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I'm interested to know what the authors think about the problem that could be called vote splitting or support buying, which would be akin to vote buying in one
by cge 11y ago
I'm interested to know what the authors think about the problem that could be called vote splitting or support buying, which would be akin to vote buying in one-person-one-vote system. This seems particularly relevant because, unlike most systems, buying the support of small numbers of voters could be useful.
Consider the case given elsewhere in this thread of 10,000 voters willing to pay only $1 against a proposal, and a single supporter. That supporter would need to pay over $100m for the measure to pass, giving each person against it at least $10,000.
Now suppose that person takes their $100m, and only purchases $25m worth of votes. They find someone else, and transfer $35m to them with the agreement that the person will buy $25m in votes, and keep the remaining $10m. A person who is only willing to vote $1 against a measure is unlikely to turn down such a deal, but it saves the lone supporter $40m.
It seems like it would be very difficult to police this, as the transfers would not necessarily need to be direct. For example, verbal agreements between the one wealthy, lone supporter and nine opponents that those opponents would get contracts in the future worth $1m each would be hard to notice, but would save the supporter $90m. An employer could give bonuses vaguely tied to the success or failure of a measure, and so on. And in all of these cases, the savings are so extreme that vast amounts could be spent hiding the fraud.
Even without buying the votes of opponents, it can be very beneficial for wealthy, motivated supporters to transfer money for voting to poorer or less motivated supporters, to move closer to the optimal funds arrangement (all amounts equal). In some cases, this could be almost indistinguishable from legitimate behavior, and would lead to all sorts of claims: is a philanthropist giving money to the poor to help them live, or to support her social agenda?
In a one-person-one-vote system, buying the votes of individuals requires mass fraud to have an impact. In QV, however, every doubling in size of a group that votes optimally doubles the number of votes they can buy at the same total cost. Thus it seems like small, motivated groups have a very, very large motivation toward fraud, while that fraud could take place at an extremely small level that would be difficult to detect. This doesn't even need to be organized: it makes sense for even a single motivated supporter to go out on their own and split their vote with one other person, perhaps a close friend of theirs.
- stormbrew 11y ago> In a one-person-one-vote system, buying the votes of individuals requires mass fraud to have an impact. More specifically, even if you do go to the trouble of outright buying people's votes, since secret ballots are generally considered the way to go (though they haven't always been, even relatively recently), it's extraordinarily difficult to have confidence in the value of your 'purchase' because you have no way of knowing if the person you paid off did it. In this system, the scaling may make it a lot easier to identify that a person followed your directions and spent a particular amount on the vote...
- glenweyl 11y agoWe are actively working on the identifiability issue; Ron Rivest (of RSA encryption) is writing a paper for a conference on the topic trying to solve this: http://bfi.uchicago.edu/events/quadratic-voting-and-public-good http://bfi.uchicago.edu/events/quadratic-voting-and-public-g...
- thomasahle 11y agoExactly, if we've already created a system where buying votes is accepted, why would I buy 1000 votes for 1000^2 money, if I might as well pay 1000 uninterested people 2 money each to vote the same way as I?
- glenweyl 11y agoBuying votes is not accepted. Using the system would be accepted, but not buying separately. Why couldn't we create a norm where buying outside the system is just as punished then as buying outside the system is now?
- thomasahle 11y agoI'm not saying we couldn't, just that it would be harder. Right now votes are thought of as something inherent to a person, similar to a soul. If votes becomes something people speculate in buying, isn't it likely that they'd start to speculate more than that? Then again, it does sound like an interesting system to try, but maybe to be used for smaller decisions and groups first.
- glenweyl 11y agoI couldn't agree more. Lots of social institutions would have to be built up around it to make it work. That is why we are starting on a small scale with market research.
- glenweyl 11y agoThis is a great question and one of the central ones my analysis addresses (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2264245 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2264245). You can read the results in details for the general guarantees, but a few observations about the scenario you describe. First, doubling group size at worst increases by a factor of the square root of two the number of votes you can buy with the same amount of money. To double the votes you buy you would have to increase aggregate expenditures by the square root of two as well. Second, I disagree that these coalitions would be stable. If you gave someone $35 million, why wouldn't they just keep the full $35 million? Under 1p1v there is no incentive to cheat on the coalition...you get to keep your money regardless. Under QV there is a huge incentive to cheat on the coalition and it could be made even larger by giving bounties for ratting out to the police, which has been extremely effective in antitrust in breaking cartels. In fact the situation is extremely analogous to antitrust. Cartels do harm market performance, but I think few of us would, as a result of them, prefer rationing over markets.