Live data from Hacker News

A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

bloomberg.com

1–10 of 343 posts

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#2
Looks like this would favor highly coordinated groups to have outsized influence over poorly coordinated groups.

So people who vote in isolation have less influence than people who organize and vote as a bloc.

I think it also means that places where one party predominates would require the minority party to be highly coordinated in order to have any chance with one single silver “bullet” whereas the dominant party can expend multiple “bullets” to counter.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#3
post #2

Looks like this would favor highly coordinated groups to have outsized influence over poorly coordinated groups. So people who vote in isolation have less influence than people who organize and vote as a bloc. I think it also means that places where one party predominates would require the minority party to be highly coordinated in order to have any chance with one single silver “bullet” whereas the dominant party ca…

This seems to be the obvious problem. If I only care about X, and you only about Y, we could vote individually (100 tokens -> 10 votes for X, 100 tokens -> 10 votes for Y), or we could collude and make that vote (2 * 50 tokens -> 2 * 7 votes X, 2 * 50 tokens -> 2 * 7 votes Y).

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#4
In the US where the parties cling to stupid and outdated viewpoints and agendas in order to differentiate themselves from the other party. Legislators have to vote with the party if they don't want to find the party funding an opponent in the next election cycle. This is an improvement insofar as it allows legislators to nominally vote with the party while voting more strongly in favor of things they actually care about.

This would probably work well in two party states because it would allow lawmakers to vote as weakly as possible for stupid things just to say they're towing the party line while not actually voting strongly for them. In single party states this is probably a bad thing because it gives the people who ran as the other party just to get their name on the ticket to only weakly vote the way their platform says they should be voting.

If this system were used outside of the legislature (i.e. to actually elect legislator) it would probably be a total shitshow because as other commenters have mentioned it rewards coordination which basically just favors the status quo. If there's anything we need it's less status quo in general elections.

So yeah, this might work in a legislature but I don't see it working well to elect the actual politicians themselves.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#5
I have had so many discussions with people about finding better ways to vote and hold elections.

It's nice to hear when there's a new approach that is actually being used, even if it was only in a small community, although I would be interested in seeing something like this used in large scales elections.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#6
post #3
post #2

Looks like this would favor highly coordinated groups to have outsized influence over poorly coordinated groups. So people who vote in isolation have less influence than people who organize and vote as a bloc. I think it also means that places where one party predominates would require the minority party to be highly coordinated in order to have any chance with one single silver “bullet” whereas the dominant party ca…

This seems to be the obvious problem. If I only care about X, and you only about Y, we could vote individually (100 tokens -> 10 votes for X, 100 tokens -> 10 votes for Y), or we could collude and make that vote (2 * 50 tokens -> 2 * 7 votes X, 2 * 50 tokens -> 2 * 7 votes Y).

I don't see the problem with that, because it would require me to convince you to vote for Y although you want X.

And in addition, seeing as this is an anonymous (I'm assuming) vote, then I could lie to you and vote my way (to get more votes for Y), but then if everyone will do it, the colluding wouldn't work, so we need to be able to trust each other and work together, which is exactly what we in the end, for people to work together and not against each other.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#7
"Success" seems to be defined unclearly here. "Held and election and got a result" seems to be the only outcome.

"Quadratic voting was invented not by political scientists but by economists and others..."

Not much of a point here, this is clearly within the domain of economics.

It worked with 41 lawmakers, it seems like an interesting voting method for small scale. Can it scale up?

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#8
post #6
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be the obvious problem. If I only care about X, and you only about Y, we could vote individually (100 tokens -> 10 votes for X, 100 tokens -> 10 votes for Y), or we could collude and make that vote (2 * 50 tokens -> 2 * 7 votes X, 2 * 50 tokens -> 2 * 7 votes Y).

I don't see the problem with that, because it would require me to convince you to vote for Y although you want X. And in addition, seeing as this is an anonymous (I'm assuming) vote, then I could lie to you and vote my way (to get more votes for Y), but then if everyone will do it, the colluding wouldn't work, so we need to be able to trust each other and work together, which is exactly what we in the end, for people…

Coordinated groups have voting power of sqrt(total money)*sqrt(number of individuals), uncoordinated ones have sqrt(money). If you are for some cause, you should just find like-minded individuals and pool your total money. They have very limited incentive for keeping the money for themselves because they also agree with you on the issue.

Then the other side should also coordinate tightly in this manner, and now you have a new problem: polarization.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#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 single-issue voters (because they generally aren't -- it's not a problem that needs to be solved)... it's that the natural evolution of the two-party system has forced us into choices that are more polarized than ever before in the history of the US -- in a two-party election, we're often only given options A and G, or maybe B and F, but rarely C through E.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#10
post #6
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be the obvious problem. If I only care about X, and you only about Y, we could vote individually (100 tokens -> 10 votes for X, 100 tokens -> 10 votes for Y), or we could collude and make that vote (2 * 50 tokens -> 2 * 7 votes X, 2 * 50 tokens -> 2 * 7 votes Y).

I don't see the problem with that, because it would require me to convince you to vote for Y although you want X. And in addition, seeing as this is an anonymous (I'm assuming) vote, then I could lie to you and vote my way (to get more votes for Y), but then if everyone will do it, the colluding wouldn't work, so we need to be able to trust each other and work together, which is exactly what we in the end, for people…

> I don't see the problem with that, because it would require me to convince you to vote for Y although you want X.

X and Y need not be alternatives for the same problem, X might be about financial deregulation and Y about privacy deregulation.

Post reply on HN