Re: Fwd: [apsa_itp] a quiet revolution in democracy

[Michael Allan <mike@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Aug 16, 2007 at 11:35:48AM -0500, Peter Muhlberger wrote:
> Hi Michael:  I like the idea of cascading delegation.  If properly
> implemented, it might get rid of the tremendous political, social, and
> economic power concentrated in the nomination process.  There's a
> reason why most members of the senate are millionaires....
> 
> I would, however, want to investigate how resilient the system is
> against a couple problems.  One issue is the 'wasted vote' issue.  In
> the absence of broadly recognized candidates, wouldn't most people
> vote in chains that terminate on people who don't have a prayer of
> winning?  If so, this could prove highly discouraging to participants.
>  A possible solution would be to hold runoffs in which people with
> terminal votes could then delegate those votes to other candidates.
> This would itself create some real complexities, such as danger of
> vote buying / selling, excessive information demands (there could be a
> large number of potential candidates).

Hi Peter,      (sorry to double-post you)

It shouldn't be a problem, because voting would be dynamic, and
elections continuous.  The day after the winner entered office, the
election for her successor would begin.  As it proceeded, voters would
be free to shift their votes, at any time.  Those who preferred to
vote for likely winners could shift their votes to one of the top
candidates, as they became known.

But that would not be ideal voting behaviour.  For system efficiency,
the best behaviour would be if voters ignored the 'poll' results of
the on-going election, and voted only on the basis of their own
knowledge. For most people, that would mean voting close to home,
where their information is the most accurate. In truth, those votes
would not be 'wasted'; they would add new info to the system. In
truth, a vote for a top candidate (on that basis alone) would be
wasted, because it would merely recycle internal info that is already
known.  Such feedback, if too strong, would weaken the
ability of the meritocracy to self-adjust to new info, as the election
proceeded. It would stabilize, and resist change somewhat.

Real behaviour is not ideal, of course. I'm not sure if this has been
modelled yet, in this context, with real numbers plugged in.  I
suspect results will be far from ideal. (Yet, still, far better than
the system we have now.)

-- 
Michael Allan

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