Are there any methods for selecting important public officials from large populations that are arguably much better than the current standards as practiced in various modern democracies?
For instance in actual vote tallying like Condorcet seem to have huge advantages over simple plurality or runoff systems, and yet it is rarely used. Are there similar big gains to be made in the systems that leads up to a vote, or avoids one entirely?
For instance, a couple ideas:
Candidates must collect a certain number of signatures to be eligible. A random selection of a few hundred people are chosen, flown to a central location, and spend two weeks really getting to know the candidates on a personal and political level. Then the representative sample votes.
Randomly selected small groups are convened from the entire population. They each elect two representatives, who then goes on to a random group selected from that pool of representatives, who select two more. Repeat until you have the final one or two candidates. This probably works better for executives that legislators, since it will have a strong bias towards majority preferences.
What other fun or crazy systems (that are at least somewhat defensible) are out there?
There are several research communities working on this and related problems, generally under the headings:
Computational/Algorithmic Mechanism Design and Social/Public Choice Theory
Multilevel voting rounds have the problem that they end up representing elite interests to a very unhealthy degree—round one is likely to select representatives with impressive accomplishments and credentials. Which means the pool of voters for subsequent votes is now more or less entirely from the very top social strata, and as such is not likely to elect leadership responsive to needs of the people. This is not just theory- it has been tried, and the results were bad.
The one I would actually like to see tried is rotating sortition. Representatives are selected for five years terms at random, one year where they are non-voting observers, then 4 years of service. (to counter the inherent problem of throwing people straight into the job)
Do you have any examples of multilevel voting that test whether they increase or decrease the concentration of power?
The only example I know is Venice, where they were introduced with the express purpose of decreasing it and they succeeded. Another example is American direct election of Senators and Presidents. I’m not sure what effect it had there. Plus it is confounded by the continual increase in the franchise.
I read a very interesting book on election systems by William Poundstone called Gaming the Vote. His conclusion was that Score (aka Range) Voting was the best system on offer. A brief explanation can be found at rangvoting.org; it’s a rather simple and intuitive system.
As to idea number 2, I had a similar idea a while back, I called it fractal hierarchy, and a few thoughts occurred to me. First, it need not be democratic at all levels. I was thinking that if you wanted to select for rationality then the entry levels might not be very good at this. This led me to realize that this was rather similar to how the US military is structured, and they are generally positively regarded and considered quite meritocratic, so it might be a good way to do things.
Another idea for legislative systems that I came across that is a merger between direct and representative democracy is called delegable proxy. The idea is that every member can vote on every issue, but they can choose to delegate their vote to a proxy voter, who can then choose to delegate all their votes to another voter, and so on, until you get a number of people with large chunks of votes. But for any issue, an individual can retract their vote(s) and vote how they wish. I think this system would allow for a lot of legislation to get passed, and would most strongly represent the popular will, but that is also it’s greatest weakness, in that you get the issue of tyranny of the majority and ignorance of the masses playing a greater role.
I am working on a project right now to put these and other ideas into practice, and will make a discussion post about it at some point in the future. If anyone is interested in helping me to better articulate my ideas before I post them, please let me know.
Interesting. Wouldn’t Score Voting strongly incentivize voters to put 0s for major candidates other than their chosen one? It seems like there would always be a tension between voting strategically and voting honestly.
Delegable proxy is definitely a cool one. It probably does presuppose either a small population or advanced technology to run at scale. For my purposes (fiction) I could probably work around that somehow. It would definitely lead to a lot of drama with constantly shifting loyalties.
There is some incentive to vote strategically, but depending on the range and the other candidate on offer you might be better off voting honestly. If there’s a candidate you dislike strongly, and a major candidate you only mildly dislike, you might give your favorite a 10, the mild dislike a 3, and the major dislike a 0, just to reduce the major dislike’s chances. The worst case scenario, which you describe, is called bullet voting, and is basically identical to our current system, but if even a small proportion vote honestly it can improve the results. The researcher who made the graph at the bottom of rangevoting.org ran computer simulations of voter preferences compared with candidate values, and found that something like 10% of voters given their honest preference can improve results. I do recommend the book if you want to know more.
I am very interested in delegable proxy, although it seems potentially dangerous and I think if it were implemented it would need to be tempered with some less democratic devices, but it could certainly make for some interesting drama.
Wouldn’t Score Voting strongly incentivize voters to put 0s for major candidates other than their chosen one?
It seems like it would solve US 3rd party voting issues, e.g. if I prefer Libertarians to Democrats to Republicans, I could give the Libertarian candidate 10⁄10, the Democratic candidate 10⁄10, and the Republican candidate 0⁄10.
You’d presumably plan to do that so long as the Republican was in first or second place, but if polling started to show the Republican candidate in third place, you’d want to switch the Democratic candidate’s score down to 0.
In the end, range voting boils down to approval voting, but with a trick to penalize people who are bad at math; and approval voting itself penalizes people who don’t closely follow election polling.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that voting weights based on mathematical aptitude and knowledge of current events are necessarily bad things, and even if they were they’re still probably not nearly as bad as the hysteresis effects of plurality voting.
This led me to realize that this was rather similar to how the US military is structured, and they are generally positively regarded and considered quite meritocratic, so it might be a good way to do things.
Huh? The US military is certainly not universally positively regarded and I am not too sure about being meritocratic either. But in any case, it has nothing to do with voting systems, it’s a strictly hierarchical organization where you shut up and do what your superior tells you to do.
Well, highly regarded as far as US politics is concerned. A lot of people here like to see military service in a politician, and it’s considered to be somewhat above partisan politics. And doing what you’re told is a meritorious characteristic to have in the military, although I suppose it’s far less meritocratic than some other organizations, it’s ideal is that it is. Although you’re certainly right, I should have said my statements were framed in the context of the US politics.
highly regarded as far as US politics is concerned
I don’t know about that. Quite a few of the people I know consider the US military to be the place where not too smart people go to learn how to obey and how to kill.
And doing what you’re told is a meritorious characteristic to have in the military
That’s probably a more sophisticated view, but I think popular opinion is with the military.
And the original topic was
methods for selecting important public officials from large populations that are arguably much better than the current standards as practiced in various modern democracies
And I think the military is similar in many ways to option two, sans the election part, which is why I brought it up.
Jesus is considerably more popular than the military. So?
the military is similar in many ways to option two, sans the election part
“Sans the election part”, LOL. But I don’t see how it’s similar at all. Option two is a bottom-up approach where authority flows up. The military is a standard top-down command hierarchy where authority flows down. The privates don’t get a say in who their sergeant will be and lieutenants do not recommend majors for promotion.
Yes, Jesus is popular than the military, and more highly regarded in US politics by a majority of people. The opinions of the majority being of significant importance in a democratic political system.
And certainly, there are differences. The direction of authority, which is what elections provide, is one. And there are others I’m sure I’m not mentioning, but those related to elections and authority are the biggest. But if you can’t see how it’s similar at all then you aren’t being very charitable and aren’t trying very hard. Both systems are hierarchical, both involve the promotion of a small number from a small group to another small group which then promotes a small number and so on until there is a small number of people or a single person at the top.
But if you can’t see how it’s similar at all then you aren’t being very charitable and aren’t trying very hard.
I am not very charitable and I don’t see any reasons to try very hard. Any metaphor can be made to work with sufficient pushing, stretching, and averting eyes, but the question is why. Do you feel that putting up the US military as an example of a certain kind of voting systems provides some insight, some perspective otherwise unavailable? Do tell.
Well, the reasons to try hard are to be kind to others and to learn something yourself. Again, I never said it was an example of a voting system, what was asked for was a system of selecting public officials, and militaries are often public officials and it is not uncommon for them to change domains. The value is in taking a hypothetical system whose merits and weaknesses are difficult to evaluate, and comparing it to its closest analog in reality, which was my goal. I had come up with a system quite similar to the original query’s idea, and the thought that it might be more effective in a top down fashion occurred to me, so it was even less different from the military than his idea, and both ideas fit the criteria of
methods for selecting important public officials from large populations that are arguably much better than the current standards as practiced in various modern democracies
What I had in mind was more a hybrid between feudalism and the democratic process originally described. Democratic, bottom up above a certain level, top down below a certain level. But the idea was promoting a single person from a small group to a small group of similarly promoted people and so on ad infinitum, concentrating power by either process. I’m thinking of a system that could be implemented in practice.
I think Catholic Church works like this. The middle level is bishop—positions higher than this are (at least were at some point of history) more or less democratically voted, functions lower than this are like in the military, they have to obey completely.
That’s a good point, I knew they elected the pope but I wasn’t sure about the middle positions, I was thinking more about the size of the groups being an important factor when I compared the other system to the military.. And the Catholic Church is another example of an effective real world analog to a system I was thinking about hypothetically.
Multiple rounds of liquid democracy based voting. You first select the top 10 candidates. Then the top 5, followed by the top 2 and then you decide for the last candidate.
In theory, if a small group of people can be trusted to pick a person among them who is at least slightly above average rationality of the group, you could add lots and lots of levels of voting for people who vote for people who vote for people who vote on the issues.
Didn’t this result in the election of Enrico Dandolo, who directed the 4th crusade to sack Constantinople, one of the most self-destructive acts of Western Civilization?
Yes, Venice elected Enrico Dandolo. I’m not sure if “this” elected him, because he was of the intermediate period 1176-1268, but probably a multi-tier voting system.
It depends on your definition of “the West.” Some people insist that Byzantium is not part of the West. This is probably the point where Venice joined the West. But is “self-destructive” a natural category? Wars are destructive. Would it have been less barbaric for the Crusade to follow its original plan and conquer Muslims? What does it matter that you, a millennium later, see Venice and Byzantium as one? That didn’t stop Constantinople from enslaving its Venetian population in 1171.
Some people attribute the Renaissance to Greek manuscripts fleeing Constantinople when it fell a 250 years later. I imagine you condemn the sack because you think it lead to that fall. Was Constantinople doing anything with those manuscripts? They weren’t having their own Renaissance. My impression was that already in 1200 Venice was the greater center of learning.
Anyhow, Byzantium wasn’t his constituency. As I said, the voting system elected a leader with wide support who didn’t use the mercenaries to sack his local rivals. Also, it achieved what Coscott asked for: a highly capable leader, who saved his city from an idle army, improvised a use for it, and, as a blind centenarian, lead the army to great victories.
Are there any methods for selecting important public officials from large populations that are arguably much better than the current standards as practiced in various modern democracies?
For instance in actual vote tallying like Condorcet seem to have huge advantages over simple plurality or runoff systems, and yet it is rarely used. Are there similar big gains to be made in the systems that leads up to a vote, or avoids one entirely?
For instance, a couple ideas:
Candidates must collect a certain number of signatures to be eligible. A random selection of a few hundred people are chosen, flown to a central location, and spend two weeks really getting to know the candidates on a personal and political level. Then the representative sample votes.
Randomly selected small groups are convened from the entire population. They each elect two representatives, who then goes on to a random group selected from that pool of representatives, who select two more. Repeat until you have the final one or two candidates. This probably works better for executives that legislators, since it will have a strong bias towards majority preferences.
What other fun or crazy systems (that are at least somewhat defensible) are out there?
There are several research communities working on this and related problems, generally under the headings: Computational/Algorithmic Mechanism Design and Social/Public Choice Theory
Multilevel voting rounds have the problem that they end up representing elite interests to a very unhealthy degree—round one is likely to select representatives with impressive accomplishments and credentials. Which means the pool of voters for subsequent votes is now more or less entirely from the very top social strata, and as such is not likely to elect leadership responsive to needs of the people. This is not just theory- it has been tried, and the results were bad.
The one I would actually like to see tried is rotating sortition. Representatives are selected for five years terms at random, one year where they are non-voting observers, then 4 years of service. (to counter the inherent problem of throwing people straight into the job)
Do you have any examples of multilevel voting that test whether they increase or decrease the concentration of power?
The only example I know is Venice, where they were introduced with the express purpose of decreasing it and they succeeded. Another example is American direct election of Senators and Presidents. I’m not sure what effect it had there. Plus it is confounded by the continual increase in the franchise.
I read a very interesting book on election systems by William Poundstone called Gaming the Vote. His conclusion was that Score (aka Range) Voting was the best system on offer. A brief explanation can be found at rangvoting.org; it’s a rather simple and intuitive system. As to idea number 2, I had a similar idea a while back, I called it fractal hierarchy, and a few thoughts occurred to me. First, it need not be democratic at all levels. I was thinking that if you wanted to select for rationality then the entry levels might not be very good at this. This led me to realize that this was rather similar to how the US military is structured, and they are generally positively regarded and considered quite meritocratic, so it might be a good way to do things.
Another idea for legislative systems that I came across that is a merger between direct and representative democracy is called delegable proxy. The idea is that every member can vote on every issue, but they can choose to delegate their vote to a proxy voter, who can then choose to delegate all their votes to another voter, and so on, until you get a number of people with large chunks of votes. But for any issue, an individual can retract their vote(s) and vote how they wish. I think this system would allow for a lot of legislation to get passed, and would most strongly represent the popular will, but that is also it’s greatest weakness, in that you get the issue of tyranny of the majority and ignorance of the masses playing a greater role.
I am working on a project right now to put these and other ideas into practice, and will make a discussion post about it at some point in the future. If anyone is interested in helping me to better articulate my ideas before I post them, please let me know.
Interesting. Wouldn’t Score Voting strongly incentivize voters to put 0s for major candidates other than their chosen one? It seems like there would always be a tension between voting strategically and voting honestly.
Delegable proxy is definitely a cool one. It probably does presuppose either a small population or advanced technology to run at scale. For my purposes (fiction) I could probably work around that somehow. It would definitely lead to a lot of drama with constantly shifting loyalties.
There is some incentive to vote strategically, but depending on the range and the other candidate on offer you might be better off voting honestly. If there’s a candidate you dislike strongly, and a major candidate you only mildly dislike, you might give your favorite a 10, the mild dislike a 3, and the major dislike a 0, just to reduce the major dislike’s chances. The worst case scenario, which you describe, is called bullet voting, and is basically identical to our current system, but if even a small proportion vote honestly it can improve the results. The researcher who made the graph at the bottom of rangevoting.org ran computer simulations of voter preferences compared with candidate values, and found that something like 10% of voters given their honest preference can improve results. I do recommend the book if you want to know more.
I am very interested in delegable proxy, although it seems potentially dangerous and I think if it were implemented it would need to be tempered with some less democratic devices, but it could certainly make for some interesting drama.
It seems like it would solve US 3rd party voting issues, e.g. if I prefer Libertarians to Democrats to Republicans, I could give the Libertarian candidate 10⁄10, the Democratic candidate 10⁄10, and the Republican candidate 0⁄10.
You’d presumably plan to do that so long as the Republican was in first or second place, but if polling started to show the Republican candidate in third place, you’d want to switch the Democratic candidate’s score down to 0.
In the end, range voting boils down to approval voting, but with a trick to penalize people who are bad at math; and approval voting itself penalizes people who don’t closely follow election polling.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that voting weights based on mathematical aptitude and knowledge of current events are necessarily bad things, and even if they were they’re still probably not nearly as bad as the hysteresis effects of plurality voting.
It would absolutely be an improvement on the current system, no argument there.
Huh? The US military is certainly not universally positively regarded and I am not too sure about being meritocratic either. But in any case, it has nothing to do with voting systems, it’s a strictly hierarchical organization where you shut up and do what your superior tells you to do.
Well, highly regarded as far as US politics is concerned. A lot of people here like to see military service in a politician, and it’s considered to be somewhat above partisan politics. And doing what you’re told is a meritorious characteristic to have in the military, although I suppose it’s far less meritocratic than some other organizations, it’s ideal is that it is. Although you’re certainly right, I should have said my statements were framed in the context of the US politics.
I don’t know about that. Quite a few of the people I know consider the US military to be the place where not too smart people go to learn how to obey and how to kill.
The topic of the discussion is voting systems.
That’s probably a more sophisticated view, but I think popular opinion is with the military.
And the original topic was
And I think the military is similar in many ways to option two, sans the election part, which is why I brought it up.
Jesus is considerably more popular than the military. So?
“Sans the election part”, LOL. But I don’t see how it’s similar at all. Option two is a bottom-up approach where authority flows up. The military is a standard top-down command hierarchy where authority flows down. The privates don’t get a say in who their sergeant will be and lieutenants do not recommend majors for promotion.
Yes, Jesus is popular than the military, and more highly regarded in US politics by a majority of people. The opinions of the majority being of significant importance in a democratic political system. And certainly, there are differences. The direction of authority, which is what elections provide, is one. And there are others I’m sure I’m not mentioning, but those related to elections and authority are the biggest. But if you can’t see how it’s similar at all then you aren’t being very charitable and aren’t trying very hard. Both systems are hierarchical, both involve the promotion of a small number from a small group to another small group which then promotes a small number and so on until there is a small number of people or a single person at the top.
I am not very charitable and I don’t see any reasons to try very hard. Any metaphor can be made to work with sufficient pushing, stretching, and averting eyes, but the question is why. Do you feel that putting up the US military as an example of a certain kind of voting systems provides some insight, some perspective otherwise unavailable? Do tell.
Well, the reasons to try hard are to be kind to others and to learn something yourself. Again, I never said it was an example of a voting system, what was asked for was a system of selecting public officials, and militaries are often public officials and it is not uncommon for them to change domains. The value is in taking a hypothetical system whose merits and weaknesses are difficult to evaluate, and comparing it to its closest analog in reality, which was my goal. I had come up with a system quite similar to the original query’s idea, and the thought that it might be more effective in a top down fashion occurred to me, so it was even less different from the military than his idea, and both ideas fit the criteria of
There are a lot of political system where the power flows from the top down. Monarchies, dictatorships, etc.
Your example would be, I guess, a junta?
What I had in mind was more a hybrid between feudalism and the democratic process originally described. Democratic, bottom up above a certain level, top down below a certain level. But the idea was promoting a single person from a small group to a small group of similarly promoted people and so on ad infinitum, concentrating power by either process. I’m thinking of a system that could be implemented in practice.
I think Catholic Church works like this. The middle level is bishop—positions higher than this are (at least were at some point of history) more or less democratically voted, functions lower than this are like in the military, they have to obey completely.
That’s a good point, I knew they elected the pope but I wasn’t sure about the middle positions, I was thinking more about the size of the groups being an important factor when I compared the other system to the military.. And the Catholic Church is another example of an effective real world analog to a system I was thinking about hypothetically.
Multiple rounds of liquid democracy based voting. You first select the top 10 candidates. Then the top 5, followed by the top 2 and then you decide for the last candidate.
In theory, if a small group of people can be trusted to pick a person among them who is at least slightly above average rationality of the group, you could add lots and lots of levels of voting for people who vote for people who vote for people who vote on the issues.
You might find this analysis of the election process for the Venetian doge interesting.
For a millennium, Venice had a multi-layer system that alternated voting for voters and drawing lots for voters.
But they were probably more interested choosing a consensus leader who would be fair than a capable leader.
Edit: maybe only half a millennium. For the first half there were simpler elections.
Didn’t this result in the election of Enrico Dandolo, who directed the 4th crusade to sack Constantinople, one of the most self-destructive acts of Western Civilization?
Yes, Venice elected Enrico Dandolo. I’m not sure if “this” elected him, because he was of the intermediate period 1176-1268, but probably a multi-tier voting system.
It depends on your definition of “the West.” Some people insist that Byzantium is not part of the West. This is probably the point where Venice joined the West. But is “self-destructive” a natural category? Wars are destructive. Would it have been less barbaric for the Crusade to follow its original plan and conquer Muslims? What does it matter that you, a millennium later, see Venice and Byzantium as one? That didn’t stop Constantinople from enslaving its Venetian population in 1171.
Some people attribute the Renaissance to Greek manuscripts fleeing Constantinople when it fell a 250 years later. I imagine you condemn the sack because you think it lead to that fall. Was Constantinople doing anything with those manuscripts? They weren’t having their own Renaissance. My impression was that already in 1200 Venice was the greater center of learning.
Anyhow, Byzantium wasn’t his constituency. As I said, the voting system elected a leader with wide support who didn’t use the mercenaries to sack his local rivals. Also, it achieved what Coscott asked for: a highly capable leader, who saved his city from an idle army, improvised a use for it, and, as a blind centenarian, lead the army to great victories.