, in a very large assembly where the business of being a member is a full-time job. There are two responses to this: disallow the reassignment of deliberation rights -- the proposal above -- or delay or otherwise restrict such reassignment. Ketchum does both. But he *also* delays the movement of voting rights, which are, even in his proposal, distinct from participation rights. That is, you can have voting rights, but not participation rights. Given that the two are separated, it then becomes logically necessary to consider them separately. We know there are reasons to delay participation rights. But what is the reason for delaying the movement of voting rights? At all, beyond the necessities of registration, i.e., notice. And what is the reason for not allowing *anyone* holding votes, that is, any elector, from voting directly? The technical problem is trivial. Further, if direct voting is allowed (remember, this is not direct voting by citizens in general, but by chosen electors who received votes from citizens in a secret ballot election), there is much less need to change proxies, so the composition of the assembly, in theory, becomes more stable. (If you disagree strongly with your proxy on one issue but you generally trust the proxy, you can reserve your direct voting for the rare occasions that this is the issue coming up. Otherwise you may feel compelled to change your proxy to someone else, simply because on one important issue you can't support the position of the proxy. This, by the way, solves the dilemma of the person who is socially liberal but is religiously convinced that abortion is murder. I know a fair number of such people....) > Minimum proxies to occupy s seat. I suggest 1% to vote; 2% to have >floor rights and thus full membership This limits the assembly to fifty people. Not bad, but I'd prefer to *allow the assembly* to determine its own operating size. If direct voting is allowed, votes on assembly rules would require majority support, and would not affect votes on subsequent issues. The incentive, then, is for the assembly to make its effective size, for deliberation, optimum for efficiency: efficiency requires that all significant factions on an issue be represented in debate, and that the size be small enough to be operationally manageable. I find no way to predict this, and optimum size would vary greatly not only with the context but also from time to time. Note that if, for example, an assembly majority decided to restrict the assembly size such that it was disproportionally represented, the minority could form its own unofficial assembly and use it to deliberate publicly. I'm sure such would be newsworthy, and it would be insane for members of the official assembly to not follow the debate in the minority assembly. Their constituents, generally, will expect them to be informed.... I don't see proxy democracy as nearly as prone to the divisive and polarized party politics of the present, because much of the driving force for this is removed. There is no *contest* involved in proxy democacy. There is only a process of determining, through free choice, a representative assembly of manageable size, and we have shown how this is possible while still preserving privacy at the primary level. >>The confusion arises because we think it best to assign seats based >>on votes. But that is just an *indication* of whether or not >>someone should have a seat. I've thought that legislatures might >>give some people seats who don't have any votes other than their own. > > >Interesting thought. I do not propose such, but do not object to >legislatures managing such affairs themselves. Since Ketchum now acknowledges the reasonableness of legislatures setting their own rules, why then prejudge what size it will choose? It is reasonable, in discussing how a proxy legislature would work, to suggest that it might have such and such a size, but most people, in seeing that comment without it being qualified, will assume that the size is fixed. I'm just suggesting that, if a formal proposal is being made, references to sizes be explicitly examples of what an assembly might choose. >>>Direct voting would be a complication that would make the basic >>>proposal harder to evaluate. Such comparatively minor changes >>>could be considered by themselves later. >Abd suggests that direct voting is more important than electing via proxy. > >I disagree. Instead of extracting my proposal by quotation, something that he seems to avoid, quoting only himself, he paraphrases me and then disagrees with the paraphrase. Nice. So do I. I do not suggest that direct voting is more important than electing via proxy. I suggest that direct voting, otherwise impossible, becomes possible if there is a proxy assembly where direct voting is allowed, but participation rights beyond that are restricted according to assembly rules. And if there is direct voting, assembly rules will respect the rights of all parties -- or there are easy ways around an attempt to monopolize debate. What I'm suggesting is that the foundations of democracy are about the right of direct participation, and that scale and efficiency demand that representation be the norm. Representation by proxy is an extension of the right of direct participation. I find it quite interesting that many organizations do allow direct participation, but prohibit participation by proxy. Why? I do understand it, quite well, I've seen organizations in action and see how this combination of rules works. The annual meeting is held in the home town of those who control the organization, and thus a majority of those who show up at the annual meeting are the managers or those close to the managers. So existing management, if proxy representation is not allowed, have a huge advantage, often insuperable, even where the majority of members, if they could be represented, would make different decisions. An example of this, in theory, would be Citizens for Approval Voting or Americans for Approval Voting, I forget which way the corporation reads. Annual meeting located conveniently for the founder, dues-paying members can vote, proxy voting not allowed. I'm not singling them out, because this is quite standard practice. Why is it standard practice? Well, it benefits those who are the initial organizers, and they are the ones who write, usually, the bylaws. There are two reasons why corporations can't get away with the same thing. First of all, if shareholders became aware of the restriction, they would be unlikely to hold shares, and, secondly, such a restriction is generally unlawful by statute. I think that there is some movement in this direction when classes of stock are set up, with some classes being non-voting.... But nonprofits aren't regulated in the same way. The state is concerned that there is a body of people responsible for ensuring that the corporation acts within the law, and it cares little or nothing about how these people are chosen, it only wants to know if they have assumed the responsibility. So nonprofits and political action groups can pretend to be democratic by having "members," but can effectively shut out the members from control. Standard practice. However, if the members really wanted to change the situation, and were aware of FA/DP, they could do it, rather easily. They simply form an independent organization of members, and, among other things, allow a superproxy, or as close to that as possible, to be found, and then it is arranged for enough members to attend the annual meeting, one time or as necessary, to change the rules to allow proxy voting. And from then only, only *one* member need attend.... The evils of proxy voting come when it is allowed, but unused. What happens then is that someone notices the proxy provisions and secretly collects a lot of proxies. Perhaps this person even gets people to join and assign him or her their proxies. Then he shows up at the organization's meeting and suddenly can vote a majority on everything. Does tend to get people riled up. And so they outlaw, if they can still manage it, proxy voting. Jan knows this story, it happened with the Libertarian Party. >>If Ketchum is saying that those who vote should understand what >>they are voting on, great. But who decides who is competent, who >>understands enough? My claim is that the proper one to make this >>evaluation is the voter himself or herself. Direct democracy by DP, >>I expect, will *increase* the participation power of exactly the >>right people, those who are widely trusted by those who know them *closely*. > >Anyone who is TRULY competent should be able to convince enough >voters to provide proxies as backing. This argument is incorrect. Someone may be truly competent and knowledgable, but may be holding a view which is, shall we say, ahead of its time. I find value in having a legislative vote, expanded by proxy, of 2,374,089 to 1. Wouldn't it be interesting if, ten years later, that one vote was seen as being the only correct one? And, with Asset/Proxy, the one vote would be of an identified person. Perhaps next time more people would listen to him or her? From my point of view, the argument does not hinge on how it can work without allowing direct voting. It can. The question is whether or not it works *better* with direct voting, and there is another question, the question of rights. If I hold a divergent view on a topic, such that to agree on it with any member of the legislature (100 people in Ketchums' proposal have the right to vote), I may be forced to not assign a proxy at all, because I would consider it repellant for my vote to be recorded in favor of a measure. I am forced, by Ketchum's proposal, to continue the odious practice of present electoral democracies, that I must compromise, not merely on issues, but on *representation*. Again, compromise on representation is necessary as to deliberative rights, because we cannot allow a million points of view to be represented in deliberation, nor even much smaller numbers than that. If my view is sufficiently divergent, it is not going to be heard at the top level, though it may be heard at lower levels than that, and I may be able to gain support, but not enough to reach the assembly level. But compromise on representation in *voting* is odious. I'm *not* represented if it is not my free choice. With direct voting allowed, it becomes much easier to compromise on representation in deliberation, because no longer is it necessary that I have no serious disagreements with my proxy. I can simply follow the business of the legislature, its agenda, sufficiently that I will know when something important to me, and where I fear that my proxy will vote in a manner offensive to me, and then I can follow the debate and process on that and vote as I see fit. There is no reason *at all* to prohibit this. I see no practical harm from it. It does not interrupt or make more difficult the legislative process, and if it introduces delay, such delay would be quite small and could be bypassed specifically in emergencies. (In which case votes would be provisional, as to full expression, but still effective as to immediate effect. I would take away the proxy (my proxy) of any representative who abused the emergency powers -- some city councils have emergency rules and use them routinely simply as an exercise in political power.) From my point of view, direct voting is the basic right, and the removal of that right must be justified. What is the justification? That is the question I'm asking. So far, Ketchum has advanced these arguments: 1. Direct Voting would be unpopular, so it would delay implementation 2. Direct Voting would be irresponsible, uninformed people would vote. I presume that this is what is "destructive." The first of these objections is a path to implementation question, not one concerned with conceiving of an ideal legislature. I've proposed a specific path which does not involve direct voting initially, but which makes it an easy step to achieve: this would be Asset Voting, which can elect a traditional-looking peer legislature, except with very exact proportional representation, so proportional that it can be considered *almost* totally free choice. Asset creates a class of electors, who effectively hold primary proxies assigned by secret ballot. These electors then elect the actual assembly by using or reassigning votes. (Any elector with enough votes may, but is not required to, assume a seat and then use remaining votes to create other seats, either independently, if the elector has enough votes, or in negotiated combination with others.) So the first argument, while not entirely wrong, is not actually relevant when it comes to implementation strategy. Asset creates the class of people who could be direct voters: the electors. And then this brings us to the second argument. Given that those voting directly would not be single citizens, in general, but persons who registered as candidates in the election, they would be, usually, relatively well informed. The second argument is actually a standard argument against democracy itself, it is considered that the "people" are ignorant and irresponsible. It has to be both, because I can be ignorant and simply abstain from making decisions where I'm ignorant. Obviously, some people are ignorant and irresponsible. But if that is a majority, the society is in deep trouble no matter what style of government you set up. Normally, this is *not* true of the people, they are collectively intelligent and responsible, given institutions that allow this to be expressed. Far too often, the existing institutions don't allow it. I seriously doubt that the Hutu majority in Ruanda would have decided through free process to attempt to exterminate their Tutsi neighbors. Rather, the institutions of majoritarian democracy set up conditions where a rather small minority of active fanatics could take power. Our system here is vulnerable to the same thing, potentially. Hopefully not so extreme! Proxy democracy, if it is based on maximized freedom of choice, I expect to select for wisdom and intelligence. The vast majority of electors under Asset Voting would be quite capable of voting intelligently. Ketchum has not responded, really, to the Asset proposals as being a means of electing the legislature that would not involve a complex local structure to exist first. But his proposals and the Asset proposal both create potential electors that would be reasonably qualified to vote. So where is the beef? I have alleged harm from not allowing direct voting, and the only reason we don't recoil in horror from this harm is that we already tolerate it, such offensive compromises (even worse, indeed) are routine in American politics. You hate abortion. Fine, I'll represent you. And, of course, I'll vote for the war, that's my party position. People offended in this way often simply don't vote. That way, they avoid, maximally, having blood on their hands. I see no reason to exclude these people from the political process, indeed, I'd want them to be a part of it. These are people who *think*. (What happens in fact, is that one side becomes so destructive that they *must* intervene, they hold their noses, pray for forgiveness, and vote.) One of them is one of the most intelligent women I know. Why do we shut these people out? ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info