Referendum democracy and the Condorcet theorem
A am sure that the best political system would be a referendum democracy: if an online referendum will be performed at least each week, and these referendums should cover not only laws, but also decisions within the competence of the judiciary power (fines and punishments). If the population votes to ban a mass media, so be it; and vice versa, if the population votes to fine people who slander this mass media, so be it. I hope my logic is clear.
However, with this system new problems can arise due to the Condorcet and Arrow's theorems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_paradox
https://youtu.be/qf7ws2DF-zk
These theorems can be illustrated as follows. The voters have three candidates - A, B and C. A third of voters think that A is better than B and B is better than C; a third of voters think that B is better than C and C is better than A, and a third thinks that C is better than A and A is better than B. It is easy to show that it is a "rock, paper, scissors" situation, i.e., depending on who goes to the second round, anyone of A, B, C can confidently win.
Theoretically, this problem can be solved as follows: the voter does not just vote for one of the candidates, but gives each candidate a score on a ten-point scale. If these scores were honest, everything would work well. But voters can lie with these scores, i.e., for example, if there are many candidates, a voter can give one a 10 and all the others a 1. It is quite unclear how to solve this problem; but this will be a formulated scientific problem for future generations. For example, I can suggest the following solution: select three hundred voters by lot after voting and ask them to take a lie detector test.
Such a system would be necessary in case of implementation of the "dictatorship of the majority" that I propose: so that, roughly speaking, it does not happen that 90% vote to make the remaining 10% slaves.
I try to find a word to name this hypothetical correct political system, please help me with this.
However, with this system new problems can arise due to the Condorcet and Arrow's theorems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_paradox
https://youtu.be/qf7ws2DF-zk
These theorems can be illustrated as follows. The voters have three candidates - A, B and C. A third of voters think that A is better than B and B is better than C; a third of voters think that B is better than C and C is better than A, and a third thinks that C is better than A and A is better than B. It is easy to show that it is a "rock, paper, scissors" situation, i.e., depending on who goes to the second round, anyone of A, B, C can confidently win.
Theoretically, this problem can be solved as follows: the voter does not just vote for one of the candidates, but gives each candidate a score on a ten-point scale. If these scores were honest, everything would work well. But voters can lie with these scores, i.e., for example, if there are many candidates, a voter can give one a 10 and all the others a 1. It is quite unclear how to solve this problem; but this will be a formulated scientific problem for future generations. For example, I can suggest the following solution: select three hundred voters by lot after voting and ask them to take a lie detector test.
Such a system would be necessary in case of implementation of the "dictatorship of the majority" that I propose: so that, roughly speaking, it does not happen that 90% vote to make the remaining 10% slaves.
I try to find a word to name this hypothetical correct political system, please help me with this.
Comments (48)
This would be a monstrous, horrible, monumental disaster.
Quoting Linkey
There is already a better system than this in place in a number of jurisdictions. Its called ranked choice voting. This from the web - https://campaignlegal.org/democracyu/accountability/ranked-choice-voting
This is a good idea, but maybe I don't fully understand the principle from your quote. For me, the best system can be as follows: if we have e.g. 3 candidates, each voter ranks each candidate with 1-3 numbers, and rank 1 means 10, 2 means 5, 3 means 0. So this will be similar to the vote with scale I proposed, but the voter will be unable to choose 10 for one candidate and 0 for each of two others.
In my example in the op with A, B, C candidates, with this system, each of them will finally get 33%.
The quote describes it simply and clearly and it's easy to understand. You should read it again.
Quoting Linkey
Quoting Linkey
Why would we possibly bring in a new system when there is an existing one, ranked choice voting, that has been in use for a long time and works well?
Probably there is no big difference, but I am not sure these two systems will always produce the same results. For me, the system I described is evidently optimal.
Millions of people in dozens of jurisdictions disagree with you.
At the same time, for referendums, the ranking vote can't be used. I think that the voting with scale will be good for the referendums anyway, but the state must try to solve the problem of unfair voting (if a person votes 10 instead of 6).
:lol:
You have this "democracy" now, and in fact, the President and expesically the Senate use their powers for serving the financial aristocracy ("300 familities"), they have the full power and do not allow other people to become their competitorr; and it is becomes clear that smart people are not allowed to become presidents in US, because a smart president can become a threat for the power and money of these people.
Intelligence is no bar to becoming president. "Brains' are no threat to the ruling class, because there are numerous safeguards protecting the interests of property--like law, the judiciary, the congress, the police, etc.
Is there any way for ordinary people to dispossess the rich of their wealth? Sure -- some sort of revolution. This has happened a few times. Societies operated for the convenience of wealthy people, however, discourage revolutionary thinking. It generally gets nipped in the bud, so to speak.
Have you investigated anarchy-syndicalism? There's a treatment of that in Monte Python and the Holy Grail. Here's a summary:
Monte Python specializes in the absurd, of course [long live absurdity!] but the peasants arguing with King Arthur have a serious point.
My question was whether we could vote this system back in by referendum or whether you're limiting the power of referendum based democracy.
If you're limiting it, you're writing a constitution. I vote we write in the right to free speech.
I really like the idea of the town meeting and I've enjoyed participating. It can be inspiring and effective on a very small scale, i.e. a few hundred people. After that it becomes cumbersome and breaks down. I live in a town of about 14,000 people and the crowd at town meeting is usually a couple of hundred, although it's open to all registered voters. Is that direct democracy?
Somewhere, though, is a limit on how many people can practically meet together and make decisions. How many people make up a quorum? It would be very unrepresentative if only a handful showed up to a meeting to make decisions,
On the other hand, who is held responsible (later) for bad decisions? An elected assembly is in office long enough for bad decisions to sometimes come home to roost.
Referendum and initiative SOMETIMES lead to very bad law, and sometimes to very good law.
Proposition 13, 1978, capped property taxes, and allowed assessed value to change only when property was sold. According to the National Bureau for Economic Research:
Prop 13 was motivated by rapidly rising real estate taxes and taxes were reduced, but in the long run, Californians may have hurt themselves. Prop 13 had particularly negative consequences for education; k-12 is funded by local taxes. With tax revenue sharply reduced, the quality of k-12 education slid, reducing CA's rank from 18 to 42. In 1977-78, California spent 5.7 percent more on its public schools per pupil than the national average. By 1994-95, California spent 20 percent less.
One of the major problems in referendum and initiative is that much more HEAT than LIGHT is required to get a measure passed.
A referendum will capture the subjective preference of the majority at the moment, but whether a decision is good or not isn't always just a subjective question, but it's often something that can be assessed objectively. There's no reason to think the average half engaged voter will be better able to assess that than an elected representative.
When towns get to be a certain size, they do elect representatives to the town meeting by district.
Quoting BC
Good question. I don't think there is a quorum. I'm not sure of that.
Quoting BC
There is also an elected board of selectmen and an unelected town manager who make the short term decisions. Town meeting mostly deals with budgets and other big issues.
And this would be worsened a hundred-fold if the OP's plan for internet voting were implimented.
Quoting T Clark
What if we made it mandatory form a quorum with at least half of the possible attendees?
In my town, that would be about 4,000 people. As I noted, only about 200 choose to come.
I like the idea of town meetings making major decisions, like those the citizenry will pay for. The Yankees who had a large influence on the politics and culture of places in the upper midwest didn't bring town meetings with them. Maybe the ordinances of the Northwest Territories (shortly after the revolution) precluded town meetings. Don't know. Interesting question.
Citizens are asked to approve spending on public infrastructure, like schools, major water projects, sports facilities, and the like at regularly scheduled elections. In such instances, it seems like the public speaks pretty clearly and generally fairly thoughtfully.
Quoting javi2541997
Even in a fairly small town with 1000 voters, 500 people showing up at a meeting would probably be an unwieldy number. It would take a highly divisive issue to get half of the voting public to appear at one time and place. Maybe a proposal to hold weekly drag queen story hours for pre-schoolers in the public school would get half the voters out. (That does sound like a stupid idea, but such things have been done.).
Interesting. So, one of the main issues regarding forming up a quorum or putting in practice "direct democracy" is that most people don't usually attend, as I expected.
I guess if most people choose not to assist, this could mean they are not very interested in taking part in decisions (or even vote), and I don't know whether this is positive or not. Forget my idea of making it mandatory. It is obvious that it will not help, and it will cause the opposite effect. Making the people not assist.
It might mean that. There are other possibilities:
a) practical problems like work, child care, bad weather, etc. may impede their participation
b) positively: perhaps they trust their neighbors to vote for the right thing
c) negatively: perhaps they are sure they will be outvoted
d) perhaps the meetings are tedious and long
e) perhaps the meetings seem to get predetermined results
In the US, 'precinct caucuses' are the first step in selecting candidates for elections. They are held in many locations--precincts are small voting areas) in the evening. The caucuses are run by the dominant political parties, and are more or less well managed. It's a good place to meet one's neighbors and one may pick up news on what one's neighbors are concerned about, politically.
But... precinct caucuses can also seem like an empty process, and a, b, c, d, and e above can all apply. I live in a very liberal precinct and my neighbors generally vote to my liking. Whether I am there, or not, doesn't seem to make much difference. Some of the locations have been very inconvenient for me to get to.
Still and all, direct participation in civic affairs is a good thing.
And who would set the question for this Friday? Do the voters get advance warning to inform themselves on the subject? It's not a lot of time to prepare. How would a new mandate be implemented, when, and by whom? Who owns the platform on which the voting takes place and how are votes tallied? What percent of the votes would it take to win, and would that be the same requirement for imposing a parking fine, changing a zoning regulation, eliminating/reinstating the death penalty and declaring war? What if the public mood shifts before the law goes into effect?
Quoting T Clark
Yes, that's a good one.
So is proportional representation.
Neither could function with that crazy referendum thing going on. Direct virtual participation could only work if the government consisted of a supercomputer with lots of enforcer and expediter peripherals and veto power over the dumbest public gestures.
In the US Senate we have the opposite of this. Each state gets two senators, no matter what it's population. That means California, with 34 million people, gets the same number as North Dakota with 750,000. Something similar happens with our presidential elections - each state gets a slate of electors matching its number of senators and congressmen. Whoever gets the majority of votes in 49 of the states gets all the electors from that state. One state, Nebraska, has proportional representation for presidential electors.
An interesting instance in unit voting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_unit_system
As the article notes, it seems a lot like the electoral college system. I place both of them under the classification of seemed like a good idea at the time.
Some of your questions are trivial. Concerning the necessity to gather information before voting, I have an idea of using a lot: a group of 200 random people would be chosen, the state will give them the money for studiing the subject, and possbly they will vote instead of the whole population. This is one implementation of the "lottocracy", for me there are better ones, but they are more difficult for explaining.
So somehow youve gone from hundreds of millions of people voting on laws to 200 people voting. I dont think youve thought this through very well.
For me, a better solution would be as follows: these 200 people will perform a vote, also they can vote for spending some state money for creating a video illustrating their argues and decisions; and after the vote of these 200 people, all nation will vote on a referendum with the suggestion to simply accept the result created by these 200 people. If the referendum will be rejected - a usual voting for all nation is performed.
I agree with their similiar structures, but I'd say the Georgia unit system was more openly nefarious than the electoral college. Georgia's was created to stem the growing power of metro Atlanta and the decreasing power of the historical racist ruling class.
The electoral college was created as a compromise between having Congress elect the President and a direct democracy, with no other nation at the time electing the President directly. It was based upon distrust of the Chief executive. You can argue it has done nothing to control the power of the President and that it does nothing other than to change the way voting works in the US, but it hasn't predictably helped one group over another. It's just a strange way the game gets played.
What I like about it is that my vote really matters and no one cares about yours. Massachusetts is a slam dunk for Harris, but Georgia is a swing state. Everyone is begging for my vote, but yours is a given and so you don't get dozens of fliers in your mailbox every week.
Please list in order of triviality.
Quoting Linkey
Government by focus group... How is that an improvement over the current system, wherein every adult has at least a theoretical opportunity to participate? You want to take away from citizens even that illusion of control?
Of course, that doesn't address the implementation problems.
So decisions on major public issues now hinge on a video of people - 200 people! - arguing? I'm trying to imagine the sound level and clarity.
This idea just keeps getting less plausible.
As far as I know, in ancient Greece the "lottocracy" was trusted more than democracy, because in usual democracy, usually not best but the worst people come to power. You can clearly see this in the US now. This phenomenon is explained by the fact, that in usual democracy, for comong into power a man must become a part of some elite which already has the power. With the "lottocracy", average people come to power and the average is better than the bad.
Do you know what sortition means? Public offices were drawn by lot - not a bunch of people to argue about an issue on film. Very different concepts.
I'm in favour of selecting governing bodies the same way that we select juries. But you don't actually seem to be clear on your proposed system. At all. I recommend more time at the drawing board.
Yes, this is true. My daughter lives in Michigan, another state where votes matter. I had just moved here when "Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts" became a popular bumper sticker.
The population of ancient Athens was about 250,000 people with only about 30,000 able to vote. That's comparable to a large town or small city. In the US, about 250,000 million people are eligible to vote.
Are you sure with these numbers? Why onle 30 000? I thought the right to vote had all free men (not slaves), and this must be approximately 60% of men or 30% of all population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Athens
We use Hare-Clark voting. This works by assigning a quota, calculated as one more than the the result of dividing the number of electors by the number of available vacancies. A candidate who receives a quota is elected, and votes are redistributed when no candidates receive a quote. The result is that each party can expect to have a number of seats in the legislature that represents the proportion of votes it received.
It is very unlikely that any one party will receive an absolute majority of votes, so minority government is almost inevitable. This means that the parties must negotiate with each other in order to form government and pass legislation. The buggers actually have to do some work.
The Condorcet paradox is bypassed, becasue there is neither the expectation nor the need for someone to receive a majority of the vote.
I asked who would set the question of the week, among other things worth considering, but my questions were considered 'trivial' and never answered.
I think the whole idea grossly overestimates people's interest in having an opinion on every political subject all the time when they are busy getting shit done - like writing obvious critiques of dumb ideas. Even voting once every 4 years is apparently too much of a hassle for large segments of the population.
:up:
If you ask them a question about something they're unaware of and/or don't care about, some of them will still throw out an opinion, relevant or not. If it happens every week, many people will play it like a game, while many others get bored and stop participating.
I'm afraid there's always a ruling class, if only because not everybody is willing to deal with the (often very boring) business of government. Revolutions just install a new ruling class. The best you can hope for is a ruling class that is sufficiently intelligent to realize that keeping the people reasonably happy is in their self-interest. The best way to deal with them is to have a way of getting rid of them when they become intolerable or incompetent (as Popper so wisely pointed out). That's the single greatest advantage of democracy.
Quoting Linkey
This sounds very like what I know as citizens' assemblies. They seem to be very helpful in formulating policy. But I don't think that anyone sees them as a possible legislative bodies. For more detail, see, for example, On Citizens' assemblies
From this link it is not fully clear for me, what principles do these assemlbies use. Firstly, using a lot (random selection) has a problem: if a small number of people who received the offer accepted to participate in this group, these people are not a representative sample, and their opinions do not represent the opinions of the whole population. To solve this problem, sufficient sums of money must be offered to these people for participating in these groups.
My impression is that the selection is random, but weighted so that the assembly overall is representative of the population. Men/women. Old/young. Class. and so on, as long as you wish.
The aim is not to represent the existing opinions of the whole population, but to enable the members to work out their own views and negotiate with others who disagree. (Negotiation with other points of view is difficult to impossible in the public forum). The result is expected to be a view that is likely to be at least acceptable to as much of the population as possible.
Quoting Linkey
Participation is time-consuming. I don't know whether paying people for work-time lost is practiced, but it obviously could be.
My point was only that something quite like your suggestion is practiced already, and is proving useful - at least to policy-makers.
Quoting Vera Mont
I agree with you. I don't think anyone is suggesting that citizens' assemblies like these should acquire any legislative powers. Their effect is only on the people developing policy. But the reform of abortion in Ireland is a good example of how influential they can be.
The assemblies only made recommendations how to frame the debate for a referendum. The referendum itself asked all the citizens one important question
After many hearings, arguments, information releases, articles and pamphlets, one question, simple and direct.
Referenda have their place, can be very useful if done properly (not like brexit!). You can't do it with every issue and you can't do it often.