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[Helgoland]

After this post:

Why stick to the concept of seats anyway? How about this: You give your vote to a representative, then all folks who were voted for a sufficient number of times (to exclude crackpots) form an assembly where the voting power of each representative is determined by how many votes they got. Votes are transferrable: If 900 people voted for me but I don't feel like becoming a representative, I can pass on those 900 votes to someone else. (It might be wise to restrict this practice to a degree to prevent a couple issues I can't think of right now.)

Putting it in a more thought-out way:

- Votes become transferrable objects.
- Everyone starts out with one vote.
- Everyone can at any time take their own vote away from the person that currently has it.
- You need X amount of votes to be admitted to Parliament and get to debate and actually vote on laws there, where X is sufficiently high to keep the number of representatives reasonably low.
- To pass a law representatives having a total of Y votes between them need to consent to it, where Y probably needs to be chosen quite a bit below 50% to accomodate votes in possession of people not currently in Parliament. In particular this includes non-voters.

Why I think this might be a good system:

- This method of voting is both proportional and personal.
- Election cycles are no longer a thing, since votes can be changed at any time.
- The effort of being politically active is lowered tremendously: If there's a party you like, you can just give your vote to them and then never have to bother with active participation again unless you decide that you no longer like that party.
- Political groundwork is rewarded: Representatives have a strong incentive to be active in their target group even outside electoral cycles.
- Politics is no longer tied to geographical areas: Suddenly it becomes viable to be a representative specifically of, for example, the gay community. This gives marginal groups a much better voice in Parliament.
- No more landslides because of singular events! Political events will have more of an impact on the distribution of power outside of election season and less during compared to the current system.
- Power shifts in general will become much more gradual. This should be considered a good thing, since continuity is desirable in incredibly many areas.

To counteract possible negative effects it may be wise to couple this system with strict term limits on government positions. A possible downside may be the splintering of Parliament into too many bickering factions, leading to frequent government changes ŕ la Italy back in the day, but I believe this can be overcome with the right political culture - and, as seen with Italy, is a danger that is also present in the more conventional incarnations of proportional representation.

Thoughts?

[MagmaMcFry]

Possible problems:

• "Hey here's a thing you probably like but you can only use it as long as we have your vote"
• "Hey so all the votes you gave me got stolen, sorry about that"
• "Hey donate your vote to Cause X, we totally promise we won't sell it to someone else"
• "Hey those are some nice votes you have there, it would be a shame if something happened to this blackmail I have here"

[Helgoland]

Those are all problems with non-secret ballots, aren't they? This system can be made anonymous fairly easily. You assign your vote at your local bureaucracy place - city hall, I guess -, and the recipient will only ever know that he got one more vote to his name, not who gave it to him.

I thought this wouldn't even have to be mentioned...

[Cheeetar]

When you referred to the votes as 'transferable objects', I had a different impression from the one I think you intended to have.

[Helgoland]

I meant the anonymous kind of vote there. The 'voting power', so to speak. Sorry, I should've put more thought into developing proper terminology...

[Reelya]

There are a few problems with the proposal.

- not everyone in parliament will have an equal voice, since delegate votes are proportional to number of voters who support them. You might end up with parliament dominated by a few individuals rather than a forum. What if 40% of people say they want Trump as their delegate? Suddenly you have a situation where Trump and one other person can basically override the entire forum and pass anything they like. Rampant base populism might be the end-game. Or you could limit delegates to 1-vote in parliament. But then that throws proportionality out the window, since a lone crackpot gets the same vote as a very popular person.

- It's not a good idea to keep a record of who voted for whom, because people can be targeted. We already see that in the USA with voter registration. Voter anonymity is an important criteria to consider.

Here's how I'd do it:

- each voter maintains a ranked list of candidates. Since your doing the record-keeping anyway, might as well let voters specify a list. Since there might by hundreds of candidates to consider, I'd let the voter maintain e.g. 6 named candidates, and a separate party list. If none of your named candidates get in, then the party list determines where your vote ends up.

- work out from the total number of registered votes a quota to get into parliament (e.g. 101 seats). Anyone over quota is in automatically.

- Excess ballots for one candidate get chosen at random, and allocated to the voter's next in line. If your #1 choice was eliminated, your vote moves down to #2, but we keep track of how many votes this happened for, so that if #1 choice later rises in popularity, they get their re-allocated votes back: e.g.: if someone is 20 votes short of the quota, their entire block of votes gets allocated to other people, but if they campaign more and sign up 20 people, those votes snap back to them.

Well there you go, that system would be dynamic, proportional, and still maintain 1 vote per senator.

As for keeping track, I'd suggest a variant of the blockchain technology rather than the old-fashioned "go to city hall" approach. Blockchain keys are very secure. If you look at the possible attacks on BitCoin, they involve people who voluntarily gave away their keys (to exchanges) and then the server with the keys got hacked, or 51% attacks - which can prevent transactions from taking place, but cannot make fake transactions without the keys. Blockchains also have the advantage of providing a completely transparent transaction history rather than just a database somewhere which can be over-written.

[Helgoland]

What's the problem with one dude having 40% of the vote, if that's what people want? If 40% vote for a party with a very hierarchical internal structure (you get one guess as to which example I'm thinking of here) you'll have the same problem in a more traditional representative democracy. Hell, according to some people you already have this problem in Germany because the ruling 'Grand Coalition' has a very large (75+%) majority, making the opposition almost irrelevant.
And it won't happen anyway: If you give your vote to Trump, it'll hardly make a difference at all, but if you give it to your friendly neighborhood Republican party cadre, it will because to him a single vote is much more important.

Voter anonymity: Even today we trust that there's no ballot stuffing, no vote buying, etc etc. Sure, this system is somewhat more vulnerable, but I do think that in the West civil servants are reliable enough to make it work. Hell, maybe with the right sort of crypto it could actually be made completely secure, but when it comes down to it I'd like my democracy to rely on primitive, easily controllable means. I'm just old-fashioned that way.

What you suggest is basically just IRV, no? And it has an element of chance that I really do not like.

[Reelya]

Well you could remove the element of chance, and calculate based on fractions of votes spilling over from all the people who voted for the guy. My reason for the random-selection was that with thousands of voters per candidate, it would statistically even out, and be easier to calculate.

Personally I think a system where if e.g. Trump was able to attract 50.01% of voters then he could pass any law he liked would be dysfunctional. There would be no debates and Trump could pass only laws that help his voter based and hurt the 49% who didn't vote for him. The problem is you still have the issue that 50.01% of votes means you get your way 100% of the time. Probably worse in your system since a tiny handful of people could act like an oligarchy rather than leading party.
With your system, it would tend to be more like a presidential race than a legislature. You'd likely get 2-3 people holding 70% of votes, and a smattering of irrelevant people with less votes.

But your counter-example of 75% of the German parliament being part of a coalition is not really a counter-example. 75+% of the parliament is basically the entire parliament. 25% of the elected representatives get zero say in the major decisions. But if the government had 51% of seats, then 49% of representatives would have no say. So you currently have 75% of parliament making decisions, and as long as 2/3rds of that group agree, they can pass laws. Which is rule by 2/3rds majority.

[Max™]

Isn't this kinda like the reputation economy ideas I've seen floating around? Except you'd be setting up a sort of crowdsourced political system, which right off the bat feels like a good idea but I don't exactly know why?

Like, when I look through amazon at stuff, I can take a handful of reviews from something that has 4.5 stars @ 1000+ reviews and have a good idea of what I'd be getting, while I can read all of the reviews of something that may have a lower score but only 10 or 11 reviews, and there is a good chance that I won't be interested... except cases where I find exactly the stuff I'm after in that smaller sample.

How many stars would you give politician a, b, and c?

[Baffler]

Well you could remove the element of chance, and calculate based on fractions of votes spilling over from all the people who voted for the guy. My reason for the random-selection was that with thousands of voters per candidate, it would statistically even out, and be easier to calculate.

Personally I think a system where if e.g. Trump was able to attract 50.01% of voters then he could pass any law he liked would be dysfunctional. There would be no debates and Trump could pass only laws that help his voter based and hurt the 49% who didn't vote for him. The problem is you still have the issue that 50.01% of votes means you get your way 100% of the time. Probably worse in your system since a tiny handful of people could act like an oligarchy rather than leading party.
With your system, it would tend to be more like a presidential race than a legislature. You'd likely get 2-3 people holding 70% of votes, and a smattering of irrelevant people with less votes.

But your counter-example of 75% of the German parliament being part of a coalition is not really a counter-example. 75+% of the parliament is basically the entire parliament. 25% of the elected representatives get zero say in the major decisions. But if the government had 51% of seats, then 49% of representatives would have no say. So you currently have 75% of parliament making decisions, and as long as 2/3rds of that group agree, they can pass laws. Which is rule by 2/3rds majority.

How is that any different than if a political party wins a majority (or supermajority in case they don't have the whitehouse), as it is?

[Reelya]

Well a party is still a group of people, not a hive-mind. I'd be wary of letting someone be a lone dictator because 50.00001% of people support them. It's very different to have one guy in charge vs 51 out of 101 in charge. e.g. in a plurality, if all the 50/101 opposition party supports something they can get it passed if they can convince 2 of the ruling party to cross the floor. If a guy personally holds a big chunk of votes, then it's all or nothing.

[Vilanat]

One problem i can foresee is that voting/electing could suffer from knee jerk reactions where a single rumor could destroy a Politician, even if for a period as short as a week, and Politicians will not have industrial quiet to operate and instead of having active politicians, we would get active campaigners.

[misko27]

we would get active campaigners.

oh god please no.

One of the biggest problems we have in the US is the endless campaign. A member of the house wins election... great he has one full year until election year. And he better be prepared for election year, so he better have some money before going in...

etc forever until politicians spend more time at fundraisers then in shady backrooms. it's a terrible result for everyone but the media.

[Helgoland]

That's the beauty of this proposal: It eliminates the pressure exerted by organized election cycles! Instead it encourages politicians to make a consistent effort to implement their proposals while at the same time making them show their work, reducing disenchantment with the political system.

Well a party is still a group of people, not a hive-mind. I'd be wary of letting someone be a lone dictator because 50.00001% of people support them. It's very different to have one guy in charge vs 51 out of 101 in charge. e.g. in a plurality, if all the 50/101 opposition party supports something they can get it passed if they can convince 2 of the ruling party to cross the floor. If a guy personally holds a big chunk of votes, then it's all or nothing.

Actually I think the opposite would happen: Politicians with a large number of votes would pass on some of them to their political friends so that they can work more effectively in parliament. You need lots of manpower to fill all those committees, attend relevant meetings, etc etc. And even a Mr. Big Shot would want to go on holidays sometimes...

One problem i can foresee is that voting/electing could suffer from knee jerk reactions where a single rumor could destroy a Politician, even if for a period as short as a week, and Politicians will not have industrial quiet to operate and instead of having active politicians, we would get active campaigners.

Ah, but isn't this precisely what happens with the current system? Half the time our politicians are campaigning, and a trivial slip-up almost completely unrelated to your campaign can fuck over their prospects of winning. Just look at Hillary's pneumonia if you want an example: If we got rid of election cycles, she could've just stayed in bed for a couple days and gotten rid of that infection. Instead we get a race skewed by chance because her illness happened to occur close to the election date.

[Tack]

If that illness even was chance.

But in seriousness I'd advise you to write up a paper on this and try to get to published.
It might actually do some good in 30 years.