Some thoughts on voting

[andrewducker]

I've been thinking about voting, about first-past-the-post and the various different kinds of proportional representation, and the vast numbers of different systems that all get lumped in together under "Democracy", and how various examples take account of different aspects of what's important to us.

And this was then crystallised by an article I read last week about how the Muslim Council of Britain is basically a spokesbody for large numbers of smaller local Muslim associations, and my thought that this is how voting ought to be - people coming together in small groups and then pushing those concerns upwards. This encourages participation and means that individual voices are heard at each level. Except that I don't particularly like the idea of forcing people to be local - some of my concerns are local, but others are marginal enough that forming a reasonable group would require looking through a larger area. And hell, why should I _have_ to have local concerns anyway?

This was coupled with the idea that representational democracy is supposed to take advantage of the idea that some people have more time/knowledge/aptitude to deal with these decisions than others. You either find people who are already know a vast amount about (for instance) the welfare system, or you find people with ideas you like and once in power they immerse themselves in the information.

Which brought up what I've been thinking of as "Single Extremely Transferrable Vote". Each person would place their vote with a person, either because that person was a representative of a group (i.e. put forward by a political party) or because I trusted that person's political opinions. If that person had sufficient votes to cross the election threshhold (1/646 of the total if we keep the current number of MPs) then they'd be elected. If not, they would pass any votes they'd been given on to _their_ nominated representative. People would pass their votes forward until all votes were with someone who had actually been elected. One major difference would be that when voting occurred in parliament the representatives would vote all the votes they represented, so someone elected with a massive number of votes would have more say than someone with a more marginal election victory.

I can see definite problems with this system, but I also suspect it would cause people to be happier with where their vote had ended up, and with a groups of MPs that are more representative of the country. At the moment each MP has to represent a very diverse group of people, the ability to have more specific policies and then pull in votes from all over the country would mean people felt there was someone representing _their_ views.

Of course, this in itself could be a problem, if you end up with a large number of MPs who never agree on anything, but I'm hopeful that people will learn to compromise, and that the majority of representatives will be fairly centrist.

A modification to this would be Multiple Extremely Transferrable Vote, whereby each person had a number of votes and could allocate them as they saw fit, so that I could allocate one to a Green representative, one to the EFF and three to the Committee for Bringing Back Hanging, which would indicate what my actual priorities were.

Thoughts, anyone?

Comments

[nwhyte]

Pretty much what John Stuart Mill recommended!

(see here, chapter seven.)

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Would the person you passed the votes on to have to indicate who they would in turn pass any surplus onto beforehand, to eliminate nasty surprises and corruption? Couldn't it lead to a kind of party list system anyway, where the various representatives of parties would just pass their votes onto one another?

I sometimes think that wanting power is sufficient reason to be denied it and that randomly selecting 650 people to serve for a year or five years would work well enough; why is it that (quasi) random selection is okay for a jury, but not elsewhere?

I don't have any answers, I just like asking questions...

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

"nominated representative" implies they would - should read before writing.

[andrewducker]

I'm occasionally tempted by random selection, except that I do think that having competent, smart people is better than random people.

Of course, we don't necessarily get those either.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

If that person had sufficient votes to cross the election threshold (1/646 of the total if we keep the current number of MPs) then they'd be elected. If not, they would pass any votes they'd been given on to _their_ nominated representative. People would pass their votes forward until all votes were with someone who had actually been elected.

It'd mean you'd not only have to decide whether you liked a politician, but whether you also liked who they'd nominated, and who they'd nominated had nominated, and so on and on. How many individuals compete in your elections compared to how many get elected? I can see some being very surprised where their vote ended up if they didn't do a decent amount of research.

There'd also be cases where someone gets a lot of votes but not enough to reach the threshold and so passes them on to someone with only a few votes and thus some with only a few direct votes would get into power. Lots would find that weird - and perhaps wonder about corruption.

I'm not sure this would be very good for local representation either, unless people were forced to only vote for local candidates. (Which you don't like.) As always, some would shine nationally and they'd attract the majority of the votes, compared to the motley bunch we normally get as local candidates.

[andrewducker]

How many individuals compete in your elections compared to how many get elected?

_Everyone_ competes. If your best mate can't work out who to vote for, but thinks you know more about politics than they do, then they pass their votes to you and then you pass them on.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Ah - I'm with you now. Looking better all the time, isn't it? ;-)

By 'your elections' I actually meant the current ones. I liked your answer though.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

I liked your answer though.

I do think it needs some refinements though. If this is all open, (meaning those who receive your vote know you gave them it), then it could take a devil of a long time to decide who gets elected. I mean, the election would begin and then everybody would wait around to see if anyone was going to pass on their votes to them, and if not, then after a few days/week/months they'd pass theirs on to someone else. It could be quite a while before a new government is elected, and I expect quite a few votes would end up down the toilet after boredom set in, and there goes your better representation.

And if closed, meaning nobody knows who you'd pass on your votes to, then you'd get any number of cases of Mr. X giving their votes to Mrs. X and vice-versa, or more complex such loops, and once again, there goes your representation.

The problem is society's mostly a network and not a hierarchy, so just passing your votes on to a mate is a very tortured way to build a hierarchy out of a network.

There's one natural hierarchy in society though, and that's age. So to make your system work just requires the simple little addition of only being able to pass your vote/s on to those born on the same day as you or earlier. (Or later in the case of those past retirement age).

We could then all vote on the same day and only need to do it once, (stating just two things - whether we want to be a politician or not, and who gets our votes if not, or if we don't get enough to pass the threshold.) Then it'd only require a quick few loops in a computer to sort out who'll be running the country.

Now that's a system I'd vote for!