Voting in advance: A thought

[andrewducker]

This particular case of voting has annoyed me. The whole point of representative democracy is that people's voices are heard, and a law being passed (or not passed) because a bit of technology failed at an inopportune moment seems to be a violation of that. There's also been a lot of cases of representatives having to turn up to places while ill, or heavily pregnant, or otherwise when being other places would have been more useful, and it seems ridiculous in the modern age that we can't manage this better.

Proxy voting would fix this, of course. But so would a very simple fix of letting people vote *in advance*. These votes are public, the choices that representatives make are a matter of record. I'm sure there have been occasions when people have changed their mind at the last minute, but that's easily dealt with by letting them change their vote until the vote closes.

Most of the time a politician knows how they're going to vote on the Conservative Bill for Doing Things Conservatively a long time before the vote is held. So open the vote a week earlier, and let them record whether they support it or not. And the same with amendments - there's a lot of back-room dealing that goes on, but that just means that people need to be able to update their vote before it's "counted" when the poll closes.

Is there an obvious problem with this? Something I'm missing? Or is this just "How it's always been done"?

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

It gives far too much power to the party whips and removes the need for debates, and hearing evidence. There would be pressure from whips to vote at the earliest opportunity, and a lot more space for blackmail.

We have too much power in the hands of whips even at local government level, let alone Senedd & San Steffan.

[andrewducker]

If they can change their mind at the last minute then I'm not sure how it hands more power to the whips.

[angelofthenorth]

It would also count as a prejudicial interest and bar the individual from voting. (See Code of Conduct Training by One Voice Wales) You can have a stated position, but you must be open to changing your mind. If you've already voted, even if you can change your mind, then by definition you've prejudiced yourself.

[angelofthenorth]

Is their any advanced democracy where voting in advance happens?

[andrewducker]

You can't have opinions about policies and be a representative? What?

[angelofthenorth]

You can't be so prejudiced that you're not listening to other viewpoints, in theory. The casting of a vote is a fairly strong indicator of prejudice.

When a councillor has an interest in a topic under debate which may prejudice their ability to fairly and objectively consider the subject, he or she is said to have a prejudicial interest. ... The councillor has an interest in the plans being considered and is therefore considered to have a "prejudicial interest".

That's Wikipedia. There is more elseweb, but I can't find it.

[andrewducker]

So if you're a woman you can't vote on things that involve women?

[angelofthenorth]

Things that general are OK. But if someone came in to a meeting and said 'I'm voting against this proposal' before hearing all the arguments, that would be a prejudicial interest.

[andrewducker]

And presumably if you introduce a bill or speak in favour (or against) it then you're banned from voting on it?

[matgb]

It's specifically for stuff like planning where there's a quasi judicial element, it doesn't apply for general legislation

I dug a lot into it for England about ten yrs ago because a friend was annoyed his neighbour, the Cllr, wouldn't publicly condemn a planning application--the Cllr couldn't vote against it if he'd condemned it before the evidenciary hearing

The main reason it wouldn't happen is that most legislators like the figleaf that the debate itself is important, if it's predetermined why debate? It'd put people off speaking against things that are likely to pass (why waste time/be unpopular/whatever) yet sometimes people do change minds and votes do/don't fail because of a specific intervention (the gay MP talking about poppers when May was trying to ban them being an example I can think of)

[andrewducker]

Or if it's in your manifesto.

[original_aj]

I don't think advance voting causes a problem, if you can subsequently change the vote after hearing further arguments. It's no different to speaking in support (or against) the motion - to have a debate you have to state your opening position and arguments, and listen to the opposing ones. Only when the vote closes is your position set.

There's a difference between being inclined to certain positions because of your personal beliefs (religion, politics, moral, phiolosophical or whatever) and having a stake in the outcome because it affects you personally as an individual or part of a small group. (Being affected because you are a member of a large group is inevitable as everyone is in various large groups - gender, ethnicity, social class, region etc.) It's a bit of a sliding scale and people who support things that disadvantage them personally because they are persuaded get respect partly because it's not a given that they will. There is also a difference between who is selected for a committee which is a subset of the elected representatives (where you can find enough people with no personal interest) and who gets el;ected to be a representative. The elected representatives will have biases, but then that is why people voted for them in the first place.

[original_aj]

According to the article, the failure was on the part of the representative who didn't make sure he was in contact in time. Apparently he was provided with a number of alternatives. He was allegedly in a meeting with the whip who had been given the presiding officer's phone number to call.

If he was too busy at the conference to make sure he could do his actual job, that's different to failing due to a glitch. It's not hard to get in touch with a parliament if you really want to.

I agree that voting should be managed better though. Part of the problem is that the processes have evolved from in person voting, though the new parliament/assembly have at least got better systems than Westminster's since the in person voting is automated. With modern systems it should be trivial to have everyone vote online in a location agnostic way. If registering your vote in advance is implemented, the advance votes should only be revealed with the result to reduce targetted attempts to change declared votes.

[mme_n_b]

One issue with voting in advance is that people die and/or are removed from their posts, sometimes suddenly. If a representative has a heart attack and dies at the moment the vote is being taken they should not be counted, but if they voted in advance, went incommunicado, and their death was not discovered until after the law passed/failed there may be people affected by incorrectly passed/failed law. E. g.: the law sets an inheritance rate at 10%. Prior rate is 15%. In the time between the law's passing and the discovery that a politician's vote was counted posthumously billionaire X dies and their estate is taxed. The heirs claim that the tax rate should be 10% and government has to spend time and money convincing them otherwise.

[andrewducker]

In the event that people die in the time between and it's not discovered for a day or two then you can easily recount. And laws tend to take significant time to come into operation so it wouldn't tend to actually have an effect.

[mme_n_b]

What if it's not discovered for a month? What if we're voting on a bill that takes immediate effect (e. g. private bill naturalization in USA or mask requirements)? You are right - those extreme cases will be very rare, but why make them possible at all? It's a politician's job to be there to vote. If they don't do their job they should not be re-elected.

[andrewducker]

Their job is to represent the views of their constituents. Not to go to a room and hold their hands in the air.

[mme_n_b]

If I plan to be away from my workspace I check in advance whether I'll be able to log in remotely. He should've done the same. Failing to do so is his professional failure, not a failure of the system.

[andrewducker]

If I'm not able to make a meeting, but have something useful to contribute then I'm still allowed to do so by sending my opinion along in advance, not banned from doing so because our ancestors didn't do so.

[mme_n_b]

You becoming dead or fired between the e-mail and the meeting does not affect the usefulness of your opinion, so the cases are not similar.

[andrewducker]

If they're fired then the vote isn't counted.

I really don't think that the chances of politicians dying secretly is very high. Are you aware of any cases of this happening in the last century?

[mme_n_b]

In case of a private naturalization bill the death wouldn't even have to be secret - an hour's difference would be enough. There are probably similar bills in Britain, but since we're researching a theoretical possibility there's no need to find them - just to acknowledge that it's possible for them to exist.

And then, of course, there'll be the politicians that lodge one vote, change their mind, attempt to send the opposite vote, and have it not be delivered in time bringing us right back to where we started. And politicians claiming that their advance vote was faked/undelivered.

Voting in advance is, of course, already a thing (for instance in US elections, I vote in advance by mail myself and it's very convenient). It's a good thing.

However, it's not a thing that makes election outcomes more representative of the views of voters on election day, it's a thing that makes an election more convenient to the voters.

Your proposal would not make a vote on a bill a better vote - it'd make life more convenient for politicians. As any convenience this would have a cost -the cost of re-counting the vote to make sure everyone was alive and eligible to vote at the time and dealing with legal repercussions if they were not and it was not discovered in a timely fashion. This cost is minor, but it exists and will be passed on to the taxpayers in perpetuity. So, the question should be rephrased as: "should taxpayers pay a minimal amount to make lives of their elective representatives easier?". I personally wouldn't pay a cent for this, but you are probably a much nicer person :)

[errolwi]

"However, [advance voting for representatives] not a thing that makes election outcomes more representative of the views of voters on election day, it's a thing that makes an election more convenient to the voters."

Especially where partisan control of elections is a factor, widespread advance voting (and other 'convenience' measures) do make the results of elections more representative of the electorate. This is a different set of issues from advance voting by representatives. One measure often used in bodies with acknowledged party systems is pairing to cover medical and other leave.

[mme_n_b]

"Especially where partisan control of elections is a factor, widespread advance voting (and other 'convenience' measures) do make the results of elections more representative of the electorate."
Or should, but not directly.

"This is a different set of issues from advance voting by representatives." It does have a different set of issues indeed, but I'm deliberately ignoring them because in a spirit of good sport I'm buffering up Andrew's side of the argument. Trying to get to the whole thesis-antithesis-synthesis thing here ;)

"One measure often used in bodies with acknowledged party systems is pairing to cover medical and other leave." You are right again, and I could say that a politician unable to arrange a buddy to pair with them is professionally unsuited, but Andrew might reply that any elected politician, however unqualified, ought to have as good a chance to succeed as possible. Here, again, we come to the price of supporting unqualified politicians in the performance of their professional duties and the argument is reduced to the previous one.

[elf]

If the voting record is public, it should be easy to remove any votes that were cast by people not eligible to vote at the time of final count.

[mme_n_b]

I am certain that I provided at least two examples above where this would be inconvenient or costly.

[elf]

Verifying the validity of absentee votes after the voting period is over, should not be a big inconvenience. It should be fairly easy to establish a process for doing so quickly - within a day or two. This would only be critical for close votes, unless someone suspects that every absentee ballot belongs to someone deceased or otherwise disqualified.

It might be a hassle to do this now, but it shouldn't be difficult to add "confirm these voters are alive after the fact" to the process. While there could be edge cases where a death needs to be confirmed to the hour, those are rarely going to be the one swing vote that changes the results. A process that adds convenience and a more accurate accounting of the will of the people should not be scuttled because it may, in rare cases, involve ambiguity.

[danieldwilliam]

I agree. There are for example only 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament.

The outcome of votes is published in the Official Record on (IIRC) the same day as the vote. If not the same day, then the next day.

So fairly easy to have proactive confirmatory measure where every member must confirm that the record of the vote as recorded in the Official Record is correct by a certain time or else some investigatory process happens.

The staff of the Scottish Parliament outnumber MSPs by a factor of between 5 and 10 to 1. So having some trusted staff to be given the job "We haven't heard from X and Y, phone round until you find them".

That's if we decide that we need a proactive postive confirmatory process, we might decide that we're happy to keep using the negative confirmatory process we currently use, that the OR publishes and is considered a true record unless and until someone actually objects. Personaly I'm not sure I see a substantial difference between the risk of an advance vote going awry and the risk of an on the spot vote going awry that would make a proactive confirmatory process necessary.

And the way to deal with edge cases is to agree as many rules for them in advance as possible.

If you are having voting in advance decide what happens if the Member dies between casting their vote and the vote closing. It could be considered a valid vote or an invalid vote, we can decide which we prefer. If we decide that the Member must be alive at the time of the vote closing for their vote to be valid we can decide in advance what happens if it is unclear if the Member was alive or dead at the time of the vote closing. We can choose between a presumption of them being alive or a presumption of them being dead. There is for example quite a lot of case law and statute on presumptions of timing of death in Scots inheritance law. It's not complicated legal technology.

For those edge cases that we can't pre-define some rules for then we have a couple of technologies available to us to resolve the dispute. We can refer the matter to the Presiding Officer or Chair or President or whatever for them to make a ruling. We can refer the dispute to the judiciary. We can refer the dispute to the floor of the House for them decide what happens

[mme_n_b]

You are right, pre-set presumptions and procedures are a great way of handling the issue. If these were included in an advance voting bill I'd vote for it :)

[mme_n_b]

I don't believe this is the cheapest to the taxpayer way of improving the accurate counting of the will of the people (not re-electing a politician that wasn't present for the vote may be cheaper). I will grant convenience, but my argument with that stands - is this convenience worthwhile to the taxpayers?

[anef]

To me the article reads as the guy blaming the technology because he couldn't be bothered to do his job properly and it turned out that his vote was in fact crucial. There were a number of methods to ensure that his vote could have been counted, but he didn't bother to use any of them.