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A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

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Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#51

Post by hannasanarion »

larrydag wrote: post #35
crazygringo wrote: post #9

It's clever, but it doesn't solve the problem. Because the problem isn't with strong preferences -- it's with extreme preferences. If there were 7 versions of a bill (A,B,C,D,E,F,G) ranging from ultra-conservative (a "A") to ultra-liberal (a "G"), in a polarized community people could still be spending the minimum 1 point each on the A's or G's and none on B-F. The problem with politics today isn't that people are si…

I agree. For this "tribal" reason of picking a party I've been more inclined to have term limits on Congress.

Term limits in congress aren't really a good thing though. We have term limits for President because the President is uniquely powerful, they can almost unilaterally bend the aparatus of government to their will. If allowed to rule for too long, a president can easily become a dictator. The same is not true of a congressperson who weilds 1/535th of the power of a branch.

Besides, if the people want to put someone in office, shouldn't they be allowed to? Isn't that Democracy 101?

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#52

Post by burtonator »

I fundamentally" believe in democracy and think that the way forward might be to experiment with these at the local level.

Either city/state elections or your own political parties.

If they REALLY work we would be HIGHLY competitive.

For example, instant run-off / ranked choice (or other voting systems) could be used in the Democratic primaries WITHOUT having to convince Republicans.

If they really work the Dems will have much better candidates better representing the people and should win more elections.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#53

Post by duxup »

Within a caucus I think this makes sense.

I do worry about any wider use though. California has shown with its proposition system that issue voting can get really messy / absurd. A political caucus can maybe recognize that voting to (just an example) dedicate %60 of all revenue to X while understanding that they can't then dedicate ... %60 of all revenue to Y too. The general electorate is not so inclined or consider things past step 1 of governance (or really think about governance at all).

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#54

Post by lghh »

If I were a politcal group with lots of members up for reelction, I would be sure to flood the ballot with things the other side wants to vote against so they'd have to spread out their tokens whereas my group could clump them on a single issue/candidate.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#55

Post by clarkevans »

It's nice to see other ways to vote. One of the other newcomers is STAR Voting (https://www.equal.vote/starvoting)

Ka-Ping Yee's analysis showing odd discontinuities in Ranked Choice aka Instant Runoff from 2005 is an interesting read http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#56

Post by _bxg1 »

What we need isn't necessarily centrism, but lowered emotions. Emotions are what skew reason and then catch like wildfire. It happens that they tend to push people to the extreme ends of the political spectrum, but that itself isn't really the problem. It's not about sheer distance from the center, it's about voting based on anger and hatefulness and fear. Anti-fascists in Nazi Germany would've been "extreme" relative to the center at the time, but they wouldn't have been "extreme" with regards to how hate-based their stance was.

Edit: Or more accurately - since many of them probably did develop hatred for the nazis - the anti-fascists' stance made the most sense when hate and fear are removed from the equation; were a person in that context to consider things stoically, there would've been little motive to side with the fascists.

To summarize: fear and anger warp your decision-making. It happens that they lead to polarization, but that's a red herring. What we need is to reduce the inflammation of society (largely thanks to social media), instead of tackling the symptom.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#57

Post by Muximize »

tialaramex wrote: post #41
Muximize wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is a Prisoner's Dilemma. Bob can convince Alice to spend half her tokens on proposition B but then betray her and spend all his tokens on B, resulting in 17 votes for B and only 7 for A. When voting is anonymous there is no way to detect if voters keep their pledge or not, so this should deter them from voting in any other way than in their own interest.

Is the voting in their legislature anonymous? Why? Unlike ordinary people, the legislators are working for their voters, who deserve to know if they got what they paid for. If I send Bob to the legislature, understanding that he plans to get rid of all the bloody clowns, I certainly want to know if he supported the Bill that gives every Clown $5000 of the city's tax revenue to buy more ludicrous shoes and lapel flowe…

Fair enough, that wouldn't work indeed. I was thinking about the abstract case, not actually applied as in the article. It would work with direct democracy though.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#60

Post by breuleux »

Couldn't this sort of incentivize efforts to polarize the public? If I want to get my way on issue X, but I don't care about issue Y, a good strategy for me would be to rouse everyone else about Y so that they waste their tokens on Y and can't oppose me as effectively on X. For example, I could push abortion as the most important issue of all, even though I really don't care either way, and then put all my tokens towards tax cuts for the rich.
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