At 08:58 AM 10/26/2009, Jobst Heitzig wrote:
Dear Abd ul-Rahman,
you wrote:
> Well, I find it hard to believe how wrong-headed this is. Forest
is no slouch, either.
Well, thank you very much.
Don't take it personally. You are in the company of experts, too many of them.
> In a real society that is
> large enough, the consensus urn will never choose a winner unless there
> is a true consensus process already in operation, people will not
> naturally agree on a large scale, and, while in small organization, 100%
> consensus is attainable, attaining it in very large ones is next to
> impossible. With 100,000 voters, at least one of them, even if they all
> agreed, would accidentally mark the wrong choice.
Of course. The method is not suggested for large groups. The cited paper
includes suitable variations for that case (using thresholds and the
like).
The method seems simple. It's not. It's quite complex for the voter!
I do suggest a possible application. Ballot after ballot has resulted
in majority failure. So, this method. That's after voters know the
general position of the electorate. Now, if the method requires a
majority in the first box, might work. Don't come to a compromise,
it's random ballot.
(It seems that a factor in the system was misstated. If the threshold
for the first box is "majority," or possibly some supermajority, it
could work, particularly for representation, if there must be single
winners. It is a probable improvement on what Alchoholics Anonymous
uses for delegation.)
Alcoholics Anonymous requires a supermajority for the election of
delegates to the World Service Conference from the Regions. 2/3 vote.
If, after repeated balloting, they don't get it, the delegate is
chosen by lot from the top two. Yes, in some ways it might not seem
fair. But consider it a form of proportional representation;
minorities get some representation that way.
AA is seeking consensus; the Conference is where fellowship-wide
consensus is expressed, and a vote there isn't considered to be
consensus until it has at least a two-thirds vote, and, according to
Bill Wilson, anyway, they will discuss well beyond that point and, in
any case, the Conference is only advisory, it doesn't control
anything except its record.
> It is traditional
> in democracies that no collective action can be taken without the
> consent of a majority.
And that precisely makes those "democracies" undemocratic since it gives
majorities the power to ignore minorities.
Sigh. If the majority has the power to ignore minorities without
harming itself, it will, and no structure you impose will prevent it.
How is this ideal voting method going to be implemented? Against the
will of the majority by the technocracy?
That is *not* precisely what causes ignorance of minorities, it is
ignorance about the value of consensus that causes that.
The work of democracy is in the deliberative process, and voting is
actually a detail. For efficiency, a majority *may* make a decision
by as little as a half-vote margin. It's been claimed that this is
arbitrary, but that's not true. Suppose you come to a fork in the
road, and you and your company have to decide to turn left or turn
right. You could also sit down, jump up and down, or turn back, of
course, or start building a new road, there are an infinite number of
possibilities, in fact, and it would take an infinite time to
consider them all. So what do you do?
Well, standard democratic process. It is moved to take one of the
forks. If the motion passes by a majority, that's the decision. If
the motion fails, it's off the table for the moment. If you have a
required supermajority, then you create a bias against the first
motion and, as well, a bias in favor of the status quo. I've seen it
in consensus organizations. After quite a bit of experience and
thought, both with the power of consensus and with the problems, I've
concluded that it is the right of the majority to decide when it is
ready to decide, and that the majority always has the right of
decision. Typically, where not all the eligible voters are assembled,
and they might be affected by a decision, there are supermajority
rules limiting the power of a majority; generally, the majority
cannot close off debate without a supermajority, generally 2/3. In
systems that become partisan and that oscillate, there is constant
pressure to move that margin down, to increase the power of the majority.
But, in the end, the only thing actually restraining the majority is
its own wisdom. And if the majority is stupid, the only thing you can
do is to try to persuade them. If you try to force them, you become a
dictator. The so-called "nuclear option" in the U.S. Senate proceeds
from the rights of the majority over its own process, over
interpretation of the rules. Any time a member of a deliberative body
considers that the chair has ruled improperly, the member may
immediately appeal, and this is a high-priority motion, taking
precedence over ordinary business. If it is seconded, it is
immediately put to a vote, no discussion. The majority is sovereign.
And a wise king will hear out his subjects and respect their advice.
And take responsibility for the decision. A wise King will wait until
one of two conditions exists: the advisors are in substantial
agreement, or delay becomes riskier, in the judgment of the King,
than the possibility of overlooking the wisdom of a minority.
Few decisions in a democracy involve zero-sum games. If there is
general agreement on a decision, voting, if needed at all, is a
formality just to check the agreement. If not, deciding by voting is
only appropriate when the decision is not important. Probably most
votes in a deliberative body, in my experience, are procedural, if a
mistake is made with them, they can be fixed. To waste a lot of time
trying to get it just right would be highly inefficent. So ... the
majority prevails, with little fuss. But where it counts, the
minority, if it has one-third of the votes, can continue debate and
delay decision. If, however, it does this as a power grab, as a means
of attempting to deprive the majority of its right of decision, the
majority can and will use its power, and the rules generally provide for that.
Under Robert's Rules, any assembly may amend its bylaws. The routine
procedure involves providing notice in advance of the consideration
of the amendment, and a two-thirds vote. However, often overlooked
because it isn't easy, is that an absolute majority, i.e, of all
members eligible to vote, can change the bylaws without notice.
Majority rule is fundamental to democracy, and my observation is that
allowing minorities to control process, without the consent of the
majority, results in minority rule over time, rule favoring the status quo.
But that the majority has the power to rule does not make it wise to
neglect and ignore minorities! If there is a thin majority, then the
sides are evenly matched, for practical purposes, and both sides
might think that they could prevail if there is a revolution. And if
that broke out, it would be bloody and likely inconclusive, unless
natural Range Voting revealed that the "majority" was by weak
preference. (And a minority by weak preference would hardly ever
start a revolution. Kind of an oxymoron.)
So if the preference of a majority is weak, it is foolish to overlook
a majority with a strong preference; at best there will be decisions
that do not have broad support, and if people work against those
decisions, the net effect can be zero. Consensus is expensive, it
takes time, but it resolves disputes, and in the end, if it can be
found, it is much more efficient than continual battle over the same
issues, over and over.
The hysteresis of the American political system, as it is, can give
us collective whiplash. What I see in this system is an attempt to
coerce the majority into giving up its right of decision, in favor of
an abstract conception of social utility. So ... this system is
implented, and a ninety percent majority is passed over, luck of the
draw. And it was important to them. So, the ninety percent then vote
for something different with their voices, their hands, their feet,
and maybe even their guns, though usually a majority that high
doesn't need to use guns except for police action.
> While random choice has an appeal, where deliberation is impossible and
> where results over many elections will average out, what if 1% of the
> electorate wants to elect a crazy who will start a nuclear war? Could we
> afford to take a 1% chance of that?
Of course not. But such an option must never appear on a ballot in ANY
voting method, since such options could easily reach majority support as
well, as history has proven over and over again. Exclusion of such
options is a different topic which in my view cannot be addressed by
voting methods but must be addressed with legal measures.
There is no way to stop it by legal measures, no way to stop the
election of a crazy, in a democracy, if the majority want that person elected.
The majority can err, sure, but it's less likely that for a plurality
to err, hence majority rule *as a minimum.* That's why accepting any
election without majority consent is a risk, that's why it's
prohibited under Robert's Rules for *any* decision, unless a society
has determined differently by amending the default rules. It can do
it, but it's not done in small deliberative bodies because it's a
really bad idea.
With repeated balloting, and a majority requirement, plurality is
quite a sophisticated method. Approval theorists often assumed
repeated balloting. And Range could speed the process up, but the
important point that has been missed is the desirability of repeated
balloting until a majority is found. Range with an approval cutoff
would maximize efficiency.
Neglecting multiround balloting and making the goal a single-ballot
"best system" has done quite a bit of damage. Because of that
neglect, FairVote has been able to encroach upon the best of American
demoicracy, replacing it with a system that, in actual practice, in
nonpartisan elections, doesn't imrove things at all. It only works in
partisan elections because of the effect of the party system on
voting, and there it only functions as people expect if there are two
major parties and a minor spoiler, and preventing the spoilers
defangs the minior parties, which might help them or might hurt them, depends.
The rest of your post does not seem to be related to mine, and I wonder
how you were able to write this much in such short time. Sorry if I
don't have the time to read it.
Yours, Jobst
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