At 07:45 AM 12/6/2008, Jobst Heitzig wrote:
Hi Adb ul-Rahman,
still, Asset Voting is majoritarian and therefore not democratic.
The reason why we have been studying methods with chance components
(that is, non-deterministic methods) is that we wanted to find a
democratic method, i.e. one that does not give any subset of the
voters (no matter how many they are) total decision power.
Of course, Asset Voting can easily be modified to achieve this:
After the inter-candidate negotiations, not Plurality but Random
Ballot is used for the final decision.
I understand the approach. But your final comment shows that the
"majoritarian, not demoratic" argument isn't true. You've added a
different element, that's all.
Alcoholics Anonymous, when repeated balloting does not find a
two-thirds majority, to elect Conference delegates from regions, uses
random choice among the top two remaining to produce a rough
proportional representation.
But something you've missed about Asset is that when used for
multiwinner, it produces, effectively, full representation. Everyone
wins. Using random choice for representation is totally silly.
What you would want is for decisions in the resulting assembly to be
randomized.
And, I'll caution, this is probably pie in the sky! Would you use it
for your personal decisions? Would this optimize overall success?
I've simply noted that Asset does work single-winner. Naturally, with
single winner, there are losers, so your "majoritarian" arguments
start to apply. Single-winner elections for representation, though,
are inherently flawed, and single winner elections for officers for
fixed terms are, well, in a word, stupid. Elect officers to serve at
will. No business elects officers for fixed terms! (But they do elect
board members, another story. If it were practical -- i.e., if they
knew how to use Asset! -- they would not do it. In Asset, the
electors serve for fixed terms, i.e., till the next election. But
they are chosen, not elected.)
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