Re: [apsa_itp] open electoral system (strawman plan)

[Michael Allan <mike@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2007 at 06:48:43AM -0500, Steffen W Schmidt wrote:
> In US elections voters live in a series of krazy and overlapping
> jurisdictions and are entitled only
> to vote for positions or ballot measures (initiatives etc) within these
> jurisdiction.
>
> For example, I cannot vote for School Board members in the
> community next to mine but I vote for the same list of candidates for
> US Congress (I am in the same Congressional district as they are),
> but I can vote in my Township Board
> election (but it is a tiny district so only a few of us living in
> this area can vote for that board) and I can vote for the State House
> District but my neighbor just across the street cannot because the
> State House District line cuts about 10 yards from my house. I can vote
> for County Board of Supervisors but my
> neighbor in the other direction lives in a different county and cannot
> vote for the same board - or for the County
> Extension, 4-H boards, etc.  And, everyone in the entire
> state of Iowa votes for president. You can imagine that geocentric and
> "neighbor credentialization"  of me as a legitimate voter
> for any given position that's on the ballot is impossible.

Hi Steffen,

True, this a complexity I did not deal with.  But it's not too hard to
sketch a solution.  Although it sounds complicated (and for many of us
voters is), the system can handle it in stride. (We will not have to
worry about in intitial deployments, though; they will cover a single
level of government, and probably only a single district. But let's
assume a full deployment, covering multiple levels.)

For every registrant, the web must validate 2 primary associations, as
being trustworthy:

  * land address -> email address
  * land address -> electoral district (one for each layer of gov't)

These mappings are trivial to store computationally, and trivial to
show to users.  The hard functions are to establish them in the first
place, and to police them.  I have already described how to do both
for the top mapping (email).  The bottom (district) happens to be
easier, because it contains highly repetitive data (very little info
stored in this mapping).

To establish the mappings, this happens in one of two ways: either
when a new level of government (or other electoral class) is added to
the system.  Then one must fill in the district mappings for every
*existing* registrant.  But only roughly (see policing below).  In
some places, this intial fill-in will be easy to automate using postal
codes; in others, it may take a little more work -- but it need only
be done once.

The other way, is when a *new* registrant is added.  Then either the
registrant must supply the info (maybe copying from his neighbour's
registration), or the system will take a guess (probably in the same
way). Errors will be corrected in policing:

To police the mappings, anybody citizen who sees an error (one of her
neighbours is in the wrong district), he just sends her an email
message, explaining the error. And either the she corrects it, or
somebody eventually points a mistrust-link at her.  (Mostly, the
neighbourhood registrar will lead in all of this.)

Once the gross errors are sorted out, the district mappings will be
very stable -- unless somebody changes the boundaries. (Hopefully
gerrymandering will afflict the US less, after an open electoral
system is in place?)

> Then there is the question of whether my neighbors can give me trust
> links because I am Hispanic and for about 25 years was
> not a US citizen and therefore not
> eligible to vote. Now I am but how do I "validate" my
> residency with my neighbors who have known me for many years (as a
> non-citizen). Do I have to show them my certificate of naturalization! My
> son is living with us for the summer but he is registered in
> Massachusetts but my neighbors have known him for several decades - how
> do they devalidate him as a voter in my district and state?

We do not deal with citizenship. All residents are eligible to vote in
this unofficial system. By the time it becomes official, we will have
gov't cooperation, and then we'll come up with ideas on this.
Meantime there will be a mismatch, more or less, between the
unofficial voter list, and the official gov't one:

> > Over-representation of residents ineligible to vote in the official
> > election, e.g. non-citizens. In some types of community, this might
> > significantly skew the 'poll'.

-- 
Michael Allan

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