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This is a refreshing and interesting suggestion for a voting system, and it seems like David and others here are far more knowledgeable about voting systems tha

This is a refreshing and interesting suggestion for a voting system, and it seems like David and others here are far more knowledgeable about voting systems than I am. I have been thinking about a voting system for a while and I really need feedback from people who know this stuff - I have a feeling there's large flaws with it. Here's the general idea: · Each voter can delegate his/her vote to any other voter, in any number of levels. I.e., if Alice delegates her vote to Bob, and Bob delegates his vote to Carol, Carol carries three votes. · Delegation of votes can happen at any time, so Alice can delegate her vote to Bob until further notice. · Each voter can change their delegate at any time. · Each voter can vote for a motion. If the voter has previously delegated his/her vote, the delegate will not carry that voters voting power in this motion. So, if Alice uses her vote in motion 1, Bob only carries one vote and Carlos 2, but only in that motion. · Each voter can delegate his/her vote to different voters in different issues; Bob may delegate his vote to Carlos in financial issues, and to Alice in justice issues. My hope is that this would scale to e.g. a nation state, as an alternative direct democracy. Today in Sweden, we delegate our votes to 349 MPs every four years. When introducing my system, that would be the initial state. After that, voters would start delegating their vote to other people that they trust, while using their vote in issues that they know or feel strongly about. This is probably an old idea, and as I stated earlier, I'm guessing there are major flaws with it, so fire away!

ZachPruckowski 16y ago
This seems really vulnerable to vote buying, unless the person receiving the vote delegation isn't informed that they're voting for two. Otherwise, your boss will say "delegate me your vote, or else". If he doesn't straight-up fire you for refusing[1], he can write bad performance reviews for two straight quarters and then dump you. Or imagine if a church threw caution into the wind (sacrificing their tax-exempt status) and said "delegate your vote to your preacher/pastor/etc., or you're going to Hell". Unless you can lie about delegating the vote, then you may as well not have it. In the above cases under the present system, I can just say "sure boss, I'll vote for Obama/Romney/whoever" and then walk into the booth and vote for whomever I like. [1] - This is arguably not illegal in some "right to work" states in the US.
- yesbabyyes 16y ago
  Hi Zach, yes, that's true. I definitely think it's a good feature to let people know their voting power though. It might be solvable by only letting them know in segments: 1-5, 6-10, and so on, or something like that.
logicchop 16y ago
This isn't a different voting system; it's only a special case of the current system. Keep in mind, in your system it's got to be possible to NOT delegate your vote; it has to be possible for everyone to just vote on their own without delegation. In that case, what happens? You haven't really specified the voting system, just an additional feature that a voting system might take on.
- yesbabyyes 16y ago
  That's true - if everyone votes on their own, it's direct democracy.
  - waqf 16y ago
    I was thinking about an essentially identical system to yours some years ago and I came up with an amendment to prevent direct democracy (if desired): nobody can vote for themselves unless they have at least X votes; if not then they must delegate. Similarly you could try to assemble everyone who has at least X votes into a parliament (if you pick X appropriately), though I'm worried that the cutoff for getting into parliament might cause a chain of tactical redelegations which never stabilizes.
    - yesbabyyes 16y ago
      Thanks for these insights, both are interesting. I've thought about the same thing with the parliament, but I fear there are problems with that. If it turns out that there is a fairly stable selection at the top it might work and should make the voting more efficient.
JoachimSchipper 16y ago
I don't think your categories work very well (even absent politicking, is a bill to raise teachers' salaries an educational, financial or social bill?). The rest of your scheme is complicated but seems to work as designed. That said, a big advantage of the currently popular party-based systems is that it ensures at least a minimum of coherent policy-making - a party that votes for both more spending and tax cuts can at least be called on it. I didn't follow it closely, but I've seen suggestions that California's experiments with direct democracy have at least partly caused financial troubles.
- yesbabyyes 16y ago
  Thanks Joachim! The categories are meant as examples only, but I think that when applied to a nation state the various departments might be a good start. It might seem complicated but I don't think it is, rather I think I am bad at explaining it. Then again, in the words of Swedish poet Esaias Tegnér, "that which is dimly said is dimly thought", so I will try to clear it up! The main problem, I think, is how to count the votes, i.e. when Alice has delegated her vote to Bob, and Bob votes, and then Alice votes, I think there might be race conditions where people could game the system. So, it might be that you would have to have "voting windows", where people who carry the most voting power has to vote first, for instance.
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    Don't worry: I understood you just fine. I'm still not convinced of your category system: if lots of people give their education vote to EducationFirst and their finance vote to NoMoreTaxes, the classification of the "increase teachers' salaries" bill becomes very important. I'm not aware of any current system to classify it under either department; you could let people elect category-sorting representatives, but that is an entirely new set of problems (the NoMoreTaxes representative may plausibly argue that every bill spending money should be in the finance department, for instance - not coincidentally a department where his/her party has lots of power.) I don't think there's any kind of race condition: Alice just sends the voting office a note "if I don't explicitly vote, I vote the same as Bob" and the voting office can just check whether or not she did when counting the votes (there is no need for a live tally, right?)
vaporstun 16y ago
One interesting point about this concept is that one of the limiting factors was likely that it was too complex to keep track of who had whose vote. Traditionally, with paper and bureaucracy, it would have been a near impossible task to calculate that on the day of the vote, Carol has been delegated Bob's vote and Alice's and that neither have rescinded such delegation prior to the vote. The paper trail made it infeasible. However, now that we have computers to do most of the figuring, things can happen in near real-time thereby removing this constraint and making this (more) possible. Certainly there are many other side issues (authentication of Alice delegating her vote to Bob, did she do so under duress?, etc.) Very interesting idea though and, as you said, probably an old idea, but one that may have been scrapped due to these technical issues. Now that we can overcome them, seems worth revisiting.
- yesbabyyes 16y ago
  Thank you vaporstun, that's exactly what I think as well. Delegating of votes is not a new idea, it's used in lots of societies - I got the idea from my housing cooperative. But it quickly gets out of hand after just one level of delegation, and if people are allowed to delegate their vote and then vote, well such a system has to be electronic. As I said, I'm sure there are ways for ambitious politicians to game the system so please try!
limmeau 16y ago
This sounds like the Liquid Democracy system, which the Pirate Party of Germany uses to decide on party-internal policy questions. (Other organizations may have had it before them, but they're the first I heard it of) The major point of dispute there is that this system cannot be simultaneously anonymous (nobody knows whether I voted for or against nuclear weapons for public schools) and independently verifiable (anyone can check that everybody's delegations have been computed correctly).
- aamar 16y ago
  Right, and liquid democracy is really a specific application of proxy voting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting A startup working with this idea: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/8394883/Jolitics-Bebo-founders-political-social-network-launches.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/8394883/J...
- yesbabyyes 16y ago
  Thanks limmeau, indeed it does sound exactly like Liquid Democracy. I have thought about the problem you raise and it is indeed a drawback.

ZachPruckowski 16y ago

This seems really vulnerable to vote buying, unless the person receiving the vote delegation isn't informed that they're voting for two. Otherwise, your boss will say "delegate me your vote, or else". If he doesn't straight-up fire you for refusing[1], he can write bad performance reviews for two straight quarters and then dump you. Or imagine if a church threw caution into the wind (sacrificing their tax-exempt status) and said "delegate your vote to your preacher/pastor/etc., or you're going to Hell". Unless you can lie about delegating the vote, then you may as well not have it. In the above cases under the present system, I can just say "sure boss, I'll vote for Obama/Romney/whoever" and then walk into the booth and vote for whomever I like. [1] - This is arguably not illegal in some "right to work" states in the US.

yesbabyyes 16y ago
Hi Zach, yes, that's true. I definitely think it's a good feature to let people know their voting power though. It might be solvable by only letting them know in segments: 1-5, 6-10, and so on, or something like that.

logicchop 16y ago

This isn't a different voting system; it's only a special case of the current system. Keep in mind, in your system it's got to be possible to NOT delegate your vote; it has to be possible for everyone to just vote on their own without delegation. In that case, what happens? You haven't really specified the voting system, just an additional feature that a voting system might take on.

yesbabyyes 16y ago
That's true - if everyone votes on their own, it's direct democracy.
- waqf 16y ago
  I was thinking about an essentially identical system to yours some years ago and I came up with an amendment to prevent direct democracy (if desired): nobody can vote for themselves unless they have at least X votes; if not then they must delegate. Similarly you could try to assemble everyone who has at least X votes into a parliament (if you pick X appropriately), though I'm worried that the cutoff for getting into parliament might cause a chain of tactical redelegations which never stabilizes.
  - yesbabyyes 16y ago
    Thanks for these insights, both are interesting. I've thought about the same thing with the parliament, but I fear there are problems with that. If it turns out that there is a fairly stable selection at the top it might work and should make the voting more efficient.

JoachimSchipper 16y ago

I don't think your categories work very well (even absent politicking, is a bill to raise teachers' salaries an educational, financial or social bill?). The rest of your scheme is complicated but seems to work as designed. That said, a big advantage of the currently popular party-based systems is that it ensures at least a minimum of coherent policy-making - a party that votes for both more spending and tax cuts can at least be called on it. I didn't follow it closely, but I've seen suggestions that California's experiments with direct democracy have at least partly caused financial troubles.

yesbabyyes 16y ago
Thanks Joachim! The categories are meant as examples only, but I think that when applied to a nation state the various departments might be a good start. It might seem complicated but I don't think it is, rather I think I am bad at explaining it. Then again, in the words of Swedish poet Esaias Tegnér, "that which is dimly said is dimly thought", so I will try to clear it up! The main problem, I think, is how to count the votes, i.e. when Alice has delegated her vote to Bob, and Bob votes, and then Alice votes, I think there might be race conditions where people could game the system. So, it might be that you would have to have "voting windows", where people who carry the most voting power has to vote first, for instance.
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  Don't worry: I understood you just fine. I'm still not convinced of your category system: if lots of people give their education vote to EducationFirst and their finance vote to NoMoreTaxes, the classification of the "increase teachers' salaries" bill becomes very important. I'm not aware of any current system to classify it under either department; you could let people elect category-sorting representatives, but that is an entirely new set of problems (the NoMoreTaxes representative may plausibly argue that every bill spending money should be in the finance department, for instance - not coincidentally a department where his/her party has lots of power.) I don't think there's any kind of race condition: Alice just sends the voting office a note "if I don't explicitly vote, I vote the same as Bob" and the voting office can just check whether or not she did when counting the votes (there is no need for a live tally, right?)

vaporstun 16y ago

One interesting point about this concept is that one of the limiting factors was likely that it was too complex to keep track of who had whose vote. Traditionally, with paper and bureaucracy, it would have been a near impossible task to calculate that on the day of the vote, Carol has been delegated Bob's vote and Alice's and that neither have rescinded such delegation prior to the vote. The paper trail made it infeasible. However, now that we have computers to do most of the figuring, things can happen in near real-time thereby removing this constraint and making this (more) possible. Certainly there are many other side issues (authentication of Alice delegating her vote to Bob, did she do so under duress?, etc.) Very interesting idea though and, as you said, probably an old idea, but one that may have been scrapped due to these technical issues. Now that we can overcome them, seems worth revisiting.

yesbabyyes 16y ago
Thank you vaporstun, that's exactly what I think as well. Delegating of votes is not a new idea, it's used in lots of societies - I got the idea from my housing cooperative. But it quickly gets out of hand after just one level of delegation, and if people are allowed to delegate their vote and then vote, well such a system has to be electronic. As I said, I'm sure there are ways for ambitious politicians to game the system so please try!

limmeau 16y ago

This sounds like the Liquid Democracy system, which the Pirate Party of Germany uses to decide on party-internal policy questions. (Other organizations may have had it before them, but they're the first I heard it of) The major point of dispute there is that this system cannot be simultaneously anonymous (nobody knows whether I voted for or against nuclear weapons for public schools) and independently verifiable (anyone can check that everybody's delegations have been computed correctly).

aamar 16y ago
Right, and liquid democracy is really a specific application of proxy voting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting A startup working with this idea: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/8394883/Jolitics-Bebo-founders-political-social-network-launches.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/8394883/J...
yesbabyyes 16y ago
Thanks limmeau, indeed it does sound exactly like Liquid Democracy. I have thought about the problem you raise and it is indeed a drawback.