Author
|
Topic: Electoral Reform (Read 1540 times) |
|
Beneficientor
Adept
Posts: 22
Reputation: 7.46
Rate Beneficientor
Fidei Defensor
 
|
 |
Electoral Reform
« on: 2004-09-24 19:51:15 » |
 |
Proposal for Electoral Reform
The Status Quo
One of the aspects of the CoV that appeals to me most is that of Virtual Democracy.
Here, policy is formed by discussion, and implemented democratically, allowing the organisation/forum to evolve in a direction that its members approve of.
However, I see an unfortunate disadvantage in this system.
Issues are decided on in the Vote section, but, being a democracy, this means that, before a decision can be arrived at, technically, over 50% of the membership must vote. Many CoV members are inactive on the site, and so this means that, if we want to uphold this Virtual Democracy, very few changes can ever be officially made and votes take a long time to accrue.
The corollary of this is that we have to cheat. We have to have a haphazard fusion of methods for arriving at a common ground. On the one hand time limits are set after which polls are closed, and we extrapolate the statistics to decide on a common policy. Because few vote though, this is a dangerous method. Results cannot be statistically significant and can be skewed in favour of certain interest groups who, theoretically, could swamp the vote in their favour if disinterested parties didn't get involved. The Polls also seem to an extent be subject to the will of the moderators.
Luckily, as far as I have seen, we have good moderators who make judicious, fair decisions and refrain from abusing their powers. Despite this, I don't think we should take the risk of descending into a kind of Virtual Oligarchy.
Proposal
So how to resolve this? How can we have an efficient system where decisions can be taken within a reasonable time frame and yet still maintain Democratic Authority?
I have a set of suggestions to offer. I am sure none of these are the last word on the subject, but, I hope, a good starting place.
1.
Expel inactive members. A reasonable set of criteria could be established to define what constitutes an inactive member, and these should be displayed on registration. I suggest the following:
An extended period of absence (that is, no activity); say, several months upwards in duration.
A low level of activity per month (say, an average of less than X number of messages per month for an extended period of time).
If a member was reaching the low activity limit expulsion line, they could receive a series of communications over time asking them to either reactivate their account or delete it. It could be like a bill- first you receive a warning, then a yellow warning, then a red warning. If the appropriate action isn't taken by the member by a specified period of time after the receipt of the red warning, their account would be deleted and they would be informed they were no longer a member. For members going on extended holidays or expecting a long period of inactivity of several months there could be a request form they could send out protecting their account from deletion during their absence, up to a certain limit.
2.
Introduce a Representative system- a council of Representatives selected by members to take care of their democratic responsibilities. This requires some elaboration.
On registration, a new member would have to select from a list of available representatives of their choice.
Polls would have certain stages or "readings". Firstly, polls would be open to everyone to vote freely- the Public Reading. After a period of time the "Bill" would pass to the Representatives. Representatives would generally be the most active members with the highest reputations. For all those who had failed to vote during the Public Reading, their votes would pass to their chosen Representative, who would vote for them:- the Council Reading. This would ensure a far greater, statistically significant bulk of votes was used. After this, a third, Final Reading would take place during which anyone who missed the first reading could vote, and where members could revoke the decisions made by their chosen Representative and posit an alternative position if they so wished.
Seeing as a choice of Representative would be compulsory upon registration, this would ensure that every member would be represented and therefore the entire membership would vote, some by proxy. An example:
20 members chose Representative X when they registered. A new poll arrives. Of the Representative X's 20 "Vritual Constituents", 5 vote on the issue personally during the Public Reading. The Representative then applies the remaining 15 unused votes as s/he sees fit during the Council Reading. During the Final Reading, 5 of the constituents who didn't originally vote, see how their Representative applied their vote, disagree with the position, and alter their vote personally according to their wishes. Despite a total of only 10 votes having been applied personally in the direct way, all of the constituents' votes are applied.
At any time, a person should be able to change their Representative. A Register of Representative could exist, on which would be all relevant data (how many constituents the Representative has, a history of how the Representative voted on certain issues, the Representative's reputation and approval rating of his/her constituents (weighted for relevance), other information the Representative can choose to include, a personal word from the Representative with an outline of policies and political philosophy, and links to the Representative's Council homepage (each Representative could be allocated a small webspace with which to keep constituents informed, provide further more detailed information, links to writings etc. and a constituency Surgery and Forum) and other relevant sites. This would allow members to make informed decisions about which Representative to choose.
If necessary, this and related organisations could be incorporated into a Virion Constitution (see "Jurisprudence" Topic in Society and Culture).
3.
Introduce a more sophisticated consultation procedure. For example, Double Majority Voting could be used. For any poll relating to policy, a slider could be used instead of a simple "Agree/Disagree" system. The slider could range from -1 (Disagree Entirely) to +1 (Completely agree), with 0 representing ambivalence. For a Bill to become policy, it would have to both achieve a rating above 0 (on whole, people's feelings are in favour) and for half of members' votes to be over 0 (the majority is in favour).
The standard vote (for votes that aren't applied, that is, when both a member and their Representative fail to use a vote) should be -1. If, for some reason, 99% of votes were not applied (that is, a huge systematic failure occurred- all Representatives on holiday), then if the standard vote were set to 0- amibvalence, then the 1% minority could swing the vote in their favour and a bill could become policy without consultation. Presumption of complete rejection is therefore necessary for democratic validity before a vote is adjusted.
More focused Forums could be provided for Polls as well.
All Poll suggestions could be automatically accepted and moved to the Polling section, but people could campaign to get their Polls recognised. Polls could have petitions attached, for example, and Polls whose associated petitions accrued a large number of signatures could be high up on the list of Polls demanding attention and would therefore get recognised. Junk polls could remain stagnant at the bottom of the pile and go unnoticed.
Anybody could stand for office as a Representative, but, again, those with the highest approval ratings and largest number of constituents (most support)- the best Representatives, would be at the top of the pile and would therefore get the most attention, whereas "junk" Representatives, similarly, would be at the bottom of the people. The register of Representatives could be searchable in different categories, and therefore people looking for a particular kind of Representative could search the Representative's Comment section of the Register for keywords such as "Marxist" for example, if they were so inclined.
I'm not a programmer, but my only concern is that this could be incredibly difficult and complicated to code. I don't know though, so I'll leave that question to those better equipped to answer.
Comments?
|
|
|
|
|
David Lucifer
Archon
Posts: 2642
Reputation: 8.94
Rate David Lucifer
Enlighten me.
|
|
Re:Electoral Reform
« Reply #1 on: 2004-09-25 04:38:04 » |
|
Quote from: Beneficientor on 2004-09-24 19:51:15 | Issues are decided on in the Vote section, but, being a democracy, this means that, before a decision can be arrived at, technically, over 50% of the membership must vote. |
Not quite. Over 50% of the equity must vote, which due to the current variance in reputation can be as little as 15% of the membership. I think the rest of your concerns may also addressed by our unique Meridion system. For example, inactive members have (or should have) relatively low reputations and therefore little influence (unless they are resting on well deserved laurels). We have something like representatives in our high reputation members, but on a much finer grained basis than traditional representative schemes.
|
|
|
|
|
Beneficientor
Adept
Posts: 22
Reputation: 7.46
Rate Beneficientor
Fidei Defensor
|
|
Re:Electoral Reform
« Reply #2 on: 2004-09-25 07:41:44 » |
|
Thank you for your reply. I'm considering the pros and cons of Sumucracy.
I have one further suggestion to add.
Presently equity is general, but could it be categorised?
For example, on a matter of policy relating to science, a specific voter might have a very high share of general equity due to a reputation earned on the humanities- Society and Culture, Arts, Religion and Philosophy etc. This weighting, however, might be inappropriate for the specific voter on matters of science. The voter may be poorly informed, ill-experienced and disinterested in Science and Technology, and yet would still control a relatively high proportion of the vote.
Perhaps ratings could be placed into categories, and members could rate other members on their proficiency within each category.
I foresee some minor potential problems with this idea, but for the sake of brevity I'll refrain from elaborating unless anyone wishes address the topic in more detail.
P.S:- Why "Meridion"?
|
|
|
|
|
David Lucifer
Archon
Posts: 2642
Reputation: 8.94
Rate David Lucifer
Enlighten me.
|
|
Re:Electoral Reform
« Reply #3 on: 2004-09-25 16:24:39 » |
|
Quote from: Beneficientor on 2004-09-25 07:41:44
I have one further suggestion to add.
Presently equity is general, but could it be categorised?
For example, on a matter of policy relating to science, a specific voter might have a very high share of general equity due to a reputation earned on the humanities- Society and Culture, Arts, Religion and Philosophy etc. This weighting, however, might be inappropriate for the specific voter on matters of science. The voter may be poorly informed, ill-experienced and disinterested in Science and Technology, and yet would still control a relatively high proportion of the vote.
Perhaps ratings could be placed into categories, and members could rate other members on their proficiency within each category.
I foresee some minor potential problems with this idea, but for the sake of brevity I'll refrain from elaborating unless anyone wishes address the topic in more detail.
|
Yes, each group or organization could have its own Meridion system. Currently there is only one (here at the CoV) but theoretically the same person could join several different groups and have a different reputation in each one.
Quote:
Ask the rhino.
|
|
|
|
|
Beneficientor
Adept
Posts: 22
Reputation: 7.46
Rate Beneficientor
Fidei Defensor
|
|
Re:Electoral Reform
« Reply #4 on: 2004-09-25 17:30:52 » |
|
Quote:Yes, each group or organization could have its own Meridion system. Currently there is only one (here at the CoV) but theoretically the same person could join several different groups and have a different reputation in each one.
|
This isn't exactly what I meant.
The suggestion was for the ratings system here at the CoV to be expanded into different categories. Rather than just rating a person, a member would be able to rate each aspect of that person's "proficiency" as a Virion, or on the Boards.
Rather than simply rating "David Lucifer", it would be possible to rate the subtler sub-categories of David Lucifer, this providing for a different level of reputation in each category. For example, given a member X:
X's rating on Evolution and Memetics
X's rating on Church Doctrine
X's rating on Science & Technology
X's rating on Society & Culture
etc. This way, as well as a total "General" Equity used when voting for general issues, each sub-category would have its own equity and each member their own weighting for voting on issues that were relevant to the particular category. I, for example, might be given a low reputation in Evolution and Memetics, Church Doctrine and Society and Culture, but a mediocre one in Science and Technology. Therefore, when voting on issues relating to Evolution and Memetics etc, the weighting of my vote would be low, but on Science and Technology, where I accumulated a slightly higher reputation, my vote would carry more weight.
I also have one further question.
Are ratings, weighted? That is to say, does the rating of a highly reputable member carry more weight than that of a less reputable member?
When a member with a reputation of say, 7, rates another member at 6, does the rating they give carry more weight than the same rating (6) given by a member of reputation 3?
Quote:
What?!
|
|
|
|
|
David Lucifer
Archon
Posts: 2642
Reputation: 8.94
Rate David Lucifer
Enlighten me.
|
|
Re:Electoral Reform
« Reply #5 on: 2004-09-26 02:51:50 » |
|
Yes, I understand what you mean. If and when we want to distinguish reputations at a finer level, then we can create subgroups of the CoV and have different reputations and votes within each subgroup.
Meridion was suggested by rhino. It comes from the greek root for "share". The name is meant to suggest that we all hold equity in this virtual organization like shareholders own shares in a corporation.
|
|
|
|
|
David Lucifer
Archon
Posts: 2642
Reputation: 8.94
Rate David Lucifer
Enlighten me.
|
|
Re:Electoral Reform
« Reply #6 on: 2004-09-27 17:04:33 » |
|
Quote from: Beneficientor on 2004-09-25 17:30:52 Are ratings, weighted? That is to say, does the rating of a highly reputable member carry more weight than that of a less reputable member?
When a member with a reputation of say, 7, rates another member at 6, does the rating they give carry more weight than the same rating (6) given by a member of reputation 3?
|
Yes.
This arabic keyboqd is certqinly interesting: Greetings from, Fes Morroco! I donùt knoz zhen Iùll find qnother internet cqfe
|
|
|
|
|
Beneficientor
Adept
Posts: 22
Reputation: 7.46
Rate Beneficientor
Fidei Defensor
|
|
Re:Electoral Reform
« Reply #7 on: 2004-09-27 18:02:29 » |
|
Thanks for filling me in.
Another question; How long does it take for 50% of the equity to vote? If getting over 50% of the equity to the polls can be an inefficient process, maybe the idea of some kind of representative system shouldn't be disregarded outright.
If over 50% of the equity regularly votes quickly, though, it isn't as big a problem as I thought.
Maybe a sliding rating scale for polls as suggested, though, is still an idea applicable in a "sumucratic" system.
I said in an earlier post I was considering the ideas behind this idea of a sumucracy. It's a concept I'd toyed with before, but on a much less developed basis. I wasn't aware of the extent to which the ratings system was integrated into policy making here.
The system seems to me to be well thought out and probably works well within the scope of an Internet based organisation.
However, I think sumucracy would be ill suited to a "real" government, in the sense of a legislative authority in the usual sense.
I think the axiom should be, when it comes to the weighting of votes in a physical political architecture, that a person/citizen's vote ought to carry weight proportional to the affect the outcome of the vote will have on them.
Seeing as most central legislation is generalised, having equal jurisdiction over all citizens, the simple one-vote-per-head system should suffice in most circumstances.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
