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| 9/19 |
| 2007/10/10-14 [Politics/Domestic/California] UID:48286 Activity:high |
10/10 Two suggestions for elections: 1) Voter lottery: each person who
votes gets entered in a $10M lottery. 2) Electoral points: each voter
gets to allocate a pool of "electoral points" to whichever candidates
he or she prefers; say six "electoral points," so as to allow pyramid-
ical ranking of 1, 2, and 3. Thoughts?
\_ Obviously, voting is too difficult of a job that the average
American does not want to participate in. We should outsource
voting offshores. We should also offshore our politicians to
reduce conflict of interests.
\_ Yes. Your understanding of math and civics is poor. -dans
\_ dans: shitting in other people's cornflakes for the hell of it.
\_ Others' responses below elaborate on my points nicely. -dans
\_ 1) Don't like it. if they don't want to vote, let them not vote.
Work on making voting easier. Absentee ballots are probably
easier for most people but it's a bit of a hassle to get them.
2) I think this is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulative_voting
I prefer IRV for a single-winner election because it doesn't
make you compromise your support. Dividing points to create
ranks is inferior to simply ranking them outright.
\_ Lack of voting is a signal that is often interpreted as 'none of
the above.' -- ilyas
\_ How about an IQ test or a test of knowledge? So many people who
*do* vote don't know most of the issues and do more harm than
good.
\_ Or how 'bout a poll tax! Do you know anything about our country,
constitution, or history?
The point that would be valid here is that since democracy is
predicated on an educated populace, access to education is an
inherent right.
\_ Hah! Do your research on rights. Oh and on the difference
between a republic and a democracy.
\_ Maybe we should abandon voting altogether and use the
jury selection method: random lottery selection per election
period. Apparently this is how ancient Athens appointed
officials. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
We could use multi-member districts and use approval voting
or cumulative voting etc. to let voters elect representatives
from a pool of randomly selected residents (somewhat akin to
how juries are approved). Perhaps the pool should be limited
to those who "sign up" to be in the pool, to avoid personal
liberty issues.
The advantage over direct democracy would presumably be that
dedicated officials would have the time to fully educate
themselves about the issues. The advantage over elected
reps is to remove the money-driven election apparatus and
get ordinary people rather than giant political parties.
\_ That's what we thought about representative democracy.
\_ It's still representative democracy. The method for
choosing representatives can vary.
\_ Perhaps only Veterans should be allowed to vote. -Vet
\_ There are many vets who aren't even citizens and cannot vote.
\_ I was under the impression that serving in the US
military guaranteed one citizenship. Is this incorrect?
-dans
\_ You're thinking of Starship Troopers. There is fairly
recent legislation to expedite citizenship for members
of the military, but it's not automatic.
\_ We are increasingly going the route of Rome in its
later years, with an Army made up primarily of
non-citizens and mercenaries.
\_ Perhaps only people of my ethnic/socio-economic/education/
geographic/professional background should be allowed to vote.
\_ At least one person got my point. It is disingenuous for
a bunch of CS geeks to argue for an IQ requirement for
voting. -Vet
\_ A basic civics requirement wouldn't be too much to
ask, would it? "Here's a pamphlet in all 300 official
US languages. Call this phone # toll free to hear it
read to you."
\_ Actually, yes it would be too much. Education
requires funding and free time. Making it a
requirement for voting makes it equivalent to
a poll tax. Education is the silver bullet. A
more educated populace yields a "better" electorate
and, one would hope, a "better" democracy. This
is what I speak about above, that the idiotic
replier doesn't understand. --scotsman
\_ So making sure someone had read a flyer or
listened to a 2 minute explanation of our
government system on the phone or at the
polling place is too high a burden to ask a
voter? If someone can' be bothered to do so
little to vote I don't want them voting. I
think you're taking the poll tax concept way
too far. Do you think non-citizens should be
allowed to vote? If not, why not? Is that not
a burden which puts a person in a position to
be a victim of government with no say? Taxation
without representation, etc?
\_ Citizenship is a prerequisite for voting.
I would not change that. I think it's a
very sad thing that non-citizens likely
know more about US civics than natural born
citizens.
The solution is not to make people prove
they're "capable" of voting. It's to
improve education. As to non-citizens,
I assume you mean people who are seeking
citizenship, or people working (and taxed)
under a visa. In those cases, they are
` working under pre-agreed conditions. If
you're talking about undocumented people,
I don't speak on that subject for lack of
knowledge. --scotsman
\_ My idea is about improving education
"on the spot", if you will.
\_ It's not the place for it, and I'd
presume law and precedence on the
matter would back me up. IANAL.
http://epress.anu.edu.au/cw/mobile_devices/ch13s02.html
http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-1004351/literacy-test
\_ It isn't a literacy test. You're
way too focused on that part. How
do you expect your populace to get
educated?
\_ An educated populace doesn't
solve the problem. You need
to demonstrate you care
enough to know the issues.
Knowing a lot about EE
doesn't mean you know diddly
about Prop XYZ, or even read
it. Therefore, I think some
sort of test of knowledge
would be useful. "Do you know
what Prop XYZ is about?"
\_ An EE degree != educated. I
think it was clear that in
the context of this discussion
we're talking about a basic
knowledge of civics, not about
requiring a 4 year degree. Ok,
let's try again: I want to see
voters who know what they're
voting for/about and I want
their votes to count without
going to direct nationwide
polling. What is your
suggestion?
\_ And I want a pony and a
blowjob, but wishing
doesn't make it so.
Actually, I'll probably get
the blowjob. What is your
point? -dans,!PP
\_ If you have nothing to
contribute, don't. I'll
stick to the validity of
my 'civics lesson
requirement' for voting
since no one here can
come up with a flaw in
it, just childish noise.
\_ Read a fucking
history book.
Reading requirements
for voters were
historically abused
to systematically
disenfranchise poor
and black voters.
Your civics lesson
nonsense would be
subject to similar
abuse. Others have
made this point. I
shouldn't have to do
it again. Enjoy your
pony. -dans
\_ You are totally
ignoring what I have been saying. It can be read, it
can be a phone call, it can be read to you, I don't
care what form it takes and you keep intentionally
ignoring that which makes you a troll. If there is a
Hellen Keller voter out there who can't read, hear, or
anything else then we'll give her a pass on the
requirement. You're just trolling. I'm not tom, stop
trolling me like I'm him.
\_ So because
someone may abuse
a law that means
we should not
have it? The status
quo, with only a
few people at the
polls and many of
*those* having no
clue what they are
doing is not being
abused by
politicians?
\_ Hyperbole; we're
not there yet.
Also, as to yr
first q, when
there's a track
record, yes. |
| 9/19 |
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| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulative_voting A points method ballot design like this one is the most common for governmental elections using cumulative voting. Voters are typically instructed to make only one mark per column. A points method ballot design like this one is the most common for governmental elections using cumulative voting. Voters are typically instructed to make only one mark per column. edit History Cumulative voting is used heavily in corporate governance, where it is mandated by many US states, and it was used to elect the Illinois House of Representatives from 1870 until its repeal in 1980. It was used in England in the late 19th century to elect school boards. In an equal and even cumulative ballot, as in Peoria, an individual's vote is fractionally divided evenly among all candidates for whom he or she indicates support. As the number of candidates increases, this can result in the need for computing sums of multiple fractions. In an equal and even cumulative ballot, as in Peoria, an individual's vote is fractionally divided evenly among all candidates for whom he or she indicates support. As the number of candidates increases, this can result in the need for computing sums of multiple fractions. bloc voting, where a voter can only award one vote per candidate, up to the number of candidates as seats. With cumulative voting, voters are permitted to not split their votes and instead concentrate them on a single candidate at full value. Ballots used for cumulative voting differ both in the ways voters mark their selections and in the degree to which voters are permitted to split their own vote. bloc voting, and votes are then automatically divided evenly among those preferred candidates. Voters are unable to specify a differing level of support for a more preferred candidate, giving them less flexibility although making it tactically easier to support a slate of candidates. A more common and slightly more complex cumulative ballot uses a points method. Under this system, voters are given an explicit number of points (often referred to as "votes" because in all known cases those number of points equals the number of seats to be elected) to distribute amongst candidates on a single ballot. Typically, this is done with a voter making a mark for each point beside the desired candidate. A similar method is to have the voter write in the desired number of points next to each candidate. Unless an appropriately programmed electronic voting system is used, however, this write-in ballot type burdens the voter with ensuring that his point allocations add up to his allotted sum. In typical cumulative elections using the points system, the number of points allotted to a voter is equal to the number of winning candidates. This allows a voter to potentially express some support for all winning candidates, however this need not be required to achieve proportional representation; egalitarian concerns of electoral equality, there is nothing in this system that requires each voter to be given the same number of points. If certain voters are seen as more deserving of influence, for example because they own more shares of stock in the company, they can be directly assigned more points per voter. Rarely, this explicit method of granting particular voters more influence is sometimes advocated for governmental elections outside of corporate management, perhaps because the voters are members of an oppressed group; currently, all governmental elections with cumulative voting award equal numbers of points for all voters. If each voter has the same number of points then typically the number of votes would be equal to the number of winners, although there is no reason why this should be required. While giving voters more points may appear to give them a greater ability to graduate their support for individual candidates, it is not obvious that it changes the democratic structure of the method. By concentrating their votes on a small number of candidates of their choice, voters in the minority can win some representation -- for example, a like-minded grouping of voters that is 20% of a city would be well-positioned to elect one out of five seats. England in the late 19th century to elect school boards. Starting in the late 1980s's, it has been adopted in a growing number of jurisdictions in the United States, in each case to resolve a lawsuit brought against bloc voting systems. With strategic voting, one can calculate how many shares are needed to elect a certain number of candidates, and to determine how many candidates a person holding a certain number of shares can elect. The formula to determine the number of shares necessary to elect a majority of directors is: X={S N \over D+1}+1 where X = number of shares needed to elect a given number of directors S = total number of shares at the meeting N = number of directors needed D = total number of directors to be elected The formula to determine how many directors can be elected by a faction controlling a certain number of shares is: N= {(X-1) * (D+1) \over S} with N becoming the number of directors which can be elected and X the number of shares controlled. Note that several sources include a variation of this formula using "X" rather than "(X-1)". Such a formulation does not assure you of having enough votes to elect a director if the "-1" is missing. Without the "-1" you will only be able to determine how many shares you must have to tie, not what you need to win. Of course not every shareholder votes perfectly every time, so the flawed formula may work in many practical instances despite it being conceptionally flawed and mathematically wrong. com, which eliminates the need for formulas and fractions. the readout states the number of directors the reader can elect, and vice versa. By entering the number of directors to be elected, the reader can find the number of shares necessary to elect one or any specified number of directors. Apple Computer's first meeting as a public company, held in January 1981, only a month after its historic IPO. provided a dramatic and surprising example of cumulative voting in action. Apple's bylaws had provided for cumulative voting, but this clause had never been used. Shareholders meetings had been small, exclusive gatherings in small, quiet rooms. Voting proxies were collected by mail and counted before the meeting. Product demos were not needed: major investors had already seen anything important. The business part of the meeting was planned, as usual, to take 15 minutes. Steve Jobs started his prepared speech, but was interrupted: a large number of proxies had been delivered at the meeting, more than usual. Rather than a few hundred cards for a few hundred shares each, millions of votes had arrived at the last minute. Steve Wozniak, and each share had become five votes for Wigginton: there had been five vacant seats. The company's lawyers concluded that two huge blocks of shares, multiplied fivefold, could swing the vote. However, Wigginton, who had no management experience and did not know that he had been nominated, said he was not interested. Eventually, the management slate was elected by default. Tactical voting is the rational response to this system. The strategy of voters should be to balance how strong their preferences for individual candidates are against how close those candidates will be to the critical number of votes needed for election. Voters typically award most, if not all, of their votes to their most preferred candidate. When seeking to help elect more than one candidate, voters may choose to spread their votes evenly between or among those candidates. single transferable vote method describe STV as a form of Cumulative voting with fractional votes. The difference is that the STV method itself determines the fractions based on a rank preference ballot from voters and interactions with the preferences of other voters. Furthermore, the ranked choice feature of the STV ballot makes it unlikely that voters might split their votes among candidates in a manner that hurts their interests; with cumulative voting, it is possible to "waste" votes by giving some candidates more votes than ... |
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition Aristotle relates equality and democracy: "Democracy arose from the idea that those who are equal in any respect are equal absolutely. All are alike free, therefore they claim that all are free absolutely... The next is when the democrats, on the grounds that they are all equal, claim equal participation in everything." Democracy" (literally meaning rule by the people) was in opposition to those supporting oligarchy (rule by a few) and Democracy was characterised by being run by the "many" (the ordinary people) who were allotted to the committees which ran government. Mogens Herman Hansen the citizen's court was superior to the assembly because the allotted members swore an oath which ordinary citizens in the assembly did not and therefore the court could annul the decisions of the assembly. Herodotus (one of the earliest writers on democracy) emphasise selection by lot as a test of democracy: "The rule of the people has the fairest name of all, equality (isonomia), and does none of the things that a monarch does. The lot determines offices, power is held accountable, and deliberation is conducted in public." Venice where sortition was used to select the holders of key political and administrative offices, sometimes combined with an element of qualification or election. Sortition proposals put forward in the modern world generally relate to the means for selecting a large legislative body (such as the US Congress) from among the adult population at large. Let the convention for deciding what is our common will be that we will accept the decision of a group of people who are well informed about the question, well-motivated to find as good a solution as possible and representative of our range of itnerests simply because they are statistically representative of us as a group. If this group is then responsible for carrying out what it decides, the problem of control of the execution process largely vanishes. Those directing the execution process are carrying out their own decisions. The may need a little prodding to keep them up to the mark, but there is no institutional basis for a conflict of interest between bodies responsible for making decisions and those responsible for execution. They have an overriding interest in showing that their decisions are practical and well-grounded. Fairness & Equality Sortition is inherently fair in that it ensures all citizens have an equal chance of entering office irrespective of any bias in society and implies an equal society where there is no meaningful difference between all the members of the society which would make one more suitable than another. Less corruptible than elections Because processes can be developed to ensure that selection is completely fair. For example, Athenians used complex allotment procedures with complicated machine to allot officers. electoral politics in the twenty-first century argue that the process of election by vote is subject to manipulation by money and other powerful forces and because legislative elections give power to a few powerful groups they are believed to be less democratic system than selection by lot from amongst the population. As a result political members of the UK population were represented by one MP per 1800 of those belonging to a party whilst those who did not belong to a party had one MP per 19million individuals who did not belong to a party. edit Disadvantages Sortition does not discriminate The most common argument against pure sortition (that is, with no prior selection of an eligible group) is that it does not discriminate those selected and takes no account of particular skills or experience that might be needed to effectively discharge the particular offices filled. pilot due to the specialist skills that those roles require. The same is argued for many political offices as under a system based on election, it is thought unlikely that those manifestly lacking the requisite skills will be elected to office. taught his companions to despise the established laws by insisting on the folly of appointing public officials by lot, when none would choose a pilot or builder or flautist by lot, nor any other craftsman for work in which mistakes are far less disastrous than mistakes in statecraft." Edmund Burke in his essay Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790): "There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Everything ought to be open, but not indifferently, to every man. no mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or rotation can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects. Because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty or to accommodate the one to the other." However, supporters of sortition argue that there is nothing in the structure of elected government (or of dictatorships, we might add) that suggests representatives will be any more intelligent or capable than those they represent. Moreover, political decision making is arguably not a craft or science, as Socrates suggests. There is not one correct answer to a political question, as in science or mathematics, but rather politics is a question of values, interests and aims. In a democracy, the values, interests and aims that should be satisfied are those of the populace, and therefore the populace is arguably qualified by definition. Certainly, there is room for expertise in formulating the process whereby people's aims will be achieved, but not in deciding those aims. A randomly selected house could listen to the advice of experts, as elected houses do now. Sortition can put in power people with minority views Some of the officials selected by sortition may hold views that greatly differ from those common in the population. For example, an unusually rich official may be selected, and once in power may try to use it to change a tax system in a way that will benefit himself and other rich individuals, in a manner that is opposed by, and possibly detrimental to, individuals who are not as wealthy. The voting process creates interest, debate, learning, and community The process of voting in itself has value; it creates interest and public debate on the future direction of public policy; it may also encourage deeper learning on the issues at stake; it also makes people less isolated by creating various organizations and parties. Voting confers legitimacy Those who see voting as expressing the "consent of the governed", maintain that voting is able to confer legitimacy in the selection. According to this view, elected officials can act with greater authority than when randomly selected. A counter-argument is that by consenting to sortition as used for a jury, the public consents to this form of selection. Sortition is a form of compulsion Unless the system of sorition allows people to opt out of serving, measures for compelling people to serve need to be instituted. Enthusiasm of the representatives In an elected system, the representatives are to a degree self-selecting for their enthusiasm for the job. Under sortition the individuals are not chosen for their enthusiasm. Many electoral systems assign to those chosen a role as representing their constituents; Elected representative choose to accept any additional workload; voters can also choose those representatives most willing to accept the burden involved in being a representative. Individuals chosen at random have no particular enthusiasm for their role and therefore may not make good advocates for a constituency. edit Methods Before the random selection can be done, the pool of candidates must be defined. Systems vary as to whether they allot from eligible volunteers, or from the membership or population at large. The selection method should be carefully designed in order to preserve public confidence that it has not been rigged. Using it, multiple specific sources of random numbers (eg lotteries) are selected in advance, and an algorithm is defined for selecting the winners based on those random numbers. When the random numbers become available, anyone can calculate the winners. Consensus Conferences give ordi... |
| epress.anu.edu.au/cw/mobile_devices/ch13s02.html Next The Mississippi precedent: the education test of 1890 In The American Commonwealth, Bryce canvassed possible solutions to the Negro problem, including the feasibility of deporting Blacks - all eight million - to Africa. He also drew attention to the Mississippi legislation of 1890, which for the first time used an education test' to exclude otherwise qualified Black voters from the electoral roll. Prevented by the 14th and 15th Amendments from disenfranchising Blacks on the grounds of race, the southern state of Mississippi led the way among self-styled white men's countries in deploying an education test - in this case a comprehension test - to achieve racial exclusion. The law required that to be registered a voter shall be able to read any section of the Constitution, or be able to understand the same when read to him, or to give a reasonable interpretation thereof'. The requirement that voters demonstrate a degree of literacy was not itself new. The importance of literacy and education to the exercise of self-government was central to republican understandings of citizenship in the United States, as Matt Jacobsen has pointed out and, it was the northern states of Connecticut (1855) and Massachusetts (1857) that first stipulated that electors should be able to read the Constitution. Massachusetts also required that electors be able to write their names. The 1890 Constitutional Convention of Mississippi marked a new departure, however, in the recommendation of an education test as a means to effect racial discrimination. The Supreme Court of Mississippi commented on the ways in which Blacks' racial characteristics rendered them unfit to exercise the suffrage: Within the field of permissible action under the limitations proposed by the Federal Constitution, the Convention swept the field of expedients to obstruct the exercise of suffrage by the Negro race. He may permit a halting reading by one and require fluent reading by the other. He may let illegible scratching on paper suffice for the signature of one and require of the other a legible handwriting. But race discriminations in such cases rest with the officers; The legislation had the desired effect, as Stephenson reported: In one county in Mississippi, with a population of about 8,000 whites and 11,700 Negroes in 1900, there were only twenty-five or thirty qualified Negro voters in 1908, the rest being disqualified, it is said, on the educational test. In another county, with 30,000 Negroes, only about 175 were registered voters ... As a general rule, taking the country at large, about one person in five is a male of voting age. In Iowa four out of five possible voters have actually voted in the last four elections; in Georgia, a State of nearly the same population, the proportion is one to six ... |
| www.britannica.com/eb/topic-1004351/literacy-test As whites came to dominate state legislatures once again, legislation was used to strictly circumscribe the right of African Americans to vote. Poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, whites-only primaries, and other measures disproportionately disqualified African Americans from voting. The result was that by the early 20th century nearly all... A 1917 law required Powell's father to pass a literacy test to enter the US from Jamaica. It required him to read 40 words from the Bible's 7th Psalm. Powell paid only $10 to attend the City College of New York, whose mission was to help give poor and new immigrants access to higher education. Risks in implementing a test-based accountability system; Impact of incentives and disincentives on the noncognitive goals of schooling; Comparison of the importance of values and academic subjects for US citizens. US President Andrew Johnson began to implement his own version of Reconstruction while Congress was in recess. Johnson quickly invited rebel states back into the Union and pardoned scores of ex-Confederate leaders. Thaddeus Stevens, the most influential Radical in Congress, watched from his home state of Pennsylvania and fumed. When Congress returned to Washington in December 1865, the Radicals were ready to pounce. Their first step was to refuse seats to the Southern leaders Johnson had welcomed back to the Capitol. By November 1866, the Republicans enjoyed a powerful two-thirds majority in the US Congress. Yet Radical Republicans feared that as long as Johnson remained president, Reconstruction was in danger. Remarks by the President at Portland State University Commencement. Essential Speeches, 2003, p0 Presents a speech by United States President Bill Clinton, given at Portland State University's commencement in Portland, Oregon on June 13, 1998. John F Kennedy, the 1960 Election, and Georgia's UnpledgedElectors in the Electoral College. Number of popular and electoral votes received by presidential candidates John F Kennedy and Richard M Nixon; Views of Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver on the agenda of the electoral votes. |