Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

Forget for a moment the logistical problems with this idea. Lets just talk political theory.

One of the problems with democracy is that some idiots vote and some genuises don't. I'll be talking about that elsewhere at a later date. But I feel like that there is another problem. Namely that it isn't really fair to defer to the majority in cases where a large minority have a STRONG reason to take the other side and the majority is close to neutral.

If I'm right (do you agree?) how can things be rectified? I can see two possible solutions, at least in theory.

1.Only allow people to cast a vote on a fraction of the total candidates/issues to be decided. Say half. They choose how to spread their votes.

2.Allow the total votes for any person to be equal to the total of the decisions, but voters can give something more than one vote while ignoring other issues. Perhaps with a limit such as four.

Is it against the law for a small city to try something like this out in a minor election? They could even perhaps simultaneously do this with a standard election just to see how the results differ. Am I being naive to think that such a suggestion has any chance of ever being implemented?

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Am I being naive to think that such a suggestion has any chance of ever being implemented?

[/ QUOTE ]

Very

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

David,

this issue has been studied by economists. You should google 'Clarke Tax'.

Dean

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

Seems like you could slip all kinds of stuff past some people while they spend all their votes opposing gay marriage instead of your thing.

But actually, I think this is an interesting idea and I would love to see it tried somewhere sometime. Don't know if it would be legal/constitutional in the US, but I'm sure it's possible somewhere.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Am I being naive to think that such a suggestion has any chance of ever being implemented?

[/ QUOTE ]

They can't even count the vote accurately. It's really <u>+</u> 0.03% in many states.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

[ QUOTE ]
1.Only allow people to cast a vote on a fraction of the total candidates/issues to be decided. Say half. They choose how to spread their votes.

2.Allow the total votes for any person to be equal to the total of the decisions, but voters can give something more than one vote while ignoring other issues. Perhaps with a limit such as four.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd like to interject a possible number 3. That is, not voting at all but rather selecting candidates like we select jury members. I would also be for candidates first having to meet some general criteria that I haven't fully thought out, like having a college education perhaps, although this may be troublesome as well.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

Number 2 has been proposed before by Lani Guinier, the law professor who Clinton nominated for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. It's been a while since I've read her book Tyranny of the Majority, but I recall that it proposed giving voters multiple votes that they can either case for separate candidates or use to strongly support a few or just one candidate in a general election for multiple seats.

Wikipedia claims that this sort of cumulative voting scheme has been done before, such as in an Alabama county commission where it led to women, blacks, and Republicans winning seats that had previously been held by white male Democrats.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

Oh OK. Every once in a while someone thinks of something before I do. So is it a good idea, in theory at least?

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

Anarcocapitalism.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

solution number 3, the market.

For instance marihuana.


Suppose we have 3 persons.

A, B &amp; C.

A loses 2 happy points if pot is legalized.
B loses 4 happy poitns if pot is legalized.
C wins 13 happy points if pot is legalized.


On democracy pot is going to be illegal.
On the market, person C gets to have pot because person A and person B are not going to bother on enforcing anti-marihuana laws, specially because they are going to find a lot of resistance on C.
Even C is by himself he is willing to do a lot more for his right to smoke weed, he is willing to spend more resources, etc.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

Can we think of a specific issue that models this strong minority vs. weak majority concept?

Gay marriage is the only one that comes immediately to mind.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

David,

Not the same thing or addressing your specific issue, but somewhat related - Ranked-Choice Voting

at first glance ...bad idea
 

intelligent logical thinkers tend to have strong opinions/facts on many topics/concerns. morons/christians tend to focus or can be easily focused. this is why the democratic party always seems disorganized. this is why if you get a gay ballot measure you can be VERY sure of how the people who show for that measure will vote down the line. getting you avg. liberal to "waste" all thier votes supressing every wacko prayerin school, flag burning , gay issue that comes around will be very hard. getting religious sheep to push them through will be easy.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

[ QUOTE ]
some idiots vote

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Only allow people to cast a vote on a fraction of the total candidates/issues to be decided. Say half. They choose how to spread their votes.

[/ QUOTE ]

DS-

Don't you think an idiot voter, who's decision making process is largely influenced by emotion rather than logic, is going to weigh their votes heavily in a direction that has a strong emotional tie to them? Your 2 solutions seem like it would only lead to, for example, fundamentalists voting heavily to ban gay marriage and stop stem cell research, and then not voting for city council.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

In a way our system is based on a minority with a stronger preference overwriting a middle of road idiot majority. If you think of the amount of money donated to a campaign as reflection of degree of preference. With more money of course representing stronger preference and higher money in your campaign increases your chance of getting the weak minded to vote yes on your issue.

Re: at first glance ...bad idea
 

[ QUOTE ]
intelligent logical thinkers tend to have strong opinions/facts on many topics/concerns. morons/christians tend to focus or can be easily focused. this is why the democratic party always seems disorganized.

[/ QUOTE ]

Does this excuse cover all forms of impotence or just political? It would be quite a relief to the flaccid if they could blame it on their brilliance.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

[ QUOTE ]
It isn't really fair to defer to the majority in cases where a large minority have a STRONG reason to take the other side and the majority is close to neutral.

[/ QUOTE ] Gauge strength of reason and we can get somewhere.

[ QUOTE ]
Only allow people to cast a vote on a fraction of the total candidates/issues to be decided. Say half. They choose how to spread their votes.


[/ QUOTE ] This would prevent people who have an informed opinion about a lot of issues, eg you-know-who, to have equal say in a number of those issues. And your other option is along the sasme lines.

What you're realy trying to do is give "smarter" people more electoral power --but that can only happen through a system whereby "one man, one vote" does not apply. It has been tried before, with the regimes of aristocracy. (Aristocracy: from ariston + kratos = the best + rule, state.)

[ QUOTE ]
Am I being naive to think that such a suggestion has any chance of ever being implemented?

[/ QUOTE ] I think you're a probabiloptimist.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

Check out the wiki link to range voting:

Wiki Range Voting
Center for range voting
and this:

MATHEMATICS and DEMOCRACY
Warren D. Smith
Center for Range Voting

1. We argue that "range voting" is the best single-winner voting
method among all commonly proposed alternatives. One argument is the
"Bayesian Regret" yardstick - our measurements and calculations
indicate
that if range voting were adopted instead of the currently most-used
system, "plurality voting," humanity's lot would improve by an amount
comparable to or exceeding the improvement achieved by switching from
undemocratic forms of government to democracy. Estimates in
http://rangevoting.org/LivesSaved.html suggest every day sooner we get
range voting is expected to save 5000 lives.
2. We argue (by analysing an explicit political strategy to get it)
range voting is, in fact, an obtainable dream.
3. Range voting has been used in hundreds of trillions of elections
over the last 20 million years. (Yes, I am aware fewer than 20 billion
humans ever lived. Hint: these elections do not involve humans.)
4. We shall also discuss some other mathematical ideas for improving
democracy such as the "shortest splitline" gerrymandering-abolition
plan, and a plan by Ronald Rivest (as repaired by me) for low-tech
fraud-proof secret ballot voting.

Speaker Bio

MIT math &amp; physics double BS 1984;
Princeton Applied Math PhD 1988;
has worked at Bell Labs, NEC, Temple University;
founded Center for Range Voting in 2005.

Home On The Range
 

[ QUOTE ]
Check out the wiki link to range voting:

Wiki Range Voting
Center for range voting
and this:

MATHEMATICS and DEMOCRACY
Warren D. Smith
Center for Range Voting

[/ QUOTE ]Thanks for the abundant info. Will study it.

Mickey Brausch

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

the issue with suggestion 1 is exactly the same as with our current system. more knowledgeable/interested voters are still only allowed as many votes as people who are generally indifferent. If someone is truly passionate about the majority of the issues/elections on the ballot, they still would feel that they cant have enough of an impact. a young politics-junkie who engages in grassroots campaigning and activism for a large number of issues still only gets to vote on as many things as the guy who never watches/reads the news and cant name the secretary of state.
and on top of that, you get people engaging in this weird system of voter game theory where you try to guess which issues the vast majority of people will vote on (thus reducing the value of your vote) and trying to exploit that by voting on issues where your vote will hold sway.

Re: at first glance ...bad idea
 

[ QUOTE ]
intelligent logical thinkers tend to have strong opinions/facts on many topics/concerns. morons/christians tend to focus or can be easily focused. this is why the democratic party always seems disorganized. this is why if you get a gay ballot measure you can be VERY sure of how the people who show for that measure will vote down the line. getting you avg. liberal to "waste" all thier votes supressing every wacko prayerin school, flag burning , gay issue that comes around will be very hard. getting religious sheep to push them through will be easy.

[/ QUOTE ]
This seems like a good thing. The "morons" will waste all their votes on meaningless issues; the more important issues will be decided by intelligent thinkers.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

I just want to comment that nobody has realized that smart doesnt mean altruistic.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

This may be outside your area of interest, but I see problems in the area of political legitimacy.

Democracy isn't about maximizing fairness, it's about maximizing legitimacy while maintaining a satisficing condition of perceived fairness.

Consider case 1, where you suggest letting people vote on a fraction of all possible candidates/issues. What happens if you give a person n votes, and he has equally strong opinions on n+1 issues? Will repeated iterations of this situation cause a sufficient number of people to question the legitimacy of the system and ultimately lead to its abolishment?

Consider case 2, where 49% strongly oppose something, 41% weakly support it, and 10% rabidly support it. I don't know if this is sufficiently similar to your proposed case to be relevant, but I suspect that it is, since it is more probable than the entire majority having weak support for a position. How often will someone be in that 10% who get overruled by the minority's strongly held beliefs before they start questioning the system?

You would see the same question of legitimacy pop up if you proposed the solution of creating a barrier to voting so that people with weakly held opinions are less inclined to vote, a situation which some argue exists today.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

[ QUOTE ]

One of the problems with democracy is that some idiots vote and some genuises don't.

[/ QUOTE ]

While on the surface, I like both proposals as much or more than our current system, I could definitely see it confusing the aforementioned "idiots" at the voting booth.

For all the stories you read about people getting confused while voting with the current system, I couldn't even imagine the outcry a system like yours would cause.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I just want to comment that nobody has realized that smart doesnt mean altruistic.

[/ QUOTE ]

of course, being altruistic does not immediately imply that you understand how to go about helping other people. And this also brings up a more complex question on the nature of government.
if we assume that the term "smart" implies that a person is best equipped intellectually to consider the pros and cons of his decisions than these people are making more logical decisions at the polls than most.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

David,

Why should another's preferences, mild or strong, have any weight at all over any individual's subjective valuation of his own goals or the disposition of his scarce resources in achieving them?

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

I meant the other way, not because Im smart it means that I will use my vote for the benefit of everyone.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

I think there's a lot to do to reform the electoral system before we get to the point of giving people extra votes for issues they feel strongly about.

How about keeping the people with close to no preference at all from voting? i.e. Take the names off the ballot and make people have to know the name of the person they're voting for to vote for a certain office. If someone isn't informed enough about the county commissioner race to know the name of one of the candidates, they probably should not be voting on that office.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

I really think our founders' concept of representative democracy is a little better than direct democracy because I would rather vote for a person I entrust to study issues and make well reasoned decisions than personally vote on a host of individual issues that I don't fully understand.

I am not a big fan of direct democracy as practiced in my state of California, for example, via the proposition system. I think it lets the legislature off the hook for making tough decisions.

I realize big money and career politics has a ton of problems, but I'd prefer those problems to everybody voting on a large number of critical issues they don't know very much about.

Instead of finding a system to weight votes, or limit votes to get people to vote on issues they know and/or care about, I'd rather vote for representatives and expect them to do their jobs well.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

I can't remember the details, but some city tried a voting system similar to what you are proposing once. It was an election for city council or something where the 5-6 highest finishers would get seats. They tried to implement a system where you could vote for five different people or allocate those five votes among only a few candidades, such as voting five times for the same person (From what I remember, it was seen as a way to improve the chances of minority candidates getting elected). In the end, it was found by the Supreme Court to be an unconstitutional violation of the principle of one man one vote.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Namely that it isn't really fair to defer to the majority in cases where a large minority have a STRONG reason to take the other side and the majority is close to neutral.


[/ QUOTE ]

Mr. S- Did you ever take a constitutional history type class in your formative years? Or any sort of civics related class? If you had, you'd know that we don't really have a democracy in this country, we have a representative republic. The PRECISE reason we have things like 2/3 votes in the house, 2 legislatures and 3 bodies that have to agree that something is good law (or really 4 I guess, if you count the Supreme Court) is to make sure lots of people agree the law is a good thing.

This is also why politics is a SLOW process. It's slow because it's deliberate, for every bill that's passed there's usually a couple feasability studies done, then it gets debated etc. It takes a while, but the idea is to get it right that time.

We don't really have a tyranny of the majority in this country because the minority can do things like filabuster.

If there's a strong minority on an issue, it won't pass because at some point you're going to need to get a 2/3rd majority, or thereabouts.

This is usually true for state and local legislatures as well. Usually local legislatures are smaller, and have a smaller constituancy to govern, so they're better at governing anyway, so it's less than an issue.

Seriously, you should read the federalist papers some time, or take a constitutional history/law class at a GOOD university.

[ QUOTE ]

1.Only allow people to cast a vote on a fraction of the total candidates/issues to be decided. Say half. They choose how to spread their votes.


[/ QUOTE ]

There's no way this would ever pass constitutional muster. You're effectivly disinfranchising people, and bringing up all kinds of 14th amendment issues there.

[ QUOTE ]

2.Allow the total votes for any person to be equal to the total of the decisions, but voters can give something more than one vote while ignoring other issues. Perhaps with a limit such as four.


[/ QUOTE ]

I think other people have already explained why this is a bad idea. Also, there's a reason we have a 2 party system in this country, it's so you can vote party line on issues you don't know about. You trust your party because it's their job to be informed on the issues, not as much yours. Also, this is what interest groups are for, they study issues and tell you what's up and how to vote. That's why we don't vote on everything, because we entrust other people to make the decisions for us who's job it is to be knowledgeable on issues.

[ QUOTE ]

Is it against the law for a small city to try something like this out in a minor election? They could even perhaps simultaneously do this with a standard election just to see how the results differ. Am I being naive to think that such a suggestion has any chance of ever being implemented?

[/ QUOTE ]

Like I said, it's probably going to have serious 14th amendment issues if it were ever really tried, and rightfuly so. 1 man, 1 vote.

If what other people have suggested is true, that you're trying to think of a system that rewards smartness, then I should remind you of something you sort of lived through, it was called "poll tax" and "literacy tests", and it's kind of bad.

What all the weirdo voting system people fail to understand is the principle (like I've already said) of why we elect leaders to represent us. We elect professional politicians (yes, even ones that stay there 20 years are good) to make our decisions for us to some extent, so we can better allocate our time to thing's we're all better at. Politians are providing a service, namely governing, just like any other professional.


It's amazing how some people just rehash the SAME problems that were thought of 225 years ago, and answered then, as some sort of new fangled thing.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

It's very likely that mild preferences don't have equal weight. Voters who care about an issue a lot will inform themselves about candidates' positions; voters who are almost indifferent won't bother. In the end, the small minority with a strong preference could easily end up with too much influence. Think pork barrel spending--the problem is precisely that there's an incentive to take a tiny but from a large population of taxpayers and funnel it to a small minority who will notice.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

What makes an established Democracy work is the ease of transfer of power and general low level of civil unrest.

The let the majority decide is a form of advertising slogan for democracy, an important one in that it is what makes people accept democratic decisions, even those the disagree strongly with.

You can come up with arguments like the OP’s as to how democracy can be made ‘fairer’. However such complicating armaments are unlikely to change the level of acceptance the general public have towards the democratic state.

Attempts too improve democracy tend to have problems associated with them. They tend to be overly complicated which will increase their expense and associated administrated overhead; also many people will have trouble understanding them.

An irrelevant luxury.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

This is why pure democracy results in rule by mob, and the reason why the US system was designed as a representative democracy. It is also the reason why referrendum legislation is a bad thing.

It is also the reason why the Founding Fathers did not believe that every person should be entitled to an equal vote. The original idea was that only the educated class of the population be entitled to vote. This proves very difficult to implement fairly, but philosophically its a good idea. Many of the problems with our system stem from the fact that we have moved towards rule-by-mob style democracy. Part of the reason that campaign contributions have such a heavy weight on our system is the need to be on television a lot to get in front of the masses who sit in front of the TV all day.

So, the third possibility is the Founding Father's idea where only those with a certain level of education are allowed to vote, and that as many decisions as possible are made by elected representatives. Very difficult to implement in practice.

Eliminating referrendum voting entirely is the best solution, and the one consistent with all of the other checks and balances of our system.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

Maybe we should have to pass one of DS's logic tests before we can vote. Better yet, DS can just decide for all of us since he did really well on the SAT and stuff.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Namely that it isn't really fair to defer to the majority in cases where a large minority have a STRONG reason to take the other side and the majority is close to neutral.


[/ QUOTE ]

Mr. S- Did you ever take a constitutional history type class in your formative years? Or any sort of civics related class? If you had, you'd know that we don't really have a democracy in this country, we have a representative republic. The PRECISE reason we have things like 2/3 votes in the house, 2 legislatures and 3 bodies that have to agree that something is good law (or really 4 I guess, if you count the Supreme Court) is to make sure lots of people agree the law is a good thing.

This is also why politics is a SLOW process. It's slow because it's deliberate, for every bill that's passed there's usually a couple feasability studies done, then it gets debated etc. It takes a while, but the idea is to get it right that time.

We don't really have a tyranny of the majority in this country because the minority can do things like filabuster.

If there's a strong minority on an issue, it won't pass because at some point you're going to need to get a 2/3rd majority, or thereabouts.

This is usually true for state and local legislatures as well. Usually local legislatures are smaller, and have a smaller constituancy to govern, so they're better at governing anyway, so it's less than an issue.

Seriously, you should read the federalist papers some time, or take a constitutional history/law class at a GOOD university.

[ QUOTE ]

1.Only allow people to cast a vote on a fraction of the total candidates/issues to be decided. Say half. They choose how to spread their votes.


[/ QUOTE ]

There's no way this would ever pass constitutional muster. You're effectivly disinfranchising people, and bringing up all kinds of 14th amendment issues there.

[ QUOTE ]

2.Allow the total votes for any person to be equal to the total of the decisions, but voters can give something more than one vote while ignoring other issues. Perhaps with a limit such as four.


[/ QUOTE ]

I think other people have already explained why this is a bad idea. Also, there's a reason we have a 2 party system in this country, it's so you can vote party line on issues you don't know about. You trust your party because it's their job to be informed on the issues, not as much yours. Also, this is what interest groups are for, they study issues and tell you what's up and how to vote. That's why we don't vote on everything, because we entrust other people to make the decisions for us who's job it is to be knowledgeable on issues.

[ QUOTE ]

Is it against the law for a small city to try something like this out in a minor election? They could even perhaps simultaneously do this with a standard election just to see how the results differ. Am I being naive to think that such a suggestion has any chance of ever being implemented?

[/ QUOTE ]

Like I said, it's probably going to have serious 14th amendment issues if it were ever really tried, and rightfuly so. 1 man, 1 vote.

If what other people have suggested is true, that you're trying to think of a system that rewards smartness, then I should remind you of something you sort of lived through, it was called "poll tax" and "literacy tests", and it's kind of bad.

What all the weirdo voting system people fail to understand is the principle (like I've already said) of why we elect leaders to represent us. We elect professional politicians (yes, even ones that stay there 20 years are good) to make our decisions for us to some extent, so we can better allocate our time to thing's we're all better at. Politians are providing a service, namely governing, just like any other professional.


It's amazing how some people just rehash the SAME problems that were thought of 225 years ago, and answered then, as some sort of new fangled thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Outstanding post. We could use you in the politics forum.

Re: Should Mild Preferences Have Equal Weight?
 

I honestly think this is one thing that the two party system should be really taking advantage of more than it currently is. If the democratic party conceded the abortion issue only, they would attract at least 1/4 of republican voters. I personally know of at least 5 people (and actually probably more than that) who one issue vote against abortion, even though in almost all other aspects, they would be voting with the democrats. Many moderate Christians (my family is Catholic) aren't very strongly against gay marriage or other "true" social/moral issues, and they are very much in line with the liberals on most social justice and economic justice issues, but it is too hard for a lot of them to (as they see it) cast a vote for killing babies. Many, moderate Christians/Catholics turn a blind eye to the issue, usually citing things like the unlikeliness of overturning Roe v. Wade, or the lack of voter impact on the Supreme Court's dealing with other abortion-related issues, but most "moderate" Christians see abortion as killing a baby. And many of them (while less than 50% probably), vote republican either solely on that issue, or almost solely. And while there is passion on the pro-choice side, I do not believe there are many pro-choice one issue voters, or at least not nearly as many. Will many democrats vote republican next election if Guilianni is their candidate? I doubt it. And I even doubt many would switch if the democratic opponent was publicly and strongly pro-life. This is not true for the other side.

Ok. I don't want this to be an abortion hijack, so I'll just state the general point to sum it up. Both parties are incredibly stubborn in their makeup. And while David's voting idea will never be implemented, political parties seeking power should take into account voter sentiment more than they do.

I do have a question for those of you who vote or who at least would vote if they knew their vote was the deciding vote (even ACers if you can stretch your imagination enough)...