Wednesday, August 21, 2013

One man, many votes?

Here's an idea I've been mulling for some time for a new type of democracy (or at least one that I've not read about before). It's intended to improve the ability of people to participate while preserving the ability to have representation where it's desired. Keep in mind that it requires some sophisticated on-line voting mechanisms, but they're just technology problems, and nothing makes me think they're not solvable.

  1. Each person gets not one vote, but many. Votes are of two types. Program administration votes, and legislative votes.
  2. Program administrative (PA) votes - One government meta-program declares all other programs. Each person gets one vote per program. The meta-program is governed like other programs.
  3. Legislative (L) votes - For every statute, a person gets one vote. The vote is applied either to a version of a statute, or against its existence. Anyone may create a statute version.
  4. All votes may be proxied to another person or organization. The recipient knows approximately how many proxy votes he controls, but not exactly (to avoid forced proxies).
  5. A person can determine where his votes are at any point, can change a vote at any point, but must change or validate the vote once every voting period.
  6. When a person reaches majority, they must cast their votes. When a person dies, their votes are removed.
  7. All personal taxes are distributed to programs by nomination of the individual. Tax allocation profiles may be established by organizations and used by individuals.
  8. All non-personal taxes are collected and distributed to programs either by using the aggregate profile of personal contributions or by nomination of a government budget program.
  9. Each program has an administrator determined by program vote. 
  10. Administrators are nominated by anyone and must accept the nomination to be considered.
  11. The term of a program administrator is determined by program vote, by statute, or by instant recall (reallocation of a program vote).
  12. Legislation determines what program policy or regulatory processes require explicit program votes.
  13. Legislative votes may be automatically allocated to the same proxy as program votes or a different proxy.
  14. If L to PA automated allocation is in effect, one government meta-program assigns draft legislation to a program. That assignment may be controlled by the meta-program's program voting. 
  15. If L to PA automated allocation is in effect, bills cannot be 'omnibus'. 

Most readers will get to the second item and say "that's just too unwieldy". But remember, most people will not want to be involved in all programs and will delegate their votes to a (hopefully) knowledgeable or responsible proxy. Those programs they wish to have an impact on, they can control in detail.

For the third item, people will say "we'll never pass any laws". But again, because of proxying, this system allows either party-based representation or personal participation in government decisions.

No comments:

Post a Comment