[Election-Methods] delegate cascade

[Michael Allan]

Hello to the list,

I'm a software engineer, currently developing an online electoral
system. I was in another discussion (link at bottom) and a subscriber
recommended this list to me. I have a few questions, if anyone is
able to help.

A key component of the electoral system (to explain) is what I call a
"delegate cascade" voting mechanism. It is intended for use in
continuous elections (open to recasting). The overall aim is to
support consensus building. In this mechanism:

...a 'delegate' is a participant who both receives votes, like a
candidate, and casts a vote of her own, like a voter. But when a
delegate casts her vote, it carries with it those received. And so
on... Passing from delegate to delegate, the votes flow together and
gather in volume - they cascade - like raindrops down the branches
of a tree. New voters are not restricted in their choices, but may
vote for anyone, their unsolicited votes serving to nominate new
candidates and to recruit new participants into the election.

http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/outline.xht

I can only cite 3 references for the mechanism (Pivato, Rodriguez et
al., and myself) all from 2007. Does anyone know of an earlier
source? Is anyone else working with this mechanism? Have there been
discussions along similar lines?

Please bring me up to date,
--
Michael Allan

Toronto, 647-436-4521
http://zelea.com/

P.S. The other discussion thread (a broader topic) is:

Read any useful research lately, unanswered research questions?
http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/6QthnRysw5lJmRGqnPAy5y

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[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Post by Michael Allan
Hello to the list,

Hello, and welcome.

Post by Michael Allan
I'm a software engineer, currently developing an online electoral
system. I was in another discussion (link at bottom) and a subscriber
recommended this list to me. I have a few questions, if anyone is
able to help.
A key component of the electoral system (to explain) is what I call a
"delegate cascade" voting mechanism. It is intended for use in
continuous elections (open to recasting). The overall aim is to
...a 'delegate' is a participant who both receives votes, like a
candidate, and casts a vote of her own, like a voter. But when a
delegate casts her vote, it carries with it those received. And so
on... Passing from delegate to delegate, the votes flow together and
gather in volume - they cascade - like raindrops down the branches
of a tree. New voters are not restricted in their choices, but may
vote for anyone, their unsolicited votes serving to nominate new
candidates and to recruit new participants into the election.
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/outline.xht
I can only cite 3 references for the mechanism (Pivato, Rodriguez et
al., and myself) all from 2007. Does anyone know of an earlier
source? Is anyone else working with this mechanism? Have there been
discussions along similar lines?

That sounds very much like Delegable Proxy, which Abd says was first
thought of by Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). In DP, as far as I understand it,
voters associate with proxies (delegates in your terminology) and the
proxies accumulate votes from those voters. A proxy is then just like
any other voter, and may vote directly or pass the ballot bulk (in sum
or part) to yet others.

If you remove the ability of proxies to pass the votes on, and instead
let the proxies decide upon the composition of a traditional assembly,
you get Asset Voting. However, that doesn't go very well with your
continuous election idea, since the assembly presumably has to reside
for a given period, just like one that would be directly elected by the
voters.

There's also the council democracy system that, I think, is used in some
unions. There you have local councils that elect among their number to
regional councils that elect among their number to national councils..
the number of "levels" is logarithmic with respect to the population,
but again that's not very continuous, and unless you use PR, it's
possible for a cleverly positioned minority to take control of the
system. Consider the case of each council electing a single person to
the next level. Then having a majority at the top will let you control
the system. Having a majority of the councils required to have a
majority at the top will also let you do so, etc, letting a minority of
((floor(k/2)+1)/k)^n, where k is the council size and n is the number of
levels, control the system in the worst case.

As for others using Delegable Proxy (or "liquid democracy"), if that's
what your scheme is, the Wikipedia page on DP
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting#Delegated_voting ) states
that it's used by a local Swedish party called "Demoex" (Democratic
Experiment). Abd has also said that it's used in corporate governance,
but I'm unfamiliar with whether that implementation lets proxies
transfer votes further.
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[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

Post by Kristofer Munsterhjelm
That sounds very much like Delegable Proxy, which Abd says was first
thought of by Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). In DP, as far as I understand
it, voters associate with proxies (delegates in your terminology)
and the proxies accumulate votes from those voters. A proxy is then
just like any other voter, and may vote directly or pass the ballot
bulk (in sum or part) to yet others.

Yes. The idea has been independently invented, how, recently, in a
half-dozen or so different places around the world, as far as we
know. My guess is there are others we don't know about. Dodgeson's
idea was to deal with exhausted ballots in STV by allowing candidates
ranked first preference to serve, essentially, as proxies for the
voters, so the context was simply an STV election for proportional
representation, but that little tweak turns standard STV PR into
Asset Voting, and Dodgeson used the same metaphor as Warren Smith,
later, in 2004 I think it was. (The candidates can treat the votes
"as if they were their own property Dodgeson) or their Assets
(Smith). A similar idea was called Candidate Proxy, and there are
posts to this list or its predecessor, early on, from Mike Ossipoff
and I think it was Forest Simmons? My own idea dates back at least
twenty years, but, though I talked about it with people, I didn't
start publishing until, as I recall at the moment, 2003, I'd have to
look at the wayback machine. Dodgeson wrote his comment in 1884. Quite a guy!

But the idea is really a no-brainer, once one sits with it long
enough and sets aside all the crap that keeps us from seeing new
things. It's not really new! It is actually just standard proxy
voting with a slight twist, that was always possible but not,
previously, necessary (a standard proxy could generally, before,
delegate the right involved, and it's common that they do, but more
than one level of delegation would be very rare. Standard proxy was
solving a different problem, a smaller-scale problem.

I don't think that Carroll realized the full implications of his
idea. But he did get that this would empower ordinary voters, who, he
noted, did not generally have sufficient information to rank umpteen
candidates, but who would know whom they most trusted, and that is
what he mentions.

Post by Kristofer Munsterhjelm
If you remove the ability of proxies to pass the votes on, and
instead let the proxies decide upon the composition of a traditional
assembly, you get Asset Voting. However, that doesn't go very well
with your continuous election idea, since the assembly presumably
has to reside for a given period, just like one that would be
directly elected by the voters.

Actually, no. If the Asset election creates an "electoral college,"
i.e., a body of public voters whose identities are known, then two
things become possible, quite remarkable things, long considered impossible.

(1) Recall of members becomes possible, quickly and easily, by those
who gave them votes withdrawing those votes. It's easy to overlook
this, because we think of an STV election and assume that an Asset
one would be the same except for a few details. But Asset makes a
major shift: votes are no longer wasted if cast for some relative
unknown, say, your uncle Fred who knows more than politics than you
and you trust him. I'd predict that, in fairly short order and quite
naturally, direct election by secret ballot votes would become rare,
people would realize that they could, almost without limitation, vote
for the person they most trust, it doesn't have to be a "candidate"
except in a technical sense (the person might have to be registered,
and I'd expect there to be a directory of registered candidates
available, and it is possible that names would not even be on the
ballot, eventually. So while there might be a kind of "term," i.e.,
the period to the next regular election, the composition of the
assembly could shift ad interim. My guess is that such assemblies
would be relatively stable, though, and I'd also expect rules that
ensured lack of serious volatility, and see the next possibility that
makes this possible and harmless.

(2) Direct democracy of a kind becomes possible! Once there is this
body of known, identified, electors, it then becomes possible for
them to vote on matters before the assembly. Most of them wouldn't do
it, I'd predict, but there would come to be a penumbra of active
electors who do vote routinely, or who serve as advisors to those
whose seats they created. When an elector votes directly, the value
of that vote (which has to do with the original election fraction) is
substracted from the vote of the seat. My guess is that normally,
these fractional votes would be small enough to not shift results,
but the fact that they could do so, and would do so if somehow the
Assembly lost the trust of the body of electors (who should not be
impeachable except for vote fraud, though some might be forced to
unconditionally delegate their votes under some conditions, such as
incarceration if following debate and voting were no longer practical
for them), would shift the sense of relationship between the public
and the assembly. An individual voter knows who the voter voted for.
And can easily find out where that vote went, what seat (or possibly
seats) represent it. And the voter can then contact the elector with
concerns, and when the elector contacts the seat holder, the seat
holder knows that the elector was literally his or her constituency.

But my work, in fact, is primarily with delegable proxy as a method
for negotiation of consensus, *not* for direct political
applications. And that's what's interesting about this new discovery,
because it mentions that, whereas the others have been political schemes.

Post by Kristofer Munsterhjelm
There's also the council democracy system that, I think, is used in
some unions. There you have local councils that elect among their
number to regional councils that elect among their number to
national councils.. the number of "levels" is logarithmic with
respect to the population, but again that's not very continuous, and
unless you use PR, it's possible for a cleverly positioned minority
to take control of the system. Consider the case of each council
electing a single person to the next level. Then having a majority
at the top will let you control the system. Having a majority of the
councils required to have a majority at the top will also let you do
so, etc, letting a minority of ((floor(k/2)+1)/k)^n, where k is the
council size and n is the number of levels, control the system in
the worst case.

The problem with this is, of course, that representation is lost. A
group that is a minority in all lower level councils is utterly
unrepresented at the top; and, by a well-known effect, because of
uneven distribution of the faction, it could actually be a majority.
Delegable proxy and Asset Voting totally bypass this problem.
Representation is unconditional, uncontested, as it should be.
Representation should not be subject to some kind of vote, really. It
should be voter *choice.* And that is what a good Asset system would
do. I'd use, in fact, the Hare quota, not the Droop quota as Dodgeson
selected. This makes it exact, and the dregs can, if they desire,
still vote directly even if they have not cobbed together a seat.

But what you get with a seat isn't voting power, it's representation
in deliberative process. Electors would not have, as such, the power
to introduce a motion, for example. This realization that
deliberation and voting (aggregation) could be separated seems to be
new, standard political science analysis misses the possibility entirely.

Post by Kristofer Munsterhjelm
As for others using Delegable Proxy (or "liquid democracy"), if
that's what your scheme is, the Wikipedia page on DP
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting#Delegated_voting ) states
that it's used by a local Swedish party called "Demoex" (Democratic
Experiment). Abd has also said that it's used in corporate
governance, but I'm unfamiliar with whether that implementation lets
proxies transfer votes further.

It's unclear, and practice in some corporations may differ from that
in others. The original Wikipedia article on Delegable Proxy was
rather overenthusiastically expanded with, shall we say, unorthodox
sourcing (I didn't touch it except for years ago because of conflict
of interest), and when that same user, an very experienced
Wikipedian, in fact, proposed Delegable Proxy as a solution to
Wikipdia structural problems (it would be, indeed, the situation is
crying for it), he was ultimately blocked, the article was deleted,
and some tried, but failed, to delete the proposal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Delegable_Proxy.

See, there is this thing that some call the Lomax effect because I've
described it so often. If an organization has developed a power
structure that assigns power inequitably such that some group has an
inequitable excess of power, and a proposal is made to distribute
power equitably, the excess power group will oppose it, seeing it as
a threat to their control. Often, such people see their control as
benefiting the organization; after all, they are the ones who,
perhaps, work hardest for it, know the most about it, etc. However,
what was actually proposed on Wikipedia did not change policies at
all, did not challenge the oligarchy except in the most diffuse
possible way.... but the reaction is one I've seen before, it is
practically instinctive.

And I know, pretty much, how to move around it, in a safe way, that
will fail if it is unjustified. As it should! And I'm doing it. It
seems to take about a year for people to start to get DP after they
were first exposed to the idea. Only a few get it right away, and
even at a year, people simply become a little more open to it. But
some of the smartest people I know have essentially signed on. And
when there is critical mass of these, we may start to see some
fireworks. Pretty fireworks, not destructive ones.

Free Association/Delegable Proxy (FA/DP) is designed to be fail-safe;
almost by definition, it can't be destructive. It includes rather
than excludes. It doesn't make centralized decisions except about its
own process, and it can fission easily, so that limited exception is
harmless. And for the same reason that it can fission easily, it can
effectively merge in a flash.

Yes, I have some hope for the future, some hope that I'll actually
see some serious realization of this stuff before I die. And I have
prostate cancer, Stage I (Don't worry, I'm an old guy and will
probably die from something else). My point is just that ... twenty
years. Could happen much sooner, could start to happen in as little
as about a year.

Dear readers, for this point in time, simply notice the idea, think
about it when you can, and talk to others when the opportunities
present. And if you have some time, join with us. I've got Attention
Deficit Disorder (that partly explains why I could see this stuff),
and the down side of that is that I have difficulty following
through. Web sites need work, a wiki should be transferred from one
domain to another, stuff like that. Volunteers needed. And I also
need to make some money, so.... never asked for this before, but
donors needed as well. Personally, to me (but it could be through a
nonprofit of some kind). FA/DP does not need and, in fact, does not
want, large amounts of central funds. Alcoholics Anonymous, the model
Free Association, was given a jump-start by some grants to Bill
Wilson, the major theoretician, for his living expenses while he
worked on the organization. Then, he wrote and edited the famous Big
Book, "Alcoholics Anonymous," and quite modest royalties from that
meant that he never needed to worry about money again, and his wife
was left with a small fortune, which, I think, she left to charity.

Fortune isn't what I did this for, but I do have, in spite of being
64, two small children, 5 and 6 years old.... and little income to
speak of except for social security. I totally turned away from my
own business to do this work.


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[Juho]

Hi,

Some more comments and questions on the properties of the proposed
method.

1) All voters are candidates and it is possible that all voters
consider themselves to be the best candidate. Therefore the method
may start from all candidates having one vote each (their own vote).
Maybe only after some candidates have numerous votes and the voter
himself has only one vote still, then the voter gives up voting for
himself and gives his vote to some of the frontrunners. How do you
expect the method to behave from this point of view?

2) Let's say that the preferences of voter A are A>B>C>D>E. At some
point he decides to vote for his second preference (B) instead of
himself. B's preferences are B>D>etc. At some (later) point B decides
to vote for his second preference D. A is however not happy with that
the vote now goes directly to D (instead of C that was better). He
changes his vote and votes for C. The point here is that it may be
that many voters will vote directly the leading candidates instead of
letting the voters in longer chains (according to their own
preferences) determine where the vote ends at. The reason may be as
above or maybe the voter simply prefers to vote directly for the
leading/best candidates instead of being at the long branches of the
tree (away from the main streams close to the root of the trees where
the decision making appears to take place). Controlling one's own
vote may also give the voter some additional negotiating power. The
end result may be that the cascade chains may tend to be short rather
than long. The same question here. Is this ok and how do you expect
the method to behave?

3) In theory the method may also end up in a loop. There could be
three voters (A, B, C) with opinions A: A>B>C, B: B>C>A and C: C>A>B.
If A votes for A, B votes for B and C votes for A, then B has an
incentive to change his vote to C in the hope that also C will vote
for himself after this move. That would improve the result from B's
(as well as C's) point of view (from A to C). But as a result now A
has a similar incentive to vote for B that is to him better than C.
And the story might continue forever. This kind of loops would
probably be rare. But do you think this is acceptable or should there
be some limitations that would eliminate or slow down possible
continuous changes in the votes? In this looped case is possible that
when the voters note the loop they are capable of negotiating some
compromise solution (e.g. A and C agree that C will get something in
return if he sticks to voting for A).

Juho Laatu

Post by Kristofer Munsterhjelm

Post by Michael Allan
Hello to the list,

Hello, and welcome.

Post by Michael Allan
I'm a software engineer, currently developing an online electoral
system. I was in another discussion (link at bottom) and a
subscriber
recommended this list to me. I have a few questions, if anyone is
able to help.
A key component of the electoral system (to explain) is what I call a
"delegate cascade" voting mechanism. It is intended for use in
continuous elections (open to recasting). The overall aim is to
...a 'delegate' is a participant who both receives votes, like a
candidate, and casts a vote of her own, like a voter. But when a
delegate casts her vote, it carries with it those received. And so
on... Passing from delegate to delegate, the votes flow together and
gather in volume - they cascade - like raindrops down the branches
of a tree. New voters are not restricted in their choices, but may
vote for anyone, their unsolicited votes serving to nominate new
candidates and to recruit new participants into the election.
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/outline.xht
I can only cite 3 references for the mechanism (Pivato, Rodriguez et
al., and myself) all from 2007. Does anyone know of an earlier
source? Is anyone else working with this mechanism? Have there been
discussions along similar lines?

That sounds very much like Delegable Proxy, which Abd says was
first thought of by Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). In DP, as far as I
understand it, voters associate with proxies (delegates in your
terminology) and the proxies accumulate votes from those voters. A
proxy is then just like any other voter, and may vote directly or
pass the ballot bulk (in sum or part) to yet others.
If you remove the ability of proxies to pass the votes on, and
instead let the proxies decide upon the composition of a
traditional assembly, you get Asset Voting. However, that doesn't
go very well with your continuous election idea, since the assembly
presumably has to reside for a given period, just like one that
would be directly elected by the voters.
There's also the council democracy system that, I think, is used in
some unions. There you have local councils that elect among their
number to regional councils that elect among their number to
national councils.. the number of "levels" is logarithmic with
respect to the population, but again that's not very continuous,
and unless you use PR, it's possible for a cleverly positioned
minority to take control of the system. Consider the case of each
council electing a single person to the next level. Then having a
majority at the top will let you control the system. Having a
majority of the councils required to have a majority at the top
will also let you do so, etc, letting a minority of ((floor(k/2)+1)/
k)^n, where k is the council size and n is the number of levels,
control the system in the worst case.
As for others using Delegable Proxy (or "liquid democracy"), if
that's what your scheme is, the Wikipedia page on DP (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting#Delegated_voting ) states that
it's used by a local Swedish party called "Demoex" (Democratic
Experiment). Abd has also said that it's used in corporate
governance, but I'm unfamiliar with whether that implementation
lets proxies transfer votes further.
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[Michael Allan]

I'm grateful I was directed to this list. You're clearly experts. I
wish I could reply more completely right away (I should know better
than to start 2 separate threads). I'll just reply to Juho's
questions today, and tomorrow I'll look at Abd's work. (You've been
thinking about this longer than I have, Abd, and I need to catch up.)

1) All voters are candidates and it is possible that all voters consider
themselves to be the best candidate. Therefore the method may start from
all candidates having one vote each (their own vote). Maybe only after some
candidates have numerous votes and the voter himself has only one vote
still, then the voter gives up voting for himself and gives his vote to
some of the frontrunners. How do you expect the method to behave from this
point of view?

The basic rule of vote flow is: a vote stops *before* it encounters a
voter for a second time, and it remains held where it is. A vote is
always considered to have "encountered" its original caster
beforehand. So it is not possible to vote for oneself. It is
permitted, but the vote stops before it is even cast - there is no
effect.

2) Let's say that the preferences of voter A are A>B>C>D>E. At some point
he decides to vote for his second preference (B) instead of himself. B's
preferences are B>D>etc. At some (later) point B decides to vote for his
second preference D. A is however not happy with that the vote now goes
directly to D (instead of C that was better). He changes his vote and votes
for C. The point here is that it may be that many voters will vote directly
the leading candidates instead of letting the voters in longer chains
(according to their own preferences) determine where the vote ends at. The
reason may be as above or maybe the voter simply prefers to vote directly
for the leading/best candidates instead of being at the long branches of
the tree (away from the main streams close to the root of the trees where
the decision making appears to take place). Controlling one's own vote may
also give the voter some additional negotiating power. The end result may
be that the cascade chains may tend to be short rather than long. The same
question here. Is this ok and how do you expect the method to behave?

The proportion of voters who preferred to vote for the "stars" would
act as a dead weight in the electoral system - a kind of irrational
ballast. To the extent they were fickle, they would act as a shifting
cargo on a rolling ship. Some factors that might reduce this:

* it can be detected and filtered from the results (as irrational
dross)

* it will be boring, there's less scope to interact with a star
candidate, because a single vote has relatively little worth to
her, so:

- the voter's questions, and attempts to enter into dialogue are
likely to go unanswered

- the voter's freedom to shift the vote will confer no leverage,
no input to the candidate's behaviour

* the star voter will be open to criticism from better informed
peers, because the vote placements are public information

- "I see you're voting for a star. If you want to waste your
vote like that, why not waste it on me?"

3) In theory the method may also end up in a loop. There could be three
voters (A, B, C) with opinions A: A>B>C, B: B>C>A and C: C>A>B. If A votes
for A, B votes for B and C votes for A, then B has an incentive to change
his vote to C in the hope that also C will vote for himself after this
move. That would improve the result from B's (as well as C's) point of view
(from A to C). But as a result now A has a similar incentive to vote for B
that is to him better than C. And the story might continue forever. This
kind of loops would probably be rare. But do you think this is acceptable
or should there be some limitations that would eliminate or slow down
possible continuous changes in the votes? In this looped case is possible
that when the voters note the loop they are capable of negotiating some
compromise solution (e.g. A and C agree that C will get something in return
if he sticks to voting for A).

Maybe the rule of vote flow (1) will prevent that, since self-votes
are null? (I have to look at this one again in the morning.) There's
a little more detail on cycles here:

http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#cascade-cyclic

[Juho]

Post by Michael Allan
I'm grateful I was directed to this list. You're clearly experts. I
wish I could reply more completely right away (I should know better
than to start 2 separate threads). I'll just reply to Juho's
questions today, and tomorrow I'll look at Abd's work. (You've been
thinking about this longer than I have, Abd, and I need to catch up.)

1) All voters are candidates and it is possible that all voters consider
themselves to be the best candidate. Therefore the method may
start from
all candidates having one vote each (their own vote). Maybe only after some
candidates have numerous votes and the voter himself has only one vote
still, then the voter gives up voting for himself and gives his vote to
some of the frontrunners. How do you expect the method to behave from this
point of view?

The basic rule of vote flow is: a vote stops *before* it encounters a
voter for a second time, and it remains held where it is. A vote is
always considered to have "encountered" its original caster
beforehand. So it is not possible to vote for oneself. It is
permitted, but the vote stops before it is even cast - there is no
effect.

Ok, not allowing voters to vote for themselves may to some extent
solve the problem. (Some voters may however decide to abstain for a
while.)

What is btw the reason that there were no arrows forward from the two
leading candidates in the election snapshot picture in the references
page? Did they abstain or were their votes (not even their own vote)
not cascaded forward for some other reason?

Post by Michael Allan

2) Let's say that the preferences of voter A are A>B>C>D>E. At some point
he decides to vote for his second preference (B) instead of
himself. B's
preferences are B>D>etc. At some (later) point B decides to vote for his
second preference D. A is however not happy with that the vote now goes
directly to D (instead of C that was better). He changes his vote and votes
for C. The point here is that it may be that many voters will vote directly
the leading candidates instead of letting the voters in longer chains
(according to their own preferences) determine where the vote ends at. The
reason may be as above or maybe the voter simply prefers to vote directly
for the leading/best candidates instead of being at the long
branches of
the tree (away from the main streams close to the root of the
trees where
the decision making appears to take place). Controlling one's own vote may
also give the voter some additional negotiating power. The end result may
be that the cascade chains may tend to be short rather than long. The same
question here. Is this ok and how do you expect the method to behave?

The proportion of voters who preferred to vote for the "stars" would
act as a dead weight in the electoral system - a kind of irrational
ballast. To the extent they were fickle, they would act as a shifting
* it can be detected and filtered from the results (as irrational
dross)
* it will be boring, there's less scope to interact with a star
candidate, because a single vote has relatively little worth to
- the voter's questions, and attempts to enter into dialogue are
likely to go unanswered
- the voter's freedom to shift the vote will confer no leverage,
no input to the candidate's behaviour
* the star voter will be open to criticism from better informed
peers, because the vote placements are public information
- "I see you're voting for a star. If you want to waste your
vote like that, why not waste it on me?"

The behaviour of voter A in the example above may be quite "sincere".
He likes B. If B forwards his votes to some candidate that A
considers to be worse than C then A may vote for C directly.

Post by Michael Allan

3) In theory the method may also end up in a loop. There could be three
voters (A, B, C) with opinions A: A>B>C, B: B>C>A and C: C>A>B. If A votes
for A, B votes for B and C votes for A, then B has an incentive to change
his vote to C in the hope that also C will vote for himself after this
move. That would improve the result from B's (as well as C's)
point of view
(from A to C). But as a result now A has a similar incentive to vote for B
that is to him better than C. And the story might continue
forever. This
kind of loops would probably be rare. But do you think this is acceptable
or should there be some limitations that would eliminate or slow down
possible continuous changes in the votes? In this looped case is possible
that when the voters note the loop they are capable of negotiating some
compromise solution (e.g. A and C agree that C will get something in return
if he sticks to voting for A).

Maybe the rule of vote flow (1) will prevent that, since self-votes
are null?

I expect the cycles in opinions to potentially cause repeated changes
in the cast votes (but since I don't know yet exactly how the voter
will be cascaded I will not attempt to describe the details yet).

Post by Michael Allan
(I have to look at this one again in the morning.) There's
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#cascade-cyclic

Could you explain what happened in Figure 9? What are the rules that
keep one vote at five of the candidates (red numbers) but forward
some of the votes to the next candidate in the ring? I.e. why not
forward all votes or keep all votes?

Juho

Post by Michael Allan
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Post by Juho
What is btw the reason that there were no arrows forward from the two
leading candidates in the election snapshot picture in the references page?
Did they abstain or were their votes (not even their own vote) not cascaded
forward for some other reason?

http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/outline.xht#delegate-cascade

They abstained.

Post by Juho
The behaviour of voter A in the example above may be quite "sincere". He
likes B. If B forwards his votes to some candidate that A considers to be
worse than C then A may vote for C directly.

So A has good reason to vote for C, even though C (suppose) is a star
having many times - thousands of times - more votes. The reason might
be:

i) A knows C personally or professionally

ii) C is recommended by A's favourite talk-show host

(i) If communication channels (personal or professional) give A
influence over C, and not just knowledge (in other words, if the
channels are 2-way) then A may be voting rationally, in the sense of
effectively.

(ii) Otherwise, A is a mosquito voting for an elephant! It's probably
not rational. It would be better to vote for a mouse (the talk-show
host, M), assuming that M *is* actually voting (directly or
indirectly) for C. Then the direct effect on C would be the same -
she'd still be receiving A's vote. But now A would have gained an
open, 2-way communication channel to C, via M.

Or A could band together with other, like-minded mosquitoes (perhaps
by soliciting their votes) and vote en-masse for C. Then C would be
more likely to pay attention to their demands etc.

Post by Juho
I expect the cycles in opinions to potentially cause repeated changes in
the cast votes (but since I don't know yet exactly how the voter will be
cascaded I will not attempt to describe the details yet).

Post by Michael Allan
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#cascade-cyclic

Could you explain what happened in Figure 9? What are the rules that keep
one vote at five of the candidates (red numbers) but forward some of the
votes to the next candidate in the ring? I.e. why not forward all votes or
keep all votes?

[The vote flow volumes (black) were wrong. I've corrected them.]

The votes flow individually. Although received votes (black inbound)
are normally carried back out along with the delegate's own vote
(black outbound), there is one exception: if carriage of a vote would
result in a cycle (the vote being received a second time), then that
vote stops. The stopped vote is held where it is (red), and the other
votes continue on their way. That's why the held votes deposit
themselves evenly around the ring. (The exception in the figure is
the one vote injected from outside of the ring.)

As a consequence, casting a vote has no effect on votes received. If
any one of the voters in figure 9 withdraws her vote (black out), it
will not affect her received votes (black in). And since electoral
standing is determined by votes received, and not by votes held (red),
the casting of a vote can never increase ones standing.

I doubt Figure 9 will ever occur in a real election - it's very much
an edge case - but if it does, it shouldn't cause any instability.
Unless I've overlooked something...

[Juho]

Post by Michael Allan
(ii) Otherwise, A is a mosquito voting for an elephant!

You seem to assume that there is a hierarchy of voters that is used
for communication in the political process, and that this hierarchy
is determined (maybe even formally) by the voting behaviour, and that
direct links between mosquitos and elephants are not the best working
solution.

Should I read this so that if a person has voted for a candidate that
has then (surprisingly) become popular, and this voter doesn't have
many indirect votes to carry from the other voters, then it would be
better for this voter to change his vote and vote for some less
popular (mouse size) intermediate candidate whose votes will cascade
to the original most preferred candidate? If this is true then the
voting process is quite strongly a communication hierarchy building
process. I.e. voters do not vote their favourites but candidates that
they think would be good enough, and right size contact points for
them, and whose votes would cascade to the right candidate.

I understood that the votes are public, so the candidates would know
who their voters are. I understood it would be acceptable for a
mosquito to vote for an elephant, but the mosquito could then assume
that the elephant would not have much time to discuss with him (worth
one vote only).

Post by Michael Allan

Post by Juho
I expect the cycles in opinions to potentially cause repeated
changes in
the cast votes (but since I don't know yet exactly how the voter will be
cascaded I will not attempt to describe the details yet).

Post by Michael Allan
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#cascade-cyclic

I doubt Figure 9 will ever occur in a real election - it's very much
an edge case - but if it does, it shouldn't cause any instability.
Unless I've overlooked something...

Let's say that in Figure 9 there are three candidates that are
interested in getting lots of votes. They could be the very top
candidate (T), the bottom left candidate (L) and the bottom right
candidate (R). Candidate T prefers R to L. Candidate R prefers L to
T. Candidate L prefers T to R.

Voting will start by all voting for their favourite candidate. The
result is as in Figure 9.

Then candidate T abstains. As a result he will get lots of votes.

Candidate L reacts to this by abstaining. As a result of this
candidate L will get the highest number of votes.

Now candidate T realizes that he needs to vote again (as in Figure 9)
in order to avoid electing L. Candidate L still has most votes. But
now candidate R can (and will) abstain, and will get more votes than L.

Now candidate L is in the same position as candidate T was few
moments ago. Candidate L votes again and thereby opens up the option
for candidate T to abstain again and become the leader.

Next it is candidate R's turn to do the same tricks and allow
candidate L to become the leader.

These cyclic changes could in principle continue forever.

The point here is that group opinions may contain cycles (this is not
dependent on what election method is used). Methods that allow votes
to be changed continuously may end up in loops like this. If cycles
are expected to cause problems (when they exist) one could develop
some tricks that could slow down the cyclic changes or even ban them
somehow.

Juho





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Post by Michael Allan
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#cascade-cyclic

Let's say that in Figure 9 there are three candidates that are interested
in getting lots of votes. They could be the very top candidate (T), the
bottom left candidate (L) and the bottom right candidate (R). Candidate T
prefers R to L. Candidate R prefers L to T. Candidate L prefers T to R.
Voting will start by all voting for their favourite candidate. The result
is as in Figure 9.

T


(1)

6 / \ 6
/ \
1
(0) ----> (1) (1)

^ |
5 | | 6
| v

(2) (1)
L R
\ /
6 \ / 6

(1)


Voting nodes are bracketed (H), where H is the count of votes held
(removed from flow). Volume in/out is shown by numbers. Vote flow is
clockwise.

For example, L (bottom left) has votes:

6 incoming
(2) held
5 outgoing

T (top) has:

6 incoming
(1) held
6 outgoing

Then candidate T abstains. As a result he will get lots of votes.
Candidate L reacts to this... These cyclic changes could in
principle continue forever.

T


(6)

6 /
/
1
(0) ----> (0) (0)

^ |
4 | | 1
| v

(0) (0)
L R
\ /
3 \ / 2

(0)

After abstaining, T has:

6 incoming
(6) held
0 outgoing

Rankings are determined by votes incoming, not votes held. This is
crucial. (It was only decided a couple of releases ago, so there may
inconstencies in the docs.) T's absolute standing in the election is
unchanged by the decision to abstain. T still has the same 6 votes of
assent. But T's *relative* standing has been increased, at the
expense of the others in the ring.

Large cycles will tend to be *structurally* un-stable - they will tend
to fall apart and not re-form. But I doubt they will be *dynamically*
unstable. (Smoothing might not be needed, as Kristofer suggested.
But PageRank is interesting, I'm looking at it for the first time. I
wonder how they handled the problem of vote cycles among pages?)

Post by Michael Allan
(ii) Otherwise, A is a mosquito voting for an elephant!

You seem to assume that there is a hierarchy of voters that is used for
communication in the political process, and that this hierarchy is
determined (maybe even formally) by the voting behaviour, and that direct
links between mosquitos and elephants are not the best working solution.

True, I expect a similar patterns of a) formal vote flow, and b)
informal communications.

Should I read this so that if a person has voted for a candidate that has
then (surprisingly) become popular, and this voter doesn't have many
indirect votes to carry from the other voters, then it would be better for
this voter to change his vote and vote for some less popular (mouse size)
intermediate candidate whose votes will cascade to the original most
preferred candidate?

Yes, it would seem to be better. So a communication choice (dialogue
with a fitting partner) determines vote placement (a informs b).
Aside from gaining an effective dialogue partner, and increased
leverage, the voter is now in a position to eavesdrop downstream. A
whole sub-branch of the communication network is explicitly revealed,
that would otherwise have been hidden. In it, the voter can learn
what the issues are. He can then correlate the issues with his own
peculiar interests.

By the same token, he can easily watch for downstream vote shifts in
the assent network. So he will learn about alternatives that might
otherwise have been hidden. (And maybe learn too how to use his vote
as leverage.)

If this is true then the voting process is quite strongly a
communication hierarchy building process. I.e. voters do not vote
their favourites but candidates that they think would be good
enough, and right size contact points for them, and whose votes
would cascade to the right candidate.

I've never shone much light on it. You're pointing to a tension
between voting for competence in communication, on the one hand, and
competence in a specialty, on the other. In an election for Municipal
Public Health Officer, for instance, a voter might choose his most
medical-minded friend (a nurse). But then, if the nurse turned out to
be an ineffective communicator (questions going unanswered) he might
shift his vote to someone else.

I guess a similar tension will play out among candidates too - between
their roles as politicians, and as experts. Will the politicians
cooperate with the experts somehow? What happens if two candidates
vote for each other (tight cycle), in order to formalize a kind of
partnership between them? Maybe one is a technical expert (doctor or
scientist) and the other a politician (communicator, consensus
builder). Would they attract more votes that way? More generally, to
what extent will the formal structure of the communication/voting
network (mid-election) predict the actual structure of administrative
power (post-election)?

Parallel to all of this, and in addition to it, is the pattern of text
flow in the evolution of consensus norms (such as a public health bill
- a separate election from above). The channels by which the
legislative drafters are exchanging bits of text will tend to align
(to some extent) with the channels of discussion and discourse, and
with the patterns of vote flow. There could be interesting synergies
among all of these. (I hope there are no instabilities.)

[Juho]

Post by Michael Allan
Rankings are determined by votes incoming, not votes held. This is
crucial. (It was only decided a couple of releases ago, so there may
inconstencies in the docs.)

Ok, this seems to bring the model closer to what Kristofer
Munsterhjelm proposed.

Post by Michael Allan
Large cycles will tend to be *structurally* un-stable - they will tend
to fall apart and not re-form. But I doubt they will be *dynamically*
unstable.

I'm quite confident that the possibility of continuous cyclic changes
in continuous elections (due to cycles in the group opinions; A
preferred over B, B preferred over C and C preferred over A) exists
since that is a very general property of voting methods. The problem
may not appear often and it may be that the cyclic behaviour won't
last long for other reasons, but in theory that risk exists.

Post by Michael Allan
You're pointing to a tension
between voting for competence in communication, on the one hand, and
competence in a specialty, on the other.

I don't see any bad tensions. I just thought that it would be good to
state it clearly if the proposed method is not intended to be just an
election method but also has another target of creating a permanent
communication structure among the voters. The change makes the
evaluation criteria and questions and comments quite different.

Post by Michael Allan
What happens if two candidates
vote for each other (tight cycle), in order to formalize a kind of
partnership between them?

If the incoming votes are the ones to be counted then both will get
more votes. Sounds like a good strategy, except that the one with
less original incoming votes will now get as many incoming votes as
the other one.


Here's one more potential problem case. If some candidate receives
votes from too many directions then some of the voters should switch
to not voting this candidate directly (to make the tree structure
less flat). If many of them have about the same number of incoming
votes they may be reluctant to change their vote since they'd prefer
other voters making the move first and thereby letting them stay
closer to the root of the tree (instead of ending up close to the
leaves).

Juho






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[Michael Allan]

(It occurs to me, Abd may have thoughts on this topic too. I haven't
read all of his Wiki. It's still down.)
http://beyondpolitics.org/wiki/

I'm quite confident that the possibility of continuous cyclic changes in
continuous elections (due to cycles in the group opinions; A preferred over
B, B preferred over C and C preferred over A) exists since that is a very
general property of voting methods. The problem may not appear often and it
may be that the cyclic behaviour won't last long for other reasons, but in
theory that risk exists.

OK. The dynamic is complex, and hard to predict. I'm curious to see
what happens in reality. Marcus Pivato said there's no way to model
this stuff in vitro (simulations), we have to run it in vivo.

But thought experiments are still useful. Aside from the voting
medium, there's also an underlying trust network for authenticating
the voter lists. We discovered last summer - doing thought
experiments in the APSA_ITP list - that my initial design was
unstable. I've since split it into 2 parallel networks of positive
(trust) and negative (doubt) signals, in order to prevent an unstable
mixture - escalating signal warfare among voters. I'll post it later,
when the design is documented. (It's already coded.)

What happens if two candidates vote for each other (tight cycle),
in order to formalize a kind of partnership between them?

If the incoming votes are the ones to be counted then both will get more
votes. Sounds like a good strategy, except that the one with less original
incoming votes will now get as many incoming votes as the other one.

Which suggests a criterion:

I. Formal vote flow ought to correspond to the actual consensus and
will of the electorate's community.

More technically (and assuming 100% turnout of the community),
the overall flow of votes in any branch of the election tree
ought to exactly reflect the current, collective decision of that
branch's electorate, and not that of any individual or subgroup
among them.

So the following ought *not* to be merely the decision of A and
B:

(1)

\ | | /
\ | | /

--- A <---> B ---

/ | | \
/ | | \


When A and B vote for each other, their incoming votes are pooled and
spread out to the same level on both sides. Applying criterion (I),
how does this formal arrangement match the actual reality?
Specifically:

i) Are A and B really a team (in mutual deference) as their pooling
of votes would imply?

ii) Do people want them as a team? Can team A-B retain at least the
level of vote flow of MAX(A,B), and maybe build on that?

(i) Maybe A and B have worked together in the past. Or maybe they
just intend to work together in the future. In any case, it was not a
mere accident that they voted for each other; otherwise the cycle
would immediately pull itself apart, correcting the mismatch of formal
and actual.

(ii) If A-B was a popular team in the past (like a pair of Roman
Consuls with complimentary strengths) then pooled vote flow A + B
ought to rise.

Or, if A-B is a novel union, then we ought to see an immediate,
decline in A + B, in response to the union. But as long as it stays
above MAX(A,B), or rebounds to that level, the union should prove
stable.

On the other hand, if voters ever perceive that the union A-B is *not*
a good idea, then A + B ought to decline below MAX(A,B). The union
would then fall apart, correcting the mismatch of formal and actual.

Here's one more potential problem case. If some candidate receives votes
from too many directions then some of the voters should switch to not
voting this candidate directly (to make the tree structure less flat). If
many of them have about the same number of incoming votes they may be
reluctant to change their vote since they'd prefer other voters making the
move first and thereby letting them stay closer to the root of the tree
(instead of ending up close to the leaves).

Picture a simpler extreme first, a tree flattened to the densest
possible star:

(2)


\ | /
\ | /

--- C <-- D

/ | \
/ | \


Suppose density is higher than shown, and C has thousands of voters.
None of them is a delegate, so only C has incoming votes. If this
were the entire election, then C would have 100% of the vote flow, and
the community would formally be expressing itself, saying, "Among us,
only C has any particular interest or competence in this issue." This
sounds false. Suppose the issue is the Public Health Bill mentioned
previously. It is unlikely that the community has no interest or
competence in this issue. Consequently, this pattern of vote flow
ought to prove unstable.

Suppose that D (who has no votes) nevertheless has an interest in this
piece of legislation. D expresses her interest to C, requesting
specific changes in the draft bill. But C does not listen to D; or C
decides (for whatever reason) not to make the requested changes. What
are D's options? D might withdraw her vote from C. But what good
would it do?

So D starts talking with the other voters. There's a loose halo of
them surrounding C - ripe for the picking - and D has no trouble
finding others who agree to the proposed changes. Moreover they
respect the effort she is putting into the issue, and admire her sense
of initiative. So feeling this way, they have everything to gain (and
nothing to lose) by expressing themselves as follows:

(3)


\ | / /
\ | / /

--- C <-- D ---

/ | \ \
/ | \ \


Here the dense star pattern begins to unravel into a tree. Even
though C has lost some direct votes (and no longer has 100% of the
flow) she still has most of it (thousands of votes). Nevertheless she
is under increased pressure from D. This is much to the advantage of
D's new voters, who are not at all unhappy at being further from the
root, and having D to fight so energetically for their interests. C
may have trouble resisting the pressure unless she gets help from
someone who is opposed to D.

(4)


\ \ | / / \ | /
\ \ | / / \ | /

--- E --> C <-- D --- --- X ---

/ / | \ \ / | \
/ / | \ \ / | \


Here E is expressing opposition to D. The content of E's legislative
draft (or amendment request) opposes that of D's, and consequently E
has attracted his own voters from among C's halo - those voters who
prefer E's ideas over D's. Note how C is at the mercy of these
upstarts. Note also that D has a big rival X (not shown previously),
who is watching the show from the sidelines.

D and E are both supporters and rivals of C. This puts them in a
strong position. Nothing would prevent them from talking to X, and
offering (threatening) to move their support, provided X is more
willing to satisfy them. In deciding whom to satisfy, both C and X
will require a clear understanding of the *basis* of their support.
But they have no way to attain that understanding except through the
rational structure of their incoming vote flow - a structure that is
beginning to emerge in D and E. Consequently, the amorphous and
irrational halos around C and X are likely to disappear, and re-form
into more-or-less rational trees. It will be in everybody's interest.

This is true recursively. As D and E acquire more vote flow, the
formal stucture of the sub-branches will elaborate the finer details
of their own interest positions. (Was it Abd who called this a
fractal?) They will then be under pressure from formal vote shifts in
these structures, shifts that reflect the dynamics of interest. None
of the details of this can be known in advance, nor can the overall
pattern be predicted - it can only be revealed moment by moment as the
election proceeds.

[Juho]

Post by Michael Allan
OK. The dynamic is complex, and hard to predict. I'm curious to see
what happens in reality. Marcus Pivato said there's no way to model
this stuff in vitro (simulations), we have to run it in vivo.

I think it is possible to find and study many of the features of a
method on paper. But only real life will show how people will
actually behave. The psychological process is often too complex to
address using few theoretical measures. Also different societies may
be very different (e.g. strategic behaviour accepted vs. not).

Post by Michael Allan
I've since split it into 2 parallel networks of positive
(trust) and negative (doubt) signals, in order to prevent an unstable
mixture - escalating signal warfare among voters. I'll post it later,
when the design is documented. (It's already coded.)

Careful with the negative signals/votes. Well known figures might get
more of them than what they "deserve".

Post by Michael Allan

Here's one more potential problem case. If some candidate receives votes
from too many directions then some of the voters should switch to not
voting this candidate directly (to make the tree structure less flat). If
many of them have about the same number of incoming votes they may be
reluctant to change their vote since they'd prefer other voters making the
move first and thereby letting them stay closer to the root of the tree
(instead of ending up close to the leaves).

(4)
\ \ | / / \ | /
\ \ | / / \ | /
--- E --> C <-- D --- --- X ---
/ / | \ \ / | \
/ / | \ \ / | \

Your description was a good explanation on how things should work
when they work well. Maybe here real life use will show us how much
people will behave as expected and where they start first seeing
problems.

In my "potential problem case" I was maybe most interested in a
situation where we would have three different D clones, D, D2 and D3.
Their opinions would be relatively similar and their agenda towards
influencing C would be quite similar. Maybe the ambition of all of
them is to one day become a central figure like "C" or "X". They need
to reorganize to be able to influence C better (otherwise E is too
strong with his opposing opinions). They could organize themselves
either C<-D1<-D2&D3 or C<-D2<-D1&D3 or C<-D3<-D1&D2. They all wonder
which one of them will get the best seat here. (My point was just
that this kind of interests may keep the tree flatter than what would
be optimal.)

Juho







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Post by Michael Allan
This is true recursively. As D and E acquire more vote flow, the
formal stucture of the sub-branches will elaborate the finer details
of their own interest positions. (Was it Abd who called this a
fractal?)

Yes, I called it, in fact, "fractal democracy."

Post by Michael Allan
They will then be under pressure from formal vote shifts in
these structures, shifts that reflect the dynamics of interest. None
of the details of this can be known in advance, nor can the overall
pattern be predicted - it can only be revealed moment by moment as the
election proceeds.

Note, however, that while it's interesting to consider how
"elections" would function, I don't see, in the near future, the use
of delegable proxy as an actual election method, with possibly some
experimental applications. Rather, it is a device for negotiating and
measuring consensus. In Free Associations, because the organization
does not collect power for application by vote, there is no special
power in "majority," rather, there is an increase of real power
(i.e., power outside the organization resulting from agreement
discovered within it), steadily, with an increase in the degree of
real consensus found.

If some issue is being considered and there is 51% on one side and
49% on the other, and then this is going to affect some outside
process, such as a political campaign, and if the measurement was
accurate, we might see 51% of members, following the recommendation
of their proxies, supporting the campaign of A, and 49% supporting
the campaign of B. The net effect of this is actually pretty low, a
net weight of 2% in favor of the election of A, which would show up
as a 2% differential in campaign financing, other factors being
equal, and 2% in numbers of volunteers available, etc. However, if a
higher level of consensus can be found, the power differential
rapidly becomes heavily one-sides. An increase in support from 51% to
67%, or only 16%, for A, would mean that the funding for A coming
from organization members is now double that of the funding for B. We
could say that in the first example, 98% of the effort going into the
election is wasted, because it is simply spent in opposition. In the
second, that is reduced to two-thirds. Still quite wasteful, but much
less so than the bare majority. And we wouldn't stop there, I think.
The goal would be to find very substantial consensus. How possible
this is with major political issues is unknown. I do know that in
small organizations, what can seem like intractable differences can
disappear if there is sufficient effort put into finding consensus.
Organizations of twenty to thirty individuals are, under some
conditions, able to function with full consensus rule. It's tedious,
often, and for that reason isn't necessarily stable over decades. But
that problem can be solved. With delegable proxy, which works not
just for large organizations, but which should help small ones as well.

FA/DP creates a structure which rewards consensus. It doesn't require
consensus, individuals remain free to act on their own or in groups.
(The DP structure makes organizing action groups trivial: any natural
caucus can become an action group, with likely high agreement within
the group. But the structure is fail-safe: if the internal agreement
of a caucus is a false agreement, there will be little actual power
exerted. The chief will ask for the action and the Indians will
scatter. Another reason why I wouldn't want clients who did not
actually trust me. Waste of time. We tend to think of power as being
something collected, but FA/DP turns that on its head. Power exists
out at the periphery, with each member, and most power is actually
exercised by clients who don't have, necessarily, any incoming
proxies at all. They are the ultimate arbiters; they accept
suggestions coming from their proxies or they don't.

The structure is often described as bottom-up, but it really can be
seen from both directions. Information flows in both directions.
Proxies, toward the center, negotiate broad consensus and their votes
are deemed to roughly represent the votes of their nonvoting clients.
It doesn't have to be exact. The consensus, when negotiated, to
whatever extent is going to be found, goes back out to the periphery,
through the proxy network. It gets passed on personally, not merely
by some organizational publication. You get a phone call.

I lived in a small town in Western Massachusetts when the beyond
politics web site was set up. I tried to start a Cummington Free
Association. Probably the single most influential person in town was
very interested. However, turns out, that doesn't necessarily mean
much. Anyway, one of the things I had noticed was that the town had a
vote to implement a tax override. It's a Town Meeting town, and Town
Meeting had voted to put this on the ballot, because tax overrides,
by Massachusetts law, must be submitted to the voters in a regular
secret ballot election. Town Meeting, of course, isn't secret, it is
a deliberative body. Anyway, the override failed. There was a big gap
between what Town Meeting decided and what the voters decided. Why?
Isn't that an interesting question? Oddly enough, I didn't see anyone
asking it! The Town of Amherst has a specially-chartered "Town
Meeting." It's really not a Town Meeting at all, rather it is a huge
representative assembly, individual small neighborhoods elect
representatives. (They don't seem to get it, that this *really* is
not Town Meeting, it is something quite different. But many Amherst
residents are fierce about preserving their Town Meeting, even
though, as a body of several hundred residents, it is unwieldy and
famously contentious. Anyway, there were two elections in recent
years where an initiative to abolish Town Meeting was on the ballot.
In both elections, it failed, by a tiny percentage, truly close. Town
Meeting supporters breathed a sign of relief. But didn't they notice
that this supposed bastion of democracy wasn't supported by *half* of
the voting electorate? Something is wrong, and who was looking at it?
Really, I looked. Nobody is looking at it.

In Cummington, Town Meeting functions quite well, actually, it is
rarely highly contentious, people are friendly and open, and
newcomers are welcomed into the Town governmental structure. Moving
in, we were asked if we wanted to serve on Town Committees. There is
always a shortage of people willing to serve. It kind of turns your
idea of politics on its head to realize that small towns often have a
shortage of people willing to run for office, particularly the minor
offices. There were opposed elections there. Sometimes.

Why did the tax override fail? Well, I can say why I didn't vote for
it. As it happened, I did not vote against it either, I realized that
I really didn't know whether it was a good idea or not. There were
some problems with the proposal (a new safety complex), it seemed
overblown, and I knew that a friend active in town government, much
more than I -- she had become a town officer -- was opposed. So I
simply abstained. I'm sure, though, that a lot of people would simply
vote against a tax increase, unless they actually favored it. Bottom
line: nobody called me to tell me that I should vote for it. Or
against it, for that matter. Why not? Small town, about 600
registered voters. Now, some volunteer could have called me, easily.
But what if I'd gotten a call from my proxy, the person I'd
designated to represent me -- informally, in a Free Association, not
officially -- explaining to me why the proposal was worthwhile? Would
I have voted for it. I'm sure I would have. Unless the argument
seemed totally bogus, in which case I'd be wondering why I'd chosen
this person, and would probably change the proxy assignment. But it's
highly unlikely it would be totally bogus.

More to the point, when the safety complex proposal was the subject
of hearings, etc., my proxy would have kept me informed, would have
asked me if I had any input to give, would have discussed with me any
question I had, would generally have seen that my ideas were part of
the process, and I'd know that. It wouldn't have been a mystery. Even
if I didn't have time to go to the hearings or vote at Town Meeting,
Town Meeting would have a sense of what I and other participating
townspeople felt about the proposal, and they wouldn't have wasted
time and money on a tax override that wasn't going to pass.

The communication is the point, not the voting in the Free
Association, and a great deal would happen with no voting at all.
When Town Meeting was ready to decide whether or not to put a
proposal on the ballot, I'd assume that someone would request a vote
within the Free Association, and the results would be available to
Town Meeting. The Meeting could choose to disregard the vote. But I
doubt that, if the FA were substantial, with more than 10% of the
Town participating, that they would simply dismiss it. And one could
hope for much higher extended participation than that.

And the whole point of an FA/DP organization is that, in theory, it
is extremely simple to join and participate to whatever level one
wishes. In most organizations, if you simply joined and did almost
nothing, there wouldn't be much benefit, either. In an FA/DP
organization, though, simply naming a proxy establishes a
communications link. It costs very little (just enough lookabout to
identify someone you think might have a good head or good heart, or,
preferably, both). The present problem, of course, is that nobody
believes that. It really takes some wrapping of one's head around
some new perspectives to get it. Once FA/DP organizations are
operating, people will be able to see it. It will be obvious, it's
not actually complicated, it's merely hard to see when one hasn't
seen it before....

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[Michael Allan]

(May I use the list as a scratch pad, to record ideas? There's a
theory somewhere in these technical pieces, and maybe it connects with
the social architecture being mooted in other threads.)
http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/4yAf4tghgQ5b53pGbPDRpZ
http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/XfrpCKqPLfZVDbcSnRQHY

I've been wondering how the previous argument would apply to an
election in which the issue was an office (executive, jurist,
bureaucrat) as opposed to a norm (policy, law, plan).

(4)


\ \ | / / \ | /
\ \ | / / \ | /

--- E --> C <-- D --- --- X ---

/ / | \ \ / | \
/ / | \ \ / | \


This is the bottom view of an election, showing the two roots (C and
X). Higher branches and leaves are largely omitted.

If the issue here is a norm (such as the Public Health Bill) then
there is no sense in which the election will ever produce a "winner".
C and X are never going to become traditional legislators. The
incoming vote flow will never confer on them a *power* to legislate.
It will only give them temporary license to *assemble* legislative
ideas that are flowing toward them. This is another sense in which
the formal vote flow must correspond to actual need. As long as C and
X are successfully assembling the incoming flow of text, they will
receive a corresponding flow of votes; otherwise the vote flow will
shift elsewhere. In this sense, C and X are just tools of the
electorate.

Moreover they are disposable tools. Figure 4 is just a snapshot in
time. It shows a particular stage of norm construction at which C and
X happen to be the best assemblers - the best tools for the job. It
is unlikely they will remain the best tools at all stages of the
construction. This is especially true since the election will never
terminate. Although a "final" legislative draft (say C's) might be
pulled from the root of the tree at some point and promulagated as a
law, the election will nevertheless continue uninterrupted. No norm
is ever final - it always remains open to the possibility of amendment
or even withdrawal. So the electorate always has an interest in it.

Technically speaking, it appears that the formal flow of votes at any
moment is the *medium* that connects input (i) to output (o):

(i) actual interest of the electorate in the norm

(o) formal expression of the norm, as a text

But how does this apply to an election in which the issue is a
political office? How would the formal medium of assent relate to the
exercise of executive power? Or juridical? What precisely are the
inputs and outputs to be mediated?

I wonder especially how vote delegation relates to power delegation.
If my neighbour has leadership qualities, and I vote for her as Mayor
(my delegate), do I thereby assent to her becoming the Mayor's
lieutenant in my neighbourhood? Might the Mayor delegate actual power
to her, if the need ever arises?

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

Post by Michael Allan
(May I use the list as a scratch pad, to record ideas? There's a
theory somewhere in these technical pieces, and maybe it connects with
the social architecture being mooted in other threads.)
http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/4yAf4tghgQ5b53pGbPDRpZ
http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/XfrpCKqPLfZVDbcSnRQHY

I could also suggest the list fa-***@yahoogroups.com, which really
could use some activity. This would be exactly on point there.

Post by Michael Allan
I've been wondering how the previous argument would apply to an
election in which the issue was an office (executive, jurist,
bureaucrat) as opposed to a norm (policy, law, plan).
(4)
\ \ | / / \ | /
\ \ | / / \ | /
--- E --> C <-- D --- --- X ---
/ / | \ \ / | \
/ / | \ \ / | \
This is the bottom view of an election, showing the two roots (C and
X). Higher branches and leaves are largely omitted.
If the issue here is a norm (such as the Public Health Bill) then
there is no sense in which the election will ever produce a "winner".
C and X are never going to become traditional legislators. The
incoming vote flow will never confer on them a *power* to legislate.
It will only give them temporary license to *assemble* legislative
ideas that are flowing toward them. This is another sense in which
the formal vote flow must correspond to actual need. As long as C and
X are successfully assembling the incoming flow of text, they will
receive a corresponding flow of votes; otherwise the vote flow will
shift elsewhere. In this sense, C and X are just tools of the
electorate.

In a sense. In another sense, they are leaders. In AA: "Our leaders
are but trusted servants, they do not govern."

Post by Michael Allan
Moreover they are disposable tools. Figure 4 is just a snapshot in
time. It shows a particular stage of norm construction at which C and
X happen to be the best assemblers - the best tools for the job. It
is unlikely they will remain the best tools at all stages of the
construction. This is especially true since the election will never
terminate. Although a "final" legislative draft (say C's) might be
pulled from the root of the tree at some point and promulagated as a
law, the election will nevertheless continue uninterrupted. No norm
is ever final - it always remains open to the possibility of amendment
or even withdrawal. So the electorate always has an interest in it.

In Asset Voting, it's possible that not even officer elections have a
term. Rather, it would be a parliamentary system. The electors hold
votes that they received in the secret ballot phase, which would
presumably take place periodically. So that "office" has a term. But,
note, those are unconditional elections. The voter simply chooses the
elector. The elector could be the voter himself or herself, under
some conditions. (Under conditions where security is a severe
problem, there might be some restrictions, so that one would only
know one's own vote count if one received more than some bottom
threshhold of votes, which might be low, like five or so.... but
these are governmental applications and this kind of thing isn't an
issue in FAs, I'd say.)

The electoral college that is created could be a standing one, i.e.,
when seats are created by it in the Assembly, the votes could be
withdrawn. For stability, I'd not have the seat's rights in
deliberation terminate immediately (absent a vote of the Assembly to
terminate, presumably for some kind of abuse). Rather, the voting
power of the seat diminishes, possibly even to zero or whatever votes
the seat had from the election, and a new member is possibly seated
(so the assembly size might vary a bit.

Officers, as distinct from seats, then, would serve at the pleasure
of the Assembly, as with any servant.

But, again, this is a utopian scheme. It's not far away from what we
have, but what can be implemented immediately is the FA/DP concept,
outside of government, for many different possible purposes. One
project was a parent association for a Waldorf School. Again, highly
influential people, supposedly, were interested. And, again, ...
nothing happened. People will say, "What a great idea!" and then do
nothing. At least they will do nothing the first time they hear about
it, and maybe the second or third. Sooner or later, though, two or
three people will realize that they can Just Do It. And they will,
and then others will join.

Post by Michael Allan
Technically speaking, it appears that the formal flow of votes at any
(i) actual interest of the electorate in the norm
(o) formal expression of the norm, as a text
But how does this apply to an election in which the issue is a
political office? How would the formal medium of assent relate to the
exercise of executive power? Or juridical? What precisely are the
inputs and outputs to be mediated?

To me, it is a question of who is the most trusted. Generally, the
question of the officer is the same question as the question of who
chooses the officer. It's a question of delegation. One of the
biggest responsibilities of a major officer is the delegation of
responsibility; thus, I claim, the most essential skill involved in
serving as an officer is the same skill involved in choosing who will
serve as an officer. Theoretically, if we trust that A would serve
well in the office, we should trust that A, if A is not going to
serve, would be a reasonable person to make the choice. For a limited
time, not for all time, like a King. Now, this election.

So, yes, an ad-hoc structure assembled from votes, where every voter
votes -- say, secretly -- for one person, and then these single
persons may reassign those votes by choosing a personal
representative, could work very well to rapidly assemble a winning
combination of votes. In some cases, those initial choices would
self-assemble directly to a majority without further ado. In others,
I assume, there would be horsetrading, logrolling, and all the rest.
(What is being pictured here is a single-winner election using Asset
Voting plus a delegable proxy structure to assemble the votes. The DP
structure is open, all vote flows in it are public, and reassignable
at any time. Electors are not obligated to name a proxy, but ... tell
me, if you knew that a "candidate" would not name a proxy, would you
vote for that candidate? I can say that I wouldn't. Someone who
trusts only themselves is not the kind of person who should be
running a government! So the DP system *might* be in place prior to
the public election. It might even be required by law.... there are
zillions of possibilities.

I prefer to work it all out in Free Associations first, where it is
fail-safe, before putting much effort into control structures where
governmental power is at stake, or substantial collected assets.

Post by Michael Allan
I wonder especially how vote delegation relates to power delegation.
If my neighbour has leadership qualities, and I vote for her as Mayor
(my delegate), do I thereby assent to her becoming the Mayor's
lieutenant in my neighbourhood? Might the Mayor delegate actual power
to her, if the need ever arises?

Sure. Why not? With Asset Voting, I see the electoral college
becoming an extension, from one perspective, of the Assembly. But it
is also a broad contact network. You want to get a message to a Seat
in the Assembly? You know who your vote elected. That Seat will
likely have many electors who gave the Seat the votes to fill the
quota. You also know, definitely, who you voted for. Likely this is
someone you know. So you have an identified communication path to the
Seat, with likely rapport of some kind. Nobody knows for sure who you
voted for, but you. But that doesn't really matter all that much. The
electoral college becomes a penumbra around the Assembly, individual
electors sometimes actually voting where they take an interest in the
particular vote. Some of these electors will eventually gain seats,
and will already be familiar with assembly business. Former seat
holders, perhaps no longer wishing to be so active, may still remain
as electors. Some of these might even have courtesy rights in the
Assembly, i.e, the routine right to attend and speak could be
granted. The structure becomes flexible and, quite likely more stable
than present electoral structures, where power hinges on what party
is in the majority.

Have you noticed that political parties no longer are necessary in
order to assemble a quota of votes? That this produces proportional
representation without parties or even any specifically defined
groups that are being represented? (That is, if people vote strictly
by party, the representation would be strictly by party. If they
voted strictly by location, the representation would be strictly by
location. In reality, it will be all of these, some in one case and
some in another, and it is, on the one hand, largely unpredictable,
but, on the other hand, probably quite stable. Would the person you
most trust change frequently? Asset Voting allows you to vote for
that person, without your vote being wasted. No other system does
that with any reliability.

Lewis Carroll, when he first described Asset in 1884, was thinking of
the "common man," who might only know a single candidate to trust. He
was concerned about exhausted votes in STV, and realized that if the
candidate could reassign the votes "as if they were his property,"
the exhausted vote problem would be solved. Quite a better solution,
don't you think, than the Australian one, where, if a voter does not
rank all the candidates, the ballot is considered spoiled and is
void? It is, in fact, a blindingly obvious solution, so obvious that
when I first read about STV -- only a few years ago -- I thought that
the votes were transferred by the candidates. Isn't that the most
obvious way to do it?

Apparently not!

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[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

Post by Juho

Post by Juho
What is btw the reason that there were no arrows forward from the two
leading candidates in the election snapshot picture in the

references page?

Post by Juho
Did they abstain or were their votes (not even their own vote)

not cascaded

Post by Juho
forward for some other reason?

http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/outline.xht#delegate-cascade
They abstained.

I have not examined this diagram specifically. But I'm getting a
feeling that there is a conceptual problem here. I'm guessing that an
election is taking place. So what is being collected is votes in the
election. Votes are assigned through a cascading process. But that a
vote is assigned isn't automatically an election or casting of the
vote. If a candidate has collected votes, those votes are either
exercised or not. If not exercised, they would be moot, of no effect.
Rather, I suggest, the system is assuming that collected votes are
exercised for the one they settle upon. So those candidates are
considered as having voted for themselves, automatically, without any action.

I think that's an error. Consider, instead, the situation if the
candidate casts a vote for one of his or her clients. I.e., the
candidate is saying, "If it's not me, it's X." Which is the same as
all other voters are saying, effectively, though possibly without
volunteering for the position, i.e., some may be saying "It's X or
who X chooses, directly or indirectly, not me, I'm not available."
What if the candidate isn't available? (Does the system require
candidacy? Mistake, I'd say. Rather, if everybody trusts X, but X is
not available to serve, let X choose who serves. Simple.)

If X casts a vote for one of his or her clients, then X's vote total
remains the same as if X had voted for himself, unless that client
gets more votes.

It is really quite simple. It's proxy voting, delegable, and the
*action* of assigning a proxy is different from the *action* of
voting. Proxies are assigned as standing assignments, presumably. (In
Asset Voting with secret ballot input, they stand until the next
election, the base-level votes. Higher levels would be standing
proxies, if the electors use DP for efficiency). You can combine the
two, i.e., voting for an office with the creation of a proxy
structure from the voting process, but I think it is messier, and
less efficient. Rather, create the proxy structure, and you can use
it for *many* decisions; and with each decision, every member can
vote, now for the decision, not for proxies.

Thus it functions like the candidate proxy method being described,
but the proxy assignments are set up for general purposes, then
simply used for a specific decision. This, then, allows large virtual
participation when only a relatively small number of trusted members
participate; these members will contact their clients if some outside
action is needed, of if the proxy thinks that a member's direct
participation would be desired by the member or useful to the organization.

Post by Juho

Post by Juho
The behaviour of voter A in the example above may be quite "sincere". He
likes B. If B forwards his votes to some candidate that A considers to be
worse than C then A may vote for C directly.

So A has good reason to vote for C, even though C (suppose) is a star
having many times - thousands of times - more votes. The reason might
i) A knows C personally or professionally
ii) C is recommended by A's favourite talk-show host

Yep. Any of these reasons, we don't know if they are good or bad.
However, give people a chance to function intelligently, with a
system that respects and uses their decisions, they will do much
better than some of us might expect. Town Meeting government works
quite well, as long as the scale is relatively small, it is scale
that kills it, not citizen inability to make good choices.

Post by Juho
(i) If communication channels (personal or professional) give A
influence over C, and not just knowledge (in other words, if the
channels are 2-way) then A may be voting rationally, in the sense of
effectively.

But A will generally be better advised to get the vote to C through
an intermediary, someone who will listen to and address A's personal
situation and concerns.

Post by Juho
(ii) Otherwise, A is a mosquito voting for an elephant! It's probably
not rational. It would be better to vote for a mouse (the talk-show
host, M), assuming that M *is* actually voting (directly or
indirectly) for C. Then the direct effect on C would be the same -
she'd still be receiving A's vote. But now A would have gained an
open, 2-way communication channel to C, via M.

Right. You got it. Congratulations, this is actually rare. Took me
several years of repeating this stuff over and over in these fora, to
find *one* person who actually got it well enough to explain it. It
seems that you found this all independently. It's not surprising, to
be sure, this isn't rocket science, all it takes is some
out-of-the-box thinking; the elements are all actually pretty
well-known, it is only putting them together in this way that is new.
And I've seen on the order of a half-dozen independent inventions
over the last decade or so. I'd say that's a clue: the time has come.
Until now, I was the first independent inventor to combine DP with
the Free Association concept, but Michael, you seem to have
recognized, at least, parts of this. Are you aware of how
phenomenally successful the rather counter-intuitive FA concepts were
when applied by Alcoholics Anonymous? They became a world-wide
movement practically overnight, as such things go. What? Don't
collect a lot of money for the cause? Don't make controversial
decisions as an organization? Don't have strong, famous leaders? How
in the world can you get anything done? Aren't those things necessary?

Well, they've certainly been common! Bill W., the theoretician behind
AA for the most part, though not without quite a bit of assistance,
studied what had caused prior movements to eventually fail even
though they may have been very successful in the beginning. He did
his work well. In some cases, he was pushed into his eventual
positions; for example, he *did* try to raise a lot of money, but
Rockefeller, I think it was, basically said that a lot of money would
ruin the thing, and gave only enough to help Bill W. survive
financially while he was working on the book. Wilson was
disappointed, but later said that this had been the best thing that
could have happened, the money would, indeed, have ruined it.

Post by Juho
Or A could band together with other, like-minded mosquitoes (perhaps
by soliciting their votes) and vote en-masse for C. Then C would be
more likely to pay attention to their demands etc.

Except that this isn't how A would do it if A wants influence with C.
A and the cohort would choose a common proxy who would choose C.
Without this, A and other mosquitos would only be heard as an
incoherent buzz and maybe a few annoying bits.

"Demands" though, is a poor description of what would happen in an
FA/DP organization. If you don't trust someone to the extent that you
have to "demand" something, you don't trust the person, period, I'd
say, and you should simply choose someone you trust to, perhaps,
sometimes, know better than you do!

And if a client made demands of me, I'd withdraw acceptance of the
proxy, almost certainly. By the way, that should be part of any proxy
structure in an FA, acceptance. And I'd consider acceptance as being
equivalent to permission to contact. If I accept 1000 direct proxies,
I'm inviting each and every one of them to communicate personally
with me about their concerns. Do I want to do this? It would depend
on the nature of the organization, so I would set no rules. But, no,
generally, I wouldn't want that. I'd rather have, say, twenty clients
who, on average, each represent twenty directly, with some of their
clients representing the difference, to make up a thousand total.
Much easier to handle, much more efficient.

Post by Juho
The votes flow individually. Although received votes (black inbound)
are normally carried back out along with the delegate's own vote
(black outbound), there is one exception: if carriage of a vote would
result in a cycle (the vote being received a second time), then that
vote stops. The stopped vote is held where it is (red), and the other
votes continue on their way. That's why the held votes deposit
themselves evenly around the ring. (The exception in the figure is
the one vote injected from outside of the ring.)

I haven't examined this. What a proxy structure sets up is possible
vote flow. Actual vote flow in an election or choice, then, is
determined by the structure plus the actual votes in that election.
Whenever someone votes directly, all proxy assignments from that
person are moot, not considered further.

Imagine the proxy structure, and then mark all those who directly
vote. Then look at all those who did not vote. Look up the structure
to proxy assignments until (1) a member who has voted is found, or
(2) no proxy assignment exists for a member who has voted and who
holds a proxy, directly or indirectly.

If (1) the voter's vote is assigned as found and, since this voter
voted, the member's vote is added to the total.
If (2) the member has abstained. In some organizations, this would be
reported; DP could make it possible and practical to require an
absolute majority for some decisions (even in an FA, some decisions
must be made, about the FA itself.)

If a member has abstained, this will be public record, and anyone
could choose to notify the member (subject to some restrictions
because of privacy and traffic considerations). The system might
automatically notify, and I'd make this a configurable option,
publicly known. Someone on automatic notification could be considered
to be more highly participatory than one who has set their options as
"Don't bother me."

Post by Juho
As a consequence, casting a vote has no effect on votes received. If
any one of the voters in figure 9 withdraws her vote (black out), it
will not affect her received votes (black in). And since electoral
standing is determined by votes received, and not by votes held (red),
the casting of a vote can never increase ones standing.

Yes, standing is a characteristic of the proxy structure, not of
actual votes. The problem here is that "votes" are being confused
with "proxy assignments." I'd suggest that they be rigorously
discriminated, except for special purposes. Proxy assignments *can*
be used to assign some participation rights; for example the right to
post to a high-level mailing list might be automatically restricted
to those with a certain proxy standing, though I'm inclined to avoid
such complications as part of the software. Let every "meeting"
define its own participatory rules, it is much better and far more in
accord with long-standing tradition. The software would provide proxy
standing information, it's a mere calculation, resulting from
analysis of the proxy table.

Post by Juho
I doubt Figure 9 will ever occur in a real election - it's very much
an edge case - but if it does, it shouldn't cause any instability.
Unless I've overlooked something...

We don't really know much about what will actually happen, beyond
theoretical speculation. I predict that "superstar" voting, though,
will become less common as the structures mature and people come to
understand what they can expect from a proxy. And that's what is
important: to develop the proxy relationships, which build
persistence and stability in the structure; and this is why it is so
important to separate the identification and documentation of those
relationships independently from the problem of each decision being
made. The proxy structure will become, I predict, quite stable.
Decisions are content, transient, chaotic, depending on many
variables. Whom you trust most, though, of those who participate,
shouldn't be, for most people, a rapidly changing thing. Proxy
relationships, if they were not initially, will become friendships,
relationships between people who communicate directly, outside the
formal structure.

It's been that with me!


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[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Post by Michael Allan
I'm grateful I was directed to this list. You're clearly experts. I
wish I could reply more completely right away (I should know better
than to start 2 separate threads). I'll just reply to Juho's
questions today, and tomorrow I'll look at Abd's work. (You've been
thinking about this longer than I have, Abd, and I need to catch up.)

1) All voters are candidates and it is possible that all voters consider
themselves to be the best candidate. Therefore the method may start from
all candidates having one vote each (their own vote). Maybe only after some
candidates have numerous votes and the voter himself has only one vote
still, then the voter gives up voting for himself and gives his vote to
some of the frontrunners. How do you expect the method to behave from this
point of view?

The basic rule of vote flow is: a vote stops *before* it encounters a
voter for a second time, and it remains held where it is. A vote is
always considered to have "encountered" its original caster
beforehand. So it is not possible to vote for oneself. It is
permitted, but the vote stops before it is even cast - there is no
effect.

Ok, not allowing voters to vote for themselves may to some extent solve
the problem. (Some voters may however decide to abstain for a while.)

This is a bit offtopic (again), but another idea that might be less
prone to strategy in the case of cyclical proxy candidacy occurred to
me: use eigenvector or Markov-based methods to distribute the deferred
power "smoothly" over the candidates in the cycle.

At this point, the method looks similar to the original PageRank used to
"vote" on web pages, where various web pages vote for the importance of
each other - and such voting chains may be cyclical.
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Post by Juho
What is btw the reason that there were no arrows forward from the two
leading candidates in the election snapshot picture in the references
page? Did they abstain or were their votes (not even their own vote)
not cascaded forward for some other reason?

Representing a complete proxy structure in a two-dimensional graph is
tricky. What was done, let's assume, is to not show proxy assignments
that complete loops. A more full graph would show loops, but not
those that come from what are effectively "top proxies." Consider
this a problem to work on: show a predicted mature proxy structure,
flat, two-dimensional. I would arrange the "voters" -- these aren't
really votes in the traditional sense, they are assignments of voting
rights -- in a circle, with votes who have received no proxy
assignments on the outside, and voters with maximum proxy assignments
being closest to the center of the circle. So distance from the
center varies with the number of proxies collected. At the center, a
proxy would be a superproxy, representing every member who has named
a proxy. So if we define "proxy rank," PR, as the number of voters
represented if a proxy votes and nobody else votes, then we can
define radial distance equals f(PR). I would set a minimum distance
for a superproxy, not zero. (because there can be more than one; for
example, suppose there are two proxies who collectively represent
everyone, and they each name each other. Then, in the absence of the
other, each of them represents all. Wouldn't that be a nice
outcome!!! But, remember, this is in an FA. Representing all doesn't
mean "controlling all." It merely would mean that you've got someone,
or several people, who are able to voice a broad consensus pretty
much as they see fit, with it being likely that actual voting would
confirm that.)

So, then, the position of the members in the space can be manipulated
so that the proxy assignments don't cross, graphically. Anyone
inclined to work out a chart program that would take a list of
members and a proxy table and generate the graph?

Post by Juho
The behaviour of voter A in the example above may be quite "sincere".
He likes B. If B forwards his votes to some candidate that A
considers to be worse than C then A may vote for C directly.

Sure. This is describing delegable proxy as an election method. It's
a mistake, though, to think of it as that. Rather, think of it as
setting up a participatory, deliberative process which allows people
to vote directly or to assign their votes, over as many iterations as
it takes. I.e., standard deliberative process, election by majority
vote, say, or possibly by supermajority in some situations. As a
"voting method" (single ballot, deterministic), it's possibly
interesting but hardly satisfactory, for it suffers from the same
problems as all such methods. For starters, a majority cannot be
guaranteed unless you coerce voters (as they do with IRV and STV in Australia).

Post by Juho
I expect the cycles in opinions to potentially cause repeated changes
in the cast votes (but since I don't know yet exactly how the voter
will be cascaded I will not attempt to describe the details yet).

Actually, what I expect is that most voters will abstain, being
content to leave decisions to their proxies, being those whom they
have come to trust as being most informed and most likely to cast the
best vote. So, in the end, an election decision will be made by a
relatively small number of individuals who are massively trusted.
It's a parliamentary system, in fact, with highly accurate
proportional representation -- of the proxy kind rather than of the
fixed seat, constant vote per seat, kind. (Asset Voting is a kind of
hybrid, when used for PR with a fixed quota and vote, but if Asset
Voting is used to create an electoral college, so to speak, with
these electors being public voters, and having the right to vote
directly on Assembly matters, as fractional votes based on the quota
and votes held, it really is both systems but with a defined
deliberative body that functions much as present bodies, only the
voting is somewhat different (and, I'd predict, in practice, direct
votes would not normally be enough to shift decisions. It's the
exceptions that are important, though, and the fact that
participation becomes full, whenever electors want that, that would
make the crucial difference in how people perceive the government.)

Post by Juho

Post by Michael Allan
(I have to look at this one again in the morning.) There's
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#cascade-cyclic

Could you explain what happened in Figure 9? What are the rules that
keep one vote at five of the candidates (red numbers) but forward
some of the votes to the next candidate in the ring? I.e. why not
forward all votes or keep all votes?

I would "forward" all or none, in straight Delegable Proxy. Keep it
Simple. In fact, there isn't really any "vote forwarding." There is
just individuals voting as they choose. "Vote forwarding" is just a
method of determining, then, the vote value for each vote actually
cast. In an Asset scheme, however, used for PR, electors, now holding
multiple votes, would assign specific votes to specific candidates.
I've proposed that they might try to keep votes assigned in precinct
blocks, which then has the salutary effect of allowing voters to know
exactly whom their vote elected. Generally, with Asset, assigned this
way, one vote elects one seat, together with all the other votes
making up the quota. If direct voting is going to be allowed, the
quota should be the Hare quota, i.e, if there are N seats, and V
voters, the quota (which is exact, not rounded off) is V/N votes.

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Post by Michael Allan
I'm grateful I was directed to this list. You're clearly experts. I
wish I could reply more completely right away (I should know better
than to start 2 separate threads). I'll just reply to Juho's
questions today, and tomorrow I'll look at Abd's work. (You've been
thinking about this longer than I have, Abd, and I need to catch up.)

Nevertheless, your thinking is very important, for I've encountered
nobody who has gone as deeply into this without having contact with
others working on it.

Post by Michael Allan

1) All voters are candidates and it is possible that all voters consider
themselves to be the best candidate. Therefore the method may start from
all candidates having one vote each (their own vote). Maybe only

after some

candidates have numerous votes and the voter himself has only one vote
still, then the voter gives up voting for himself and gives his vote to
some of the frontrunners. How do you expect the method to behave from this
point of view?

The basic rule of vote flow is: a vote stops *before* it encounters a
voter for a second time, and it remains held where it is. A vote is
always considered to have "encountered" its original caster
beforehand. So it is not possible to vote for oneself. It is
permitted, but the vote stops before it is even cast - there is no
effect.

Juho doesn't get it, yet. The system provides no special incentive to
vote for "frontrunners," and, indeed, a counterincentive, which
Michael describes below. "Voting for yourself" is actually the
default position. I.e., everyone is considered to represent
themselves, and to vote for themselves (on whatever issue is being
decided). But openly and deliberatively. I.e., the default is direct
democracy. Now, how can we make direct democracy efficient? Classical
answer: elected representation. But that sacrifices a fundamental
value of direct democracy. Proxy representation does not sacrifice
that value, particularly if individuals remain free to direct vote if
they so choose.

The problem of scale with direct democracy is *not* a voting problem,
it is a problem of how to conduct deliberation. Delegable proxy
breaks down deliberation into smaller units (what we call "natural
caucuses," a natural caucus consists of a proxy and all represented
by the proxy, directly and indirectly).

Post by Michael Allan

2) Let's say that the preferences of voter A are A>B>C>D>E. At some point
he decides to vote for his second preference (B) instead of himself. B's
preferences are B>D>etc. At some (later) point B decides to vote for his
second preference D. A is however not happy with that the vote now goes
directly to D (instead of C that was better). He changes his vote

and votes

for C. The point here is that it may be that many voters will

vote directly

the leading candidates instead of letting the voters in longer chains
(according to their own preferences) determine where the vote ends at. The
reason may be as above or maybe the voter simply prefers to vote directly
for the leading/best candidates instead of being at the long branches of
the tree (away from the main streams close to the root of the trees where
the decision making appears to take place). Controlling one's own vote may
also give the voter some additional negotiating power. The end result may
be that the cascade chains may tend to be short rather than long. The same
question here. Is this ok and how do you expect the method to behave?

The proportion of voters who preferred to vote for the "stars" would
act as a dead weight in the electoral system - a kind of irrational
ballast. To the extent they were fickle, they would act as a shifting
* it can be detected and filtered from the results (as irrational
dross)

With, of course, loss of information regarding the free choices of electors.

Post by Michael Allan
* it will be boring, there's less scope to interact with a star
candidate, because a single vote has relatively little worth to
- the voter's questions, and attempts to enter into dialogue are
likely to go unanswered
- the voter's freedom to shift the vote will confer no leverage,
no input to the candidate's behaviour

Yes. There is no advantage to voting for a star. Nor, in fact, is
there really an advantage from the star's point of view, *compared to
what stars will actually do,* unless the star is socially
dysfunctional. What a star will do is to identify clients (we call
those who name a proxy the clients of the proxy) who are trusted by
the star to act as filters between further clients and the star. This
filtering is actually a standard function of a proxy. The proxy
shields the client from excess traffic from above, and the client
shields the proxy from excess traffic from below (i.e., from clients
of the client).

So, you want to vote for Clint Eastwood, you email him. You get back
a mail that suggests you pick So-and-So. This gives Clint your vote,
effectively, but indirectly. Would you be offended? Not if So-and-so
is skilled at communication, not if Clint made a good recommendation.
And, in fact, should you have a legitimate need, you have *more*
access to Clint than you would have had if you were part of a
faceless mass of clients directly attached. All you have to do is
convince So-and-so that it's worth Clint's attention.

(Hint: things already work this way, but the structure is not clearly
known. DP documents it, and, in doing this, it makes it possible to
make it much more efficient, that is the big change.)

Post by Michael Allan
* the star voter will be open to criticism from better informed
peers, because the vote placements are public information
- "I see you're voting for a star. If you want to waste your
vote like that, why not waste it on me?"

Well, bad argument.... I wouldn't give my vote to someone who
solicits it. That is a radical change from present electoral structures.

Post by Michael Allan

3) In theory the method may also end up in a loop. There could be three
voters (A, B, C) with opinions A: A>B>C, B: B>C>A and C: C>A>B. If A votes
for A, B votes for B and C votes for A, then B has an incentive to change
his vote to C in the hope that also C will vote for himself after this
move. That would improve the result from B's (as well as C's)

point of view

(from A to C). But as a result now A has a similar incentive to vote for B
that is to him better than C. And the story might continue forever. This
kind of loops would probably be rare. But do you think this is acceptable
or should there be some limitations that would eliminate or slow down
possible continuous changes in the votes? In this looped case is possible
that when the voters note the loop they are capable of negotiating some
compromise solution (e.g. A and C agree that C will get something

in return

if he sticks to voting for A).

Maybe the rule of vote flow (1) will prevent that, since self-votes
are null? (I have to look at this one again in the morning.) There's
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#cascade-cyclic

The loop objection is a very common one. It's a sign that someone is
actually starting to consider the structure. However, it's a
non-issue. Juho's analysis is still coming from the electoral model.
DP can be used for elections, but that's not the best application, by
far. Rather, DP creates a deliberative body that can negotiate
consensus. It does so using traditional means (though it can
certainly utilize new ones and invent whatever it needs). If every
member names a proxy -- and, really, every member who cares should do
so, it is harmless at worst, since it only has effect if you don't
participate -- then there must be loops. The question is not, then,
whether there will be loops or not or how to avoid them, but what
their effect is. Whenever a loop includes someone who actually
participates in a decision, no harm has been done at all. When some
set of members isn't represented because no member of a loop
participates, and if this is considered a problem (it isn't,
necessarily), there is a simple solution: notification.

When notified, any member of the loop may connect the loop by
participating. Alternatively, any member of the loop may connect the
loop to a larger caucus by reassigning their proxy.

(This may be a general proxy assignment or a special one. Special
proxies are created for a ... special purpose! Special proxies
override general proxies within the special function. So if a
committee is formed to study something, and a member trusts some
particular member other than their general proxy with regard to this
special purpose, they assign a special proxy through a dedicated
proxy table for that committee. If they do not assign a special
proxy, the general proxy stands. Thus the system is simple (one proxy
assignment does serve for everything if that's what you want), but
flexible (you can be as particular as you like.)

(And here I must note that we have worked this out for application
within Free Associations -- this is FA/DP -- where nothing is really
binding on anyone, it is all pure, voluntary process, designed for
the negotiation of consensus, not for control. So anyone can create a
special proxy table for some purpose, but there is no guarantee that
it will be respected by others. Probably will be, though. If the goal
is consensus, why not allow people to participate as they choose?)

We have not attempted to design DP as a software tool. Our focus has
been on the personal connections, and analyzing the *significance* of
proxy assignments, which is what software tools would do, has been
considered secondary, and, in advance of actual applications,
probably a distraction. However, handling multiple proxy tables and
the like, as long as formats are compatible, is pretty simple. In the
FA environment, as well, security issues fade in importance. A few
sock puppet votes, or even many sock puppet votes, aren't much of a
problem, since (1) they don't bind and (2) it would be fairly easy to
smell a rat. If proxy assignments are public, and so are registration
dates and the like (as if, say, implementation is on MediaWiki), what
one would see with sock puppet proxy assignments would be very
different from real ones, and then we need to look at how proxy
assignments are used.... they are used by analysts. Who are the
analysts? Anyone who cares! If I'm a leader of a natural caucus, I
want to advise my clients how to vote *in a real election*, say. I
will, through the structure, attempt to negotiate a consensus,
because consensus is powerful. I see that we have found 40% of votes,
using DP, for a satisfactory outcome. Is that enough?

It is up to me to decide. For now, the point is that I might look at
what is in opposition, and I discover that a huge block of votes, say
30%, are from mysterious origins, smells like socks to me. And so I
conclude that, in reality, we have 40/70, a majority. Is that enough?
Depends. I can continue to negotiate to find higher consensus, or I
can decide it's enough and proceed. The higher the level of true
consensus I can find, the easier will be the implementation; on the
other hand, it may require postponing decision too long. It's a
deliberative process, and decisions are made by free agents acting
independently but in communication with each other through an
efficient structure. There is another name for this: intelligence.
This is what neurons do.

The FA/DP concept could revolutionize politics as we know it,
*without any changes in legal structure.*

There is are two major obstacle, each with two faces:

First, apathy and cynicism, which feed on each other. "It won't work,
nothing will work." "They won't let you do this." "It will be corrupted."

Second, there is a very natural filtering mechanism that we use to
prevent information and processing overload. New ideas are, pretty
much, automatically rejected simply because they are new, and this is
actually quite efficient, for most new ideas are not worth the effort
it would take to understand them. Naturally, we have filter bypasses,
or else we'd never be able to find worthwhile new ideas.

How to bypass the natural filters is the essential problem facing
FA/DP theory today. Some basic mechanisms are fairly well understood.
For example, it's been my experience that if I raise the issue of
FA/DP with someone a year later than their first contact, there is
far more receptivity. This points to a bypass: persistence of the
concept over time, which not only shows that the idea wasn't just a
wild imagination of a moment, but has some depth. Another bypass is
multiple sourcing. When we hear of an idea from more than one person
considering it worthy of attention, we likewise will be more inclined
to think about it.

The presence FA/DP plan (or at least my plan) is to simply discuss
the ideas, to implement them in projects where possible, and to allow
the ideas and the projects to percolate. It's possible that some
major implementation will appear that could accelerate the process.
FA/DP was proposed for Wikipedia and was (as I expected) roundly
rejected. First time. Based on the usual *total* misunderstanding
that it is about voting, and, hey, what about sock puppets and end of
discussion. But it's been mentioned, now, over the six months or so
since the first formal proposal, a few times here and there. I've
become much more widely known and trusted. In another six months or
so, there may be another formal proposal. While I would not go so far
as to predict success, it may start to happen that significant
numbers of proxies start to be assigned. *FA/DP does not require
central approval.* One thing proven by the initial proposals was that
(1) attempts would be made to crush it, and (2) those attempts would
likely fail. That is, the proposal was rejected, but the quite
remarkable (and anomalous) attempts to crush it, actually delete the
proposal, erase all trace, were likewise rejected. So what remains as
an obstacle are only the standard ones listed above.

Because FAs don't take, as an FA, any controversial position, they
are in opposition to nobody. To me, the theory indicates that FA/DP
could function even under relatively repressive regimes, particularly
in China, as an example. The FA would initially serve to develop and
coordinate public consensus to support the noble goals of the
Communist Party (and a particular example and organizational impulse
might come from environmental protection, which is an official Party
goal). But the medium is the message. I'd predict that the FA would
never actually oppose the Party, but it would, rather, become an
institution whereby the people advise the Party, coherently, and in
opposition only to those who, themselves, are the ones who corrupt
the Party and make it into an oppressive instrument instead of what
Marxist theory would have predicted and wanted. And it would do this,
not by actually opposing those ones (scapegoating) but by making them
less relevant, and those individuals would be continually invited to
participate and exercise proper influence. Ultimately, the Party
would be transformed and become what it should have been from the
beginning, if it had not been organized on what must now be seen as a
relatively traditional, oligarchical plan.

The hazards are many, but the theory is that FA/DP will make
decisions that are maximally intelligent, that are wiser than what
traditional structures (including purely anarchist ones) have been
able to make. If the students at Tienanmen Square had been organized
with FA/DP concepts, the history of China from that point on would
have been radically different. The government was actually
negotiating with them, there were sympathetic elements in the Party
that supported the students, that were excited by what they were
doing. But because there was no coherent organization, but only
firebrand leaders, in addition to some sober ones, there was nothing
to negotiate with and the firebrands, the loudest voices, were
seeking nothing but the total humiliation of the government. That
doesn't fly in China. The government took its only option
(considering their own limitations as well), they imported troops
from other regions that did not speak the local language, and crushed
the rebellion (which had involved massive support from the local
Beijing workers.) From the point of view of responsible government,
this was almost their only option, as tragic as it was. With FA/DP,
I'm pretty confident, the students would have negotiated changes,
would have peacefully dispersed, the crisis would have been averted,
the Communist Party would have become stronger, more popular, and who
knows where that would have gone.... but probably thirty years more
advanced toward a vibrant, healthy Chinese political life. And a
world political life, for the example would have been imitated elsewhere.

So, for now, it is quite enough of a task to disseminate these ideas.
If the right people in the right place understand this, the seed
crystal will form. My theory is that society is currently
supersaturated, looking for this, massive crystallization could occur
practically overnight. But first there must be a crystal of
sufficient size and persistence to not be broken apart by the random
fluctuations that afflict very small organizations. I do not know how
large this crystal must be. It could be as small as a hundred or so
individuals who understand the concept. Progress toward this, in my
view, has been ongoing, but I can't predict how long it will take;
except I'll say that I expect I'll witness it before I die. I'm 64,
which gives me roughly an estimated twenty years.

At this point, Delegable Proxy has possibly enough mention in what
Wikipedia considers "reliable source," to justify a return of the
article (which was deleted as part of the reaction to the proposal on
Wikipedia, and, at that point, the deletion was not outside of
notability policy). But I can't do it, I consider myself to have a
Conflict of Interest.... I will, however, have the article restored
to my user space, it may be time to start working on it.




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[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

Wow! Mr. Allan, you have done some excellent work. Yes, we've been
working on this, and more -- and less.

You can see a little at http:beyondpolitics.org/wiki but most of that
is old, the site needs work, and there is a lot of ferment and
discussion in various places going on. We call it delegable proxy.
It's also been called

liquid democracy
delegated voting
candidate proxy
delegated democracy

and then
Asset Voting for a form that is a hybrid, and very old in terms of
when first proposed, 1884, but which could phase into a much more pure

There were also proposals a hundred years ago or so to implement a
system where members of a city council would exercise votes according
to the votes they received in the election.

But my own focus has been on nongovernmental solutions, because I
believe that the fundamental problem of democracy is not the
structures we use for control, as such, but the structures we use for
collective judgement, and judgement is not the executive power, it is
the ... judicial power! And the judicial power seeks consensus,
generally, and exceptions often represent a breakdown of the system.

If we can solve the problem of how to negotiate informed consensus on
a large scale, efficiently, we can deal with governmental problems
with relative ease. Even under dictatorships, if the necessary
communication can take place -- and that might be more possible than
we think, particularly if the structure is wise enough to avoid
confrontation, and I expect it would be -- the whole actual control
structure could shift toward true social consensus, without violence
and disruption.

But in democracies, there really is not anything stopping us, except
inertia. In specific organizations, attempts to introduce FA/DP
principles will almost certainly meet with opposition, to some
degree, but apathy is a far more persistent enemy. And it's not
really an enemy, merely a mechanism by which society filters out bad
ideas. Give it time!

And, please, join with us. You are very, very welcome. Do remember,
I've been thinking about this stuff for well over twenty years, and I
can have a lot to say, sometimes.....

No more new text below.

Post by Michael Allan
Hello to the list,
I'm a software engineer, currently developing an online electoral
system. I was in another discussion (link at bottom) and a subscriber
recommended this list to me. I have a few questions, if anyone is
able to help.
A key component of the electoral system (to explain) is what I call a
"delegate cascade" voting mechanism. It is intended for use in
continuous elections (open to recasting). The overall aim is to
...a 'delegate' is a participant who both receives votes, like a
candidate, and casts a vote of her own, like a voter. But when a
delegate casts her vote, it carries with it those received. And so
on... Passing from delegate to delegate, the votes flow together and
gather in volume - they cascade - like raindrops down the branches
of a tree. New voters are not restricted in their choices, but may
vote for anyone, their unsolicited votes serving to nominate new
candidates and to recruit new participants into the election.
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/outline.xht
I can only cite 3 references for the mechanism (Pivato, Rodriguez et
al., and myself) all from 2007. Does anyone know of an earlier
source? Is anyone else working with this mechanism? Have there been
discussions along similar lines?
Please bring me up to date,
--
Michael Allan
Toronto, 647-436-4521
http://zelea.com/
Read any useful research lately, unanswered research questions?
http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/6QthnRysw5lJmRGqnPAy5y
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[Michael Allan]

You can see a little at http://beyondpolitics.org/wiki/ but most of that is
old, the site needs work, and there is a lot of ferment and discussion in
various places going on. We call it delegable proxy...

You foresaw it! I'm deeply impressed. I read half the Wiki, and the
server went down - I'll come back to it. But so far it's clear that
you've envisioned:

* basic voting mechanism (delegable proxy, DP)

* application to communities (free associations, FA)

* effects of DP + FA on other parts of society, particularly power
mediated organizations (government, business firms, etc.)

For my part, what I can contribute (if it's actually new) is:

* combination of DP with a peer-to-peer drafting medium (recombinant
text) for consensus on norms (laws, plans, policies)

* tentative connections with social theory (communicative action)

* trust network to authenticate voter lists, so a city or region can
be an FA

* implementation in code (alpha stage)

I hope this brings it closer to realization. It's been running in our
imaginations - your's longer than mine. But when the electoral system
is opened up, and the voters begin to provide feedback - even then -
the only way to interpret will be with a vision that sees a little
further ahead, beyond what's obvious. I think you have that in
abundance, and I hope we can work together!

Highest regards,

[Michael Allan]

Post by Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
But, again, this is a utopian scheme. It's not far away from what we
have, but what can be implemented immediately is the FA/DP concept,
outside of government...

But I am not proposing to implement any changes *within* government.
That would be utopian, I agree. The software I am developing is for
communities to use, not for governments. The community for the beta
trials will be Toronto, for example - with other communities being
free to conduct parallel trials, if they wish. Government will not be
involved.

Post by Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
...I prefer to work it all out in Free Associations [FA] first,
where it is fail-safe, before putting much effort into control
structures where governmental power is at stake, or substantial
collected assets.

If the societal effects could be contained... but how? Your
definition for FA is similar to what I call a "community" in the
public sphere - a group of equal peers in open communication with each
other. I cannot imagine any restricted form of FA or community that
could serve as a "fail-safe container" for DP, where we could conduct
isolated "experiments". There is nothing to prevent someone (less
cautious) from replicating the experiments more broadly.

Also, the technology will be better if we develop it in a real
context, where real political issues are at stake. We'll then be
forced to deal with the actual design constraints up front, rather
than guessing at them from an artifical context.

Lastly, if we do not develop it ourselves for mainstream, popular
applications, then business concerns will do the job for us. They'll
lock it up with patents. We'll end up with an electoral interface
that pushes paid ad-spam at us, or worse. It might take years to undo
the damage.

Post by Abd ul-Rahman Lomax

...how vote delegation relates to power delegation. If my
neighbour has leadership qualities, and I vote for her as Mayor (my
delegate)... [might] the Mayor delegate actual power to her...?

Sure. Why not? With Asset Voting, I see the electoral college becoming an
extension, from one perspective, of the Assembly. But it is also a broad
contact network. You want to get a message to a Seat in the Assembly? You
know who your vote elected. That Seat will likely have many electors who
gave the Seat the votes to fill the quota. You also know, definitely, who
you voted for. Likely this is someone you know. So you have an identified
communication path to the Seat, with likely rapport of some kind...

I agree, communication and rapport are critical. They'll affect how
the power structure and voting patterns intermesh. The power
structure will affect vote placement, pulling votes up from the
bottom. By the same token, voting patterns will affect the delegation
of power, pulling power out from the center. It appears that the
whole power/vote structure will crystallize simultaneously.

(When the executive's term ends, I imagine the combined structure will
either hold steady, or it will rapidly re-form itself into a
different, stable configuration. Presumeably this will occur before
we go to the conventional polls, so we'll know in advance who we've
chosen. If we vote rationally, we'll simply ratify that choice on
election day.)

But I forsee no essential role for an "Assembly". It's not needed.
DP can bypass an assembly, serving as an institution for deliberation
and construction of laws and other norms. It can do everything except
the final promulgation of the norm. So maybe assemblies will become
"clearing houses" (mostly a rubber stamping role) between fluid
communities of norm drafters, on the one hand, and the rigid structure
of power, on the other.

Post by Abd ul-Rahman Lomax

(4)
\ \ | / / \ | /
\ \ | / / \ | /
--- E --> C <-- D --- --- X ---
/ / | \ \ / | \
/ / | \ \ / | \

In my "potential problem case" I was maybe most interested in a situation
where we would have three different D clones, D, D2 and D3. Their opinions
would be relatively similar and their agenda towards influencing C would be
quite similar. Maybe the ambition of all of them is to one day become a
central figure like "C" or "X". They need to reorganize to be able to
influence C better (otherwise E is too strong with his opposing opinions).
They could organize themselves either C<-D1<-D2&D3 or C<-D2<-D1&D3 or
C<-D3<-D1&D2. They all wonder which one of them will get the best seat
here. (My point was just that this kind of interests may keep the tree
flatter than what would be optimal.)

I confused the picture by switching between two kinds of election,
with two different issues. Voting behaviour depends on the issue,
either:

a) normative election (for a particular policy, law, or plan)

b) power election (for a particular office)

(a). In a normative election, where D and D2 have identical interests
(as you say) the best position is actually the furthest from the root,
out in the leaves. Whoever is closest to the root will be doing the
most work; whoever is furthest, the least. So if D is already
drafting the shared interest, and spending the effort to "push" it
rootward, then D2's best option is to relax and vote for D. The
formal pattern of vote flow will therefore spread out to match (more
or less exactly) the actual pattern of interest in the community of
voters.

(That pattern will be dynamic, however, because it will depend on the
current state of norm construction. As soon as the shared interest is
successfully pushed rootward and drafted into the consensus, then the
question for D and D2 becomes "what next?" If they have different
answers at that point - different interests - they will go swinging
off in pursuit of them, ending up in different parts of the tree or
forest.)

(b). In a power election, the vote flow is still an open question.
It will probably be less dynamic, maybe even fixed and rigid. It will
probably align with the structure of power (as Abd suggested above).
Its analysis therefore requires a political and social context.
Here's a scenario, by way of context:

(S). The young people in a certain neighbourhood wish to make
improvements to their local playground or park. They come up with a
plan and begin to promote it locally. Some of them are in
disagreement and propose alternative plans. They all have access to
a new kind of electoral medium. They use the medium to highlight
their differences and to resolve them one by one. Eventually they
reach a general agreement on a consensus plan. The City sends a
safety inspector to the site, and trucks in some sand. With a
little help, the young people complete the improvements to the park.

And, to explain how power is applied:

(ad S). M is a community leader in the neighbourhood. She has a
large share of the votes as a local delegate in the open election
for Mayor. When she learns of the plans to improve the local park
she takes an interest. She speaks to another person in the
neighbourhood (H). H is a local delegate in the election for Public
Health Officer. M asks H to look into the safety issues of the
proposed plan.

H agrees to M's request. He takes the lead in drafting the safety
amendments for the plan. Seeing this, many of the parents in the
neighbourhood cast their votes for H. These votes are numerous, and
they ensure that safety concerns are going to feature prominently in
the plan.

The young planners have questions about the delivery of the sand, so
they approach W. W is a local building contractor who is always
active in the election for Public Works Officer. W explains that
several types of sand are available from the City yards. He says
that delivery will depend on budgetary approval. So they add "sand"
to the budget section of their plan.

Later, when it appears that a consensus is likely to form, M
requests approval for the plan. She does not speak directly to the
City, rather she speaks to her own delegate - the person she is
voting for in the Mayoral election. In reply she receives a signed
email from the Comptroller of the Parks Department, authorizing a
preliminary safety inspection of the site. M forwards the
authorization to H, who arranges for the actual inspection. When
the inspector arrives, H guides her to the site... And so on.

http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/47GTfRhVa6dOa0G7BXMxfp

Juho's concern (branchiness of the voting pattern) might be translated
to this context by considering clones M and M2. They live in the same
neighbourhood; they have equal apparent ability, and both are
currently receiving the same number of votes. What is likely to
happen? In other words, how will competition affect the tree
structure?

I can only forsee that the voting pattern must provide effective lines
of communication. It must connect local leaders (like M) into the
structure of power being delegated outward from the Mayor. If the
whole does not mesh, then the leaders at all levels are going to be
thinking of making changes (M shifting her vote, the Mayor choosing
new lieutenants, and so on). The detailed dynamics are unpredictable.
I can only imagine that any widespread restructuring will be
relatively rapid.