10 ms·

Quadratic voting (2014)

84 points by alansammarone 9y ago

Ygg2 9y ago
How does it work? If there is say - Aerith and Bob running for president, say there are Charlie and Drako that want to buy two votes each for Aerith. Do they each pay 4 or do they pay 16?
- totalZero 9y ago
  They each pay 4. Otherwise, a marginal vote purchased by a different voter would change the total price of prior purchased votes. If votes were tallied per candidate, voters would bid without knowing how much they owe until after the election.
- pennaMan 9y ago
  Can't this be used for a direct democracy where all the population can vote directly on issues instead of voting representatives? This essentially makes the people the legislative branch of government. Now scale this decentralized system globally and we've got ourselves a planetary civilization.
rwmj 9y ago
At a cursory read, this is similar to Demand-Revealing Referenda / Revealed Preferences, I think? http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2007/03/trident_how_to_.html http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli... https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/half-baked-ideas-demand-revealing-referenda-applied-to-fedora-features/ https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/half-baked-ideas-deman... I love that there are so many better ways to vote, and I hate that we still use FPTP.
lindig 9y ago
> Majority rule based on one-person-one-vote notoriously results in tyranny of the majority–a large number of people who care only a little about an outcome prevail over a minority that cares passionately, resulting in a reduction of aggregate welfare. Calling the majority tyrannous and assuming fringe interests to be naturally benevolent reeks of an agenda.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
- ZirconCode 9y ago
  I also thought that it was ironic. He does mention a valid flaw in the one-to-one voting system. I wonder if quadratic voting, in practice, encourages extremism. It also offers more choices, so more time spent thinking, and less easy to make a choice. Perhaps it discourages voting for those who care just a little.
- vertere 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
- ComputerGuru 9y ago
  That’s a phrase, well-accepted and very famous in this domain. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority Please don’t insinuate bad intent where there needn’t be any.
  - ZenoArrow 9y ago
    The suggestion being made is that the unwashed masses don't know what's best for them, and need to be guided by the enlightened minority. The problem with this is that there isn't a minority that's fit to lead. No one group fully understands the needs and wants of a society. That's why, as imperfect as it is, it makes sense for every citizen (of voting age) to have an equal say in how a society is run.
    - andrepd 9y ago
      >The suggestion being made is that the unwashed masses don't know what's best for them, and need to be guided by the enlightened minority. An enlightened millionaire minority, by the looks of it.
igitur 9y ago
I accept that this is a superior voting system to one-person-one-vote. However, for it to succeed, it should not merely be superior, it should also appear superior. The trust the voters put into the system is paramount. And for that to be true, the vast majority of the voters have to understand exactly how it works. Unfortunately, and, yes, I'm a cynic, I don't believe we are close to having a voter base that is capable of understanding, and hence accepting an outcome of such a voting system. Disclaimer: I'm not a US citizen.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  How is this a superior voting system? It just seems to be a way for those with more money to have more influence in the voting process. We've got enough problems with money in politics as it is, we don't need any more of them.
  - IanDrake 9y ago
    It's quadratic, do some quick math on how expensive it is to buy a victory. It's actually more cost effective to buy people's votes the usual way.
    - ZenoArrow 9y ago
      It's not necessary for a single wealthy individual to be able to buy a victory by themselves for the results to be skewed towards the will of the wealthy. If 1000 votes cost £1 million, and 100 wealthy individuals all decide to spend that much in an election, that's 100,000 votes when these individuals would only usually have 100 votes. That's going to have an impact, especially on local elections. As for it being more cost effective to buy votes the usual way, the "usual" way relies on voter fraud and massive advertising campaigns, one of which is illegal, and the other is very expensive and the voting decisions are not guaranteed. On the other hand, quadratic voting would be legal and guaranteed.
      - IanDrake 9y ago
        By the usual way, I was referring to large advertising campaigns that I'm sure yield more votes per dollar than a quadratic voting system. One of the things you're missing is that people who can afford to buy that many votes for a single issue are very rare and could easily be out voted by a small organized group that buys multiple votes, but with a lower power multiple. Assuming all votes cost $1, then 1,000 votes costs 1mil. That could easily be nullified by 100 voters buying 10 votes. Consider also that the money would be rebated equally. So you might spend $100 and get back $250 and win the vote.
snarfy 9y ago
I'm not sure the tyranny of the minority that we have now is any better.
- zo1 9y ago
  Yeah, the minority of elected officials and bureaucrats. It's kind of sad seeing how little say the voting-populace actually has. Not only are they fragmented per-issue, but the entire establishment is built around not actually getting things done. E.g. Look at how Trump is not actually able to do any of the things he was voted in by the voting populace to do. What is the point of voting him in then? Either you want all of what he platformed on, or you want some of it and you're hoping that that "some" thing that he manages to do is the thing you actually want? It's all bread and circuses, with the media running the circus. Just spend 10 minutes watching one of the big networks and you quickly realize it's all just rhetoric and bias, sprinkled with facts. No one reasons or argues, it's all just emotions and word-juggling. E.g. the recent "undocumented citizens" and "dreamers" double-speak when referring to illegal alien children under DACA. They're children, they're illegal aliens, it's not that hard. Edit. Grammar.
igitur 9y ago
I would like to see how this compares to exponential voting.
jacquesm 9y ago
The real problem is that there is a tyranny of sorts involved, whether by the majority or the minority is not really all that important. Consensus building should be the norm, not to ram your view down other people's throats because you can.
- zo1 9y ago
  We can't have genuine consensus until people reason with arguments and facts, instead of emotions. And emotions are currently extremely manipulatable. The entire media ecosystem is built around doing just that.
  - ZenoArrow 9y ago
    That's why school subjects like media studies and civics aren't bullshit wishy-washy ones, they're essential for getting us out of this rut. We should teach the young how to be better citizens than we are by equipping them with the tools to see through propaganda and to help them set the direction they see as best for their country. Also, there should be room for both rationality and emotion in public debate. Emotion is a key part of the human experience, making decisions based on rationality alone will stop us seeing why certain rational decisions should not be followed.
    - zo1 9y ago
      I'm fine with that as long as they're not used for indoctrination. I.e. Every single issue and previous decision by society needs to be "re-decided" by the children in the civics class, without influence by the teachers. If you're not doing that, you're reinforcing previous generations' biases in the form of indoctrination. It's a very precarious line to walk, and a very important one because you're dealing with innocent and impressionable minds.
      - ZenoArrow 9y ago
        Yes, it would be best to let the students explore the subjects with only a minimum of guidance. I'd suggest that for this reason it'd make sense if these subjects were not graded.
FeepingCreature 9y ago
Why would you ever pay for an additional vote yourself, instead of giving the money to someone likely to vote in your favor? If you want 50 votes, just give 3$ to 1/p * 50 people with a p probability of voting for the thing you want. 1/p * 150$ is almost certainly massively cheaper than 2500$.
- dagss 9y ago
  Because the people you pay could just take the money and then cast the (secret) vote the other way. Secret voting is what prevents buying votes today.
  - soVeryTired 9y ago
    On the other hand, advertising is something like a means of buying votes. But the authors have assumed the possibility of influencing other voters away.
  - Toboe 9y ago
    Could. With a better choice you can get a better chance: 1. Take an organization working for your cause, 2. identify a subset of org members you assume to be zealous enough for your taste 3. give all of them some money Now: Your vote can be bought once Then: Your vote can be bought arbitrarily often with diminishing returns.
XorNot 9y ago
The real problem is the winners take small American electoral system and the lack of mandatory voting. Fix either one, preferably fix both, and I suspect people will stop proposing brain dead ideas like this.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Banthum 9y ago
What's the reasoning behind choosing the power of 2 for this? It could be tuned to a power of 1.9 or 2.1 or 3 or 1.5. Aside from being a round number, how do we know 2 is best? What would be the pro/con of a higher exponent? What about the pro/con of a lower exponent?
- Rangi42 9y ago
  As the paper's abstract states, "Quadratic cost uniquely makes the marginal cost proportional to votes purchased". The full paper shows their proof and the assumptions behind it, such as "an individuals’ value for votes is likely to be approximately linear in the number of votes she casts so long as her utility is driven by the impact she has on the vote total, as argued by Mueller (1973, 1977) and Laine (1977)".
quickben 9y ago
Allow me to shine some light on the title: What does the general population think if aristocracy is about to buy back it's way to power?
CuriousSkeptic 9y ago
If you think of the market as another democratic institution (albeit with another set of principles for what's considered fair), could this be a step towards addressing both? (A market is afer all just another way to try and select preferences fairly and effective) I've long found it an interesting idea to allocate limited capital assets (aka land) in a similar manner, select best use (aka owner) through highest bid (aka vote), but offset the opportunity cost, and rent extraction, by expressing said bid in a rent paid as a public dividend. Perhaps when discussin public policy decision by means of voting with your wallet it opens the door to also discuss market decisions as a democracy implementation. (Oh well, I have a 58-page paper to read to see if this comment was entirely of topic)
ykler 9y ago
I didn't read the whole article, so maybe they address this, but instead of letting people buy votes with money, which favors the rich, why not allocate an equal number of special credits to everyone that they can apportion among different issues (still using the quadratic system, if that there are reasons to think that is optimal)?
- troupe 9y ago
  Interesting idea. The difference I see is that with the payments, the money goes back to the voting pool. So a rich person buying lots of votes for something they care about, gives money to everyone else which increases everyone's ability to vote with more weight on things they care about.
  - ykler 9y ago
    I suppose, although with the money system it seem like there is this crazy hyperparameter of how much a single vote costs. Plus, if you want to make things more economically equal (which is something we should want), you can do that with redistributive taxation. There are pragmatic considerations of what can get passed, but the same is true of voting reform. (Many people will make their decisions based on whether it will benefit their causes. This is why, for example, we have gerrymandering and left-right polarization on issues like making voter registration easy or allowing felons to vote or electoral college reform. General principles take a backseat, perhaps even rightly to some extent, to what one believes will lead to good outcomes.)
    - HelloNurse 9y ago
      Vote cost is not a crazy hyperparameter: it's only an arbitrary unit of measure. If votes "cost twice as much" everyone buys sqrt(Xi/2) votes rather than sqrt(Xi), by spending a fixed sum Xi that depends on the utility of winning the vote. Results are unchanged.
Nuzzerino 9y ago
This is fascinating, as I've done some work with weighted voting systems in the past. If I understand correctly, some emergent effects would occur. 1. The poor would collectively have less voting power. 2. The poor would likely become less poor due to distribution of voting funds. This would be roughly proportional to the amount of voting power lost. 3. The middle class, assuming it still exists the way we know it, may or may not have increased collective voting power. 4. Upper-middle class will gain proportionally more collective voting power than what middle class gained, but they are fewer in population. The 1% will gain even more, but they are only 1% of the population. Each social class (aside from the poor) will have more representation, while the poor will receive money (and a tiny amount of representation). 5. More passionate voters will pay more, and polarizing or strongly motivating issues will create a less-predictable situation at the polls. This could be a very good thing or a very bad thing, I don't know. Perhaps this is where the magic happens. 6. Political groups will form voting coalitons to vote certain ways, and may be paid to do so, beyond the voting fees, unless legally prohibited. However, this may prove to be not the most viable use of resources. I think that this could work in positive ways. However, I wouldn't bet on it, as there are as many things that could go wrong. When dealing with complex strategy or architecture choices with unknown consequences, it is a hard sell to willingly go with one that brings significant risk. However, one can argue, especially with the current political climate and lack of faith in the system, that not switching to this would be the bigger risk. I'm interested in finding smaller scale applications of such a system, as a crude proof of concept.
rurban 9y ago
It only favors extremists and extremely rich over the normal democratic process. But since the US is already an oligarchy, it makes sense for them. And it's of course a cheap take on the tragedy of the commons.
ivanhoe 9y ago
Hmm, but what if "a minority that cares passionately" are nazis or religious fanatics or some other extremist group? They fit the description pretty well, and just being a minority doesn't validate your ideas or views automatically. This system would, as a side-effect, effectively give more political leverage to all extremist groups out there, too. In many European countries ethnical minorities are given a few guaranteed seats in the parliament to ensure that their voices are heard. The same could be done for a wider spectrum of minority groups that are of interest to society, selectively boosting their political influence, but still filtering out the crazy ones. Problem with this is that it's not as stable as giving everyone the same rights unconditionally, as it's much more prone to manipulations, like cutting deals with minority representatives who got elected without voting and making wide coalitions with them in order to take over the power, against the will of the majority.
- versteegen 9y ago
  I think you actually have it back to front at least in the most extreme example. Suppose group A strongly wish to do horrible things to group B, expel/exterminate/incarcerate, whatever. A might care passionately, but B's lives are at stake, they care even more about the issue. A wouldn't actually get their way unless they are the majority. As long as one group's actions are considerably detrimental to another, that other group will care.
  - emerongi 9y ago
    A could be a big enough threat that B will buy a lot of votes. In a way, A can blackmail B, because the money gets distributed later (A will get a lot more back than they put in, because B bought an unnecessarily high amount of votes). Is this scenario acceptable?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
dcuthbertson 9y ago
Is this a fair system? It looks to me like the very wealthy get there own way. Let's say I'm a very wealthy person, and I have $4M to spend. It looks like I can buy 2000 votes. However, money is very fluid. So I decide I'm going to find 10,000 "budget-constrained" voters and give them each $400. I'll say, "Here's $100 for buying 10 votes, and keep the remaining $300 for yourself." Now I've just purchased 100,000 votes. Ah! ZenoArrow (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206589) beat me to it. Well done.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  For what its worth, I thought your explanation was helpful in highlighting how organised voting blocks could game the system even more effectively. :-)
- nafey 9y ago
  That's such a super obvious flaw. I felt I must be missing something because nobody else was talking about it.
  - dagss 9y ago
    Noone is talking about it because the fix is obvious: If you have secret votes then you can just take the money and vote the other way. Which is what prevents this today.
    - bonzini 9y ago
      Besides it being illegal to buy votes...
    - dcuthbertson 9y ago
      The only way I can see QV might work is if each voter was given the same amount of voting credits, which could only be used for voting. On the surface, it seems to me that this degenerates into the one-person, one-vote system. If real money is allowed, then the very poor are completely disenfranchised. Many don't have enough money to put food on the table, never mind spending it to vote. That gives the wealthy a huge advantage - more so than they have today.
lordnacho 9y ago
Does anyone know whether this has any effect on Arrow's Impossibility Theorem? Or does it violate some assumption, making it a separate (but related) issue? (Of course a theorem is a theorem, so it's not going to invalidate it...) I'd assume that this paper is written by someone who has intimate knowledge of AIT, just looking for some perspective.
- Ari_Rahikkala 9y ago
  AIT applies to: - Votes with at least three options. A simple majority vote between two options does in fact satisfy all of Arrow's fairness criteria (if only vacuously). - Ranked voting systems, i.e. ones where voters only give a rank ordering of their options, not any more information. Quadratic voting is neither of those: It applies only to binary decisions, but for those decisions, it tries to be more fair than Arrow's criteria call for, by getting out not only information about which option voters prefer, but how strongly they prefer it. Whether it could be extended to more complex votes than binary ones, I don't know.
chestervonwinch 9y ago
> Weyl and Lalley prove that the collective decision rapidly approximates efficiency as the number of voters increases. By contrast, no extant voting procedure is efficient. I'm assuming they're working within some mathematical formalism where efficiency is defined in some manner, but I can't access the linked paper. Can anyone explain what efficiency means in this context or provide some links to the mathematical framework for this stuff?
- VHRanger 9y ago
  Efficient usually refers to Pareto efficiency. Sometimes (rarely) Kaldor-Hicks efficiency or "no deadweight loss" efficiency
crazygringo 9y ago
This is certainly an intriguing and creative proposal. But as the paper notes, it is mainly around referendum voting. And referendum voting can be viewed as opposed to representative democracy. Voters will happily vote yes on one referendum for higher benefits, and yes on another referendum on lower taxes, and the end result is laws that don't make sense. This can be seen as an example of the Condorcet Paradox [1]. But the point is, referendums are generally a terrible way to make decisions. So on page 45 of the paper [2], the authors discuss that democracies are generally run according to representation, not referendums. So first they suggest using QV to elect candidates. Yet when given a choice between 2 (or even a handful) of candidates, do we really expect QV to make a difference? Republicans and Democrats are both extremely passionate, so I'd call it a wash. There's such a mix of social and economic issues large and small, QV doesn't seem to help untangle that. The second thing the authors suggest is for representatives to "put their constituents' money at stake" when voting on laws. The authors wisely don't go too deeply into this, because it's clearly nonsensical when representatives are from a district which contains significant members of both sides. They actually admit as much ("QV in representative assemblies would probably make more sense in a parliamentary system than in a presidential system") but actually get their terminology wrong -- it would make more sense in a proportional representation system than in a first-past-the-post system. (Presidential/parliamentary refers to the relationship between the legislature and the executive, which this proposal has nothing to do with -- which reveals their amatueur-ish level of analysis in this case.) At least they're honest in saying "many details clearly need to be worked out". But I have an even more basic question, even for deciding referendums: who determines the base price of a vote? If a single vote cost $0.10 or $100, I imagine that could drastically affect outcomes, and I don't see them address this question anywhere. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_paradox [2] https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=287114112074116088083081078093027028127035061037007087028124077125100068075086098105101029122061103047118074117001004065016074013074027021053114119097009025082072058089039087066113081004111112107026019118092094008080003119026104024028079005074103100&EXT=pdf https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=2871141120741160...
Vinnl 9y ago
One question that remains for me other than whether this is fair to groups with income <x>, is: how do you decide which proposals to vote on? Otherwise, there'd be incentive to submit ridiculous proposals that greatly disadvantage the wealthy, who would then have to pony up to keep those proposals from being implemented.
notahacker 9y ago
HN thread from two years ago, featuring participation from the paper's authors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9477747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9477747
simonsarris 9y ago
Take note if you're thinking: > Hmm, but what if "a minority that cares passionately" are nazis or religious fanatics or some other extremist group? Then they cause an outcome by paying all the people that are not in the minority lots of money, and then next election the majority uses that money, more effectively per voter, to reverse the outcome. If you think the median individual is rational enough to be allowed to vote at all (I don't), then the passionate minority still has to keep the majority happy or else they transfer large sums of money and therefore a larger sum of distributed-voting-power onto that group for future elections. Understanding the quadratic effects and that the money is returned per capita is absolutely key to the beauty of it. Imagine 10 rich voters buying an election out of 1000 voters. They spend $10 million to do so. The next election, those 990 (now unhappy) voters, with the proceeds of the $10m money they received, can all buy many more distributed votes than the 10 voters were able to buy, and reverse the decision overwhelmingly. So if you're really worried about this (and think voters are rational), just allow snap elections or votes of no confidence if there's enough protest, and the majority with their new dollars can right the ship very quickly.
scotty79 9y ago
So basically a basic income scheme financed by people with financial interest for the law to be one way or another.

84 points by alansammarone 9y ago

Ygg2 9y ago

How does it work? If there is say - Aerith and Bob running for president, say there are Charlie and Drako that want to buy two votes each for Aerith. Do they each pay 4 or do they pay 16?

totalZero 9y ago
They each pay 4. Otherwise, a marginal vote purchased by a different voter would change the total price of prior purchased votes. If votes were tallied per candidate, voters would bid without knowing how much they owe until after the election.
pennaMan 9y ago
Can't this be used for a direct democracy where all the population can vote directly on issues instead of voting representatives? This essentially makes the people the legislative branch of government. Now scale this decentralized system globally and we've got ourselves a planetary civilization.

rwmj 9y ago

At a cursory read, this is similar to Demand-Revealing Referenda / Revealed Preferences, I think? http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2007/03/trident_how_to_.html http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli... https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/half-baked-ideas-demand-revealing-referenda-applied-to-fedora-features/ https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/half-baked-ideas-deman... I love that there are so many better ways to vote, and I hate that we still use FPTP.

lindig 9y ago

> Majority rule based on one-person-one-vote notoriously results in tyranny of the majority–a large number of people who care only a little about an outcome prevail over a minority that cares passionately, resulting in a reduction of aggregate welfare. Calling the majority tyrannous and assuming fringe interests to be naturally benevolent reeks of an agenda.

eeZah7Ux 9y ago
Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
ZirconCode 9y ago
I also thought that it was ironic. He does mention a valid flaw in the one-to-one voting system. I wonder if quadratic voting, in practice, encourages extremism. It also offers more choices, so more time spent thinking, and less easy to make a choice. Perhaps it discourages voting for those who care just a little.
vertere 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
ComputerGuru 9y ago
That’s a phrase, well-accepted and very famous in this domain. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority Please don’t insinuate bad intent where there needn’t be any.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  The suggestion being made is that the unwashed masses don't know what's best for them, and need to be guided by the enlightened minority. The problem with this is that there isn't a minority that's fit to lead. No one group fully understands the needs and wants of a society. That's why, as imperfect as it is, it makes sense for every citizen (of voting age) to have an equal say in how a society is run.
  - andrepd 9y ago
    >The suggestion being made is that the unwashed masses don't know what's best for them, and need to be guided by the enlightened minority. An enlightened millionaire minority, by the looks of it.

igitur 9y ago

I accept that this is a superior voting system to one-person-one-vote. However, for it to succeed, it should not merely be superior, it should also appear superior. The trust the voters put into the system is paramount. And for that to be true, the vast majority of the voters have to understand exactly how it works. Unfortunately, and, yes, I'm a cynic, I don't believe we are close to having a voter base that is capable of understanding, and hence accepting an outcome of such a voting system. Disclaimer: I'm not a US citizen.

ZenoArrow 9y ago
How is this a superior voting system? It just seems to be a way for those with more money to have more influence in the voting process. We've got enough problems with money in politics as it is, we don't need any more of them.
- IanDrake 9y ago
  It's quadratic, do some quick math on how expensive it is to buy a victory. It's actually more cost effective to buy people's votes the usual way.
  - ZenoArrow 9y ago
    It's not necessary for a single wealthy individual to be able to buy a victory by themselves for the results to be skewed towards the will of the wealthy. If 1000 votes cost £1 million, and 100 wealthy individuals all decide to spend that much in an election, that's 100,000 votes when these individuals would only usually have 100 votes. That's going to have an impact, especially on local elections. As for it being more cost effective to buy votes the usual way, the "usual" way relies on voter fraud and massive advertising campaigns, one of which is illegal, and the other is very expensive and the voting decisions are not guaranteed. On the other hand, quadratic voting would be legal and guaranteed.
    - IanDrake 9y ago
      By the usual way, I was referring to large advertising campaigns that I'm sure yield more votes per dollar than a quadratic voting system. One of the things you're missing is that people who can afford to buy that many votes for a single issue are very rare and could easily be out voted by a small organized group that buys multiple votes, but with a lower power multiple. Assuming all votes cost $1, then 1,000 votes costs 1mil. That could easily be nullified by 100 voters buying 10 votes. Consider also that the money would be rebated equally. So you might spend $100 and get back $250 and win the vote.

snarfy 9y ago

I'm not sure the tyranny of the minority that we have now is any better.

zo1 9y ago
Yeah, the minority of elected officials and bureaucrats. It's kind of sad seeing how little say the voting-populace actually has. Not only are they fragmented per-issue, but the entire establishment is built around not actually getting things done. E.g. Look at how Trump is not actually able to do any of the things he was voted in by the voting populace to do. What is the point of voting him in then? Either you want all of what he platformed on, or you want some of it and you're hoping that that "some" thing that he manages to do is the thing you actually want? It's all bread and circuses, with the media running the circus. Just spend 10 minutes watching one of the big networks and you quickly realize it's all just rhetoric and bias, sprinkled with facts. No one reasons or argues, it's all just emotions and word-juggling. E.g. the recent "undocumented citizens" and "dreamers" double-speak when referring to illegal alien children under DACA. They're children, they're illegal aliens, it's not that hard. Edit. Grammar.

igitur 9y ago

I would like to see how this compares to exponential voting.

jacquesm 9y ago

The real problem is that there is a tyranny of sorts involved, whether by the majority or the minority is not really all that important. Consensus building should be the norm, not to ram your view down other people's throats because you can.

zo1 9y ago
We can't have genuine consensus until people reason with arguments and facts, instead of emotions. And emotions are currently extremely manipulatable. The entire media ecosystem is built around doing just that.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  That's why school subjects like media studies and civics aren't bullshit wishy-washy ones, they're essential for getting us out of this rut. We should teach the young how to be better citizens than we are by equipping them with the tools to see through propaganda and to help them set the direction they see as best for their country. Also, there should be room for both rationality and emotion in public debate. Emotion is a key part of the human experience, making decisions based on rationality alone will stop us seeing why certain rational decisions should not be followed.
  - zo1 9y ago
    I'm fine with that as long as they're not used for indoctrination. I.e. Every single issue and previous decision by society needs to be "re-decided" by the children in the civics class, without influence by the teachers. If you're not doing that, you're reinforcing previous generations' biases in the form of indoctrination. It's a very precarious line to walk, and a very important one because you're dealing with innocent and impressionable minds.
    - ZenoArrow 9y ago
      Yes, it would be best to let the students explore the subjects with only a minimum of guidance. I'd suggest that for this reason it'd make sense if these subjects were not graded.

FeepingCreature 9y ago

Why would you ever pay for an additional vote yourself, instead of giving the money to someone likely to vote in your favor? If you want 50 votes, just give 3$ to 1/p * 50 people with a p probability of voting for the thing you want. 1/p * 150$ is almost certainly massively cheaper than 2500$.

dagss 9y ago
Because the people you pay could just take the money and then cast the (secret) vote the other way. Secret voting is what prevents buying votes today.
- soVeryTired 9y ago
  On the other hand, advertising is something like a means of buying votes. But the authors have assumed the possibility of influencing other voters away.
- Toboe 9y ago
  Could. With a better choice you can get a better chance: 1. Take an organization working for your cause, 2. identify a subset of org members you assume to be zealous enough for your taste 3. give all of them some money Now: Your vote can be bought once Then: Your vote can be bought arbitrarily often with diminishing returns.

XorNot 9y ago

The real problem is the winners take small American electoral system and the lack of mandatory voting. Fix either one, preferably fix both, and I suspect people will stop proposing brain dead ideas like this.

deleted 9y ago

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Banthum 9y ago

What's the reasoning behind choosing the power of 2 for this? It could be tuned to a power of 1.9 or 2.1 or 3 or 1.5. Aside from being a round number, how do we know 2 is best? What would be the pro/con of a higher exponent? What about the pro/con of a lower exponent?

Rangi42 9y ago
As the paper's abstract states, "Quadratic cost uniquely makes the marginal cost proportional to votes purchased". The full paper shows their proof and the assumptions behind it, such as "an individuals’ value for votes is likely to be approximately linear in the number of votes she casts so long as her utility is driven by the impact she has on the vote total, as argued by Mueller (1973, 1977) and Laine (1977)".

quickben 9y ago

Allow me to shine some light on the title: What does the general population think if aristocracy is about to buy back it's way to power?

CuriousSkeptic 9y ago

If you think of the market as another democratic institution (albeit with another set of principles for what's considered fair), could this be a step towards addressing both? (A market is afer all just another way to try and select preferences fairly and effective) I've long found it an interesting idea to allocate limited capital assets (aka land) in a similar manner, select best use (aka owner) through highest bid (aka vote), but offset the opportunity cost, and rent extraction, by expressing said bid in a rent paid as a public dividend. Perhaps when discussin public policy decision by means of voting with your wallet it opens the door to also discuss market decisions as a democracy implementation. (Oh well, I have a 58-page paper to read to see if this comment was entirely of topic)

ykler 9y ago

I didn't read the whole article, so maybe they address this, but instead of letting people buy votes with money, which favors the rich, why not allocate an equal number of special credits to everyone that they can apportion among different issues (still using the quadratic system, if that there are reasons to think that is optimal)?

troupe 9y ago
Interesting idea. The difference I see is that with the payments, the money goes back to the voting pool. So a rich person buying lots of votes for something they care about, gives money to everyone else which increases everyone's ability to vote with more weight on things they care about.
- ykler 9y ago
  I suppose, although with the money system it seem like there is this crazy hyperparameter of how much a single vote costs. Plus, if you want to make things more economically equal (which is something we should want), you can do that with redistributive taxation. There are pragmatic considerations of what can get passed, but the same is true of voting reform. (Many people will make their decisions based on whether it will benefit their causes. This is why, for example, we have gerrymandering and left-right polarization on issues like making voter registration easy or allowing felons to vote or electoral college reform. General principles take a backseat, perhaps even rightly to some extent, to what one believes will lead to good outcomes.)
  - HelloNurse 9y ago
    Vote cost is not a crazy hyperparameter: it's only an arbitrary unit of measure. If votes "cost twice as much" everyone buys sqrt(Xi/2) votes rather than sqrt(Xi), by spending a fixed sum Xi that depends on the utility of winning the vote. Results are unchanged.

Nuzzerino 9y ago

This is fascinating, as I've done some work with weighted voting systems in the past. If I understand correctly, some emergent effects would occur. 1. The poor would collectively have less voting power. 2. The poor would likely become less poor due to distribution of voting funds. This would be roughly proportional to the amount of voting power lost. 3. The middle class, assuming it still exists the way we know it, may or may not have increased collective voting power. 4. Upper-middle class will gain proportionally more collective voting power than what middle class gained, but they are fewer in population. The 1% will gain even more, but they are only 1% of the population. Each social class (aside from the poor) will have more representation, while the poor will receive money (and a tiny amount of representation). 5. More passionate voters will pay more, and polarizing or strongly motivating issues will create a less-predictable situation at the polls. This could be a very good thing or a very bad thing, I don't know. Perhaps this is where the magic happens. 6. Political groups will form voting coalitons to vote certain ways, and may be paid to do so, beyond the voting fees, unless legally prohibited. However, this may prove to be not the most viable use of resources. I think that this could work in positive ways. However, I wouldn't bet on it, as there are as many things that could go wrong. When dealing with complex strategy or architecture choices with unknown consequences, it is a hard sell to willingly go with one that brings significant risk. However, one can argue, especially with the current political climate and lack of faith in the system, that not switching to this would be the bigger risk. I'm interested in finding smaller scale applications of such a system, as a crude proof of concept.

rurban 9y ago

It only favors extremists and extremely rich over the normal democratic process. But since the US is already an oligarchy, it makes sense for them. And it's of course a cheap take on the tragedy of the commons.

ivanhoe 9y ago

Hmm, but what if "a minority that cares passionately" are nazis or religious fanatics or some other extremist group? They fit the description pretty well, and just being a minority doesn't validate your ideas or views automatically. This system would, as a side-effect, effectively give more political leverage to all extremist groups out there, too. In many European countries ethnical minorities are given a few guaranteed seats in the parliament to ensure that their voices are heard. The same could be done for a wider spectrum of minority groups that are of interest to society, selectively boosting their political influence, but still filtering out the crazy ones. Problem with this is that it's not as stable as giving everyone the same rights unconditionally, as it's much more prone to manipulations, like cutting deals with minority representatives who got elected without voting and making wide coalitions with them in order to take over the power, against the will of the majority.

versteegen 9y ago
I think you actually have it back to front at least in the most extreme example. Suppose group A strongly wish to do horrible things to group B, expel/exterminate/incarcerate, whatever. A might care passionately, but B's lives are at stake, they care even more about the issue. A wouldn't actually get their way unless they are the majority. As long as one group's actions are considerably detrimental to another, that other group will care.
- emerongi 9y ago
  A could be a big enough threat that B will buy a lot of votes. In a way, A can blackmail B, because the money gets distributed later (A will get a lot more back than they put in, because B bought an unnecessarily high amount of votes). Is this scenario acceptable?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

dcuthbertson 9y ago

Is this a fair system? It looks to me like the very wealthy get there own way. Let's say I'm a very wealthy person, and I have $4M to spend. It looks like I can buy 2000 votes. However, money is very fluid. So I decide I'm going to find 10,000 "budget-constrained" voters and give them each $400. I'll say, "Here's $100 for buying 10 votes, and keep the remaining $300 for yourself." Now I've just purchased 100,000 votes. Ah! ZenoArrow (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206589) beat me to it. Well done.

ZenoArrow 9y ago
For what its worth, I thought your explanation was helpful in highlighting how organised voting blocks could game the system even more effectively. :-)
nafey 9y ago
That's such a super obvious flaw. I felt I must be missing something because nobody else was talking about it.
- dagss 9y ago
  Noone is talking about it because the fix is obvious: If you have secret votes then you can just take the money and vote the other way. Which is what prevents this today.
  - bonzini 9y ago
    Besides it being illegal to buy votes...
  - dcuthbertson 9y ago
    The only way I can see QV might work is if each voter was given the same amount of voting credits, which could only be used for voting. On the surface, it seems to me that this degenerates into the one-person, one-vote system. If real money is allowed, then the very poor are completely disenfranchised. Many don't have enough money to put food on the table, never mind spending it to vote. That gives the wealthy a huge advantage - more so than they have today.

lordnacho 9y ago

Does anyone know whether this has any effect on Arrow's Impossibility Theorem? Or does it violate some assumption, making it a separate (but related) issue? (Of course a theorem is a theorem, so it's not going to invalidate it...) I'd assume that this paper is written by someone who has intimate knowledge of AIT, just looking for some perspective.

Ari_Rahikkala 9y ago
AIT applies to: - Votes with at least three options. A simple majority vote between two options does in fact satisfy all of Arrow's fairness criteria (if only vacuously). - Ranked voting systems, i.e. ones where voters only give a rank ordering of their options, not any more information. Quadratic voting is neither of those: It applies only to binary decisions, but for those decisions, it tries to be more fair than Arrow's criteria call for, by getting out not only information about which option voters prefer, but how strongly they prefer it. Whether it could be extended to more complex votes than binary ones, I don't know.

chestervonwinch 9y ago

> Weyl and Lalley prove that the collective decision rapidly approximates efficiency as the number of voters increases. By contrast, no extant voting procedure is efficient. I'm assuming they're working within some mathematical formalism where efficiency is defined in some manner, but I can't access the linked paper. Can anyone explain what efficiency means in this context or provide some links to the mathematical framework for this stuff?

VHRanger 9y ago
Efficient usually refers to Pareto efficiency. Sometimes (rarely) Kaldor-Hicks efficiency or "no deadweight loss" efficiency

crazygringo 9y ago

This is certainly an intriguing and creative proposal. But as the paper notes, it is mainly around referendum voting. And referendum voting can be viewed as opposed to representative democracy. Voters will happily vote yes on one referendum for higher benefits, and yes on another referendum on lower taxes, and the end result is laws that don't make sense. This can be seen as an example of the Condorcet Paradox [1]. But the point is, referendums are generally a terrible way to make decisions. So on page 45 of the paper [2], the authors discuss that democracies are generally run according to representation, not referendums. So first they suggest using QV to elect candidates. Yet when given a choice between 2 (or even a handful) of candidates, do we really expect QV to make a difference? Republicans and Democrats are both extremely passionate, so I'd call it a wash. There's such a mix of social and economic issues large and small, QV doesn't seem to help untangle that. The second thing the authors suggest is for representatives to "put their constituents' money at stake" when voting on laws. The authors wisely don't go too deeply into this, because it's clearly nonsensical when representatives are from a district which contains significant members of both sides. They actually admit as much ("QV in representative assemblies would probably make more sense in a parliamentary system than in a presidential system") but actually get their terminology wrong -- it would make more sense in a proportional representation system than in a first-past-the-post system. (Presidential/parliamentary refers to the relationship between the legislature and the executive, which this proposal has nothing to do with -- which reveals their amatueur-ish level of analysis in this case.) At least they're honest in saying "many details clearly need to be worked out". But I have an even more basic question, even for deciding referendums: who determines the base price of a vote? If a single vote cost $0.10 or $100, I imagine that could drastically affect outcomes, and I don't see them address this question anywhere. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_paradox [2] https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=287114112074116088083081078093027028127035061037007087028124077125100068075086098105101029122061103047118074117001004065016074013074027021053114119097009025082072058089039087066113081004111112107026019118092094008080003119026104024028079005074103100&EXT=pdf https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=2871141120741160...

Vinnl 9y ago

One question that remains for me other than whether this is fair to groups with income <x>, is: how do you decide which proposals to vote on? Otherwise, there'd be incentive to submit ridiculous proposals that greatly disadvantage the wealthy, who would then have to pony up to keep those proposals from being implemented.

notahacker 9y ago

HN thread from two years ago, featuring participation from the paper's authors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9477747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9477747

simonsarris 9y ago

Take note if you're thinking: > Hmm, but what if "a minority that cares passionately" are nazis or religious fanatics or some other extremist group? Then they cause an outcome by paying all the people that are not in the minority lots of money, and then next election the majority uses that money, more effectively per voter, to reverse the outcome. If you think the median individual is rational enough to be allowed to vote at all (I don't), then the passionate minority still has to keep the majority happy or else they transfer large sums of money and therefore a larger sum of distributed-voting-power onto that group for future elections. Understanding the quadratic effects and that the money is returned per capita is absolutely key to the beauty of it. Imagine 10 rich voters buying an election out of 1000 voters. They spend $10 million to do so. The next election, those 990 (now unhappy) voters, with the proceeds of the $10m money they received, can all buy many more distributed votes than the 10 voters were able to buy, and reverse the decision overwhelmingly. So if you're really worried about this (and think voters are rational), just allow snap elections or votes of no confidence if there's enough protest, and the majority with their new dollars can right the ship very quickly.

scotty79 9y ago

So basically a basic income scheme financed by people with financial interest for the law to be one way or another.