Better voting methods, better politics, better society | Solving society's problems VIII

Democracy, Dianomocracy and non-plurality voting

Keywords: voting-expertise model, dianomocracy, distributing merit, expertise, power and agency; ranked choice voting (RCV) and STAR voting; vote on goals, missions and indicators; voting on laws; decentralization, citizen councils, worker coop (variant); deliberative, (semi-)direct, political and economic democracy

Can we improve governing models? Can we improve on democracy? There are several models how to govern groups of people, in companies, organizations and countries. I came up with an idea while thinking how to balance expertise of people and decentralization or devolvement of power. Also I’ll expand on some topics that are known in their respective fields, but maybe not so much in the general population.

First the voting-expertise model.

Sometimes the crowd can be irrational, which can result in groupthink or mobs. On the flipside, sometimes experts can be authoritative, narcassistic and/or corrupt. So how do you balance the expertise of the few with the wisdom of the crowds?

I came up with a new voting-expertise model, that I have never seen before and you read it here first.

Divide the total relevant population, people who want to participate actively in the selection and voting process, in two groups via a list/filter of characteristics or features that are democratically agreed upon, 1 positive set of characteristics you want people to have and 1 negative set you don’t want them to have. Now you have two groups: an expert group and a layman group.

The major problem is who determines what characteristics or features you have. Just like you need to take an exam to get a diploma, so you have credentials for certain occuptations. We can make an exam that assess your skills in all fields. This shows your qualifications for which you can be voted upon. The exam will also need to be democratically voted upon to get passed.

Let’s continue, the expert group is the top 50th percentile of the remaining part, where you subtract the negative set from the positive one. The layman group is the bottom 50th percentile, the rest of the population.

As for how we make and decide on such a list. We can do it by paper or digitally (blockchain to make it more secure). Let people gather and write down or input their preferences, positive as well as negative ones. Write down how many preferences you want them to have and don’t have. We collect them. There also has to be a method for tie-breakers, which I yet to have to think about.

The expert group refines the list with their expertise democratically to a probably smaller set of people and the 8 best people corresponding to that refined list are chosen automatically.

The expert group chooses democratically from the second refined list, 2 groups with each 4 people, 1 group from the expert group and 1 from the layman one. The choice is such, that they think will best suit their vision and idea’s. The layman group does the same, but can choose from either of the two lists.

Finally from the layman group, 8 people are chosen randomly to act as a kind of red team and to balance out the team that is chosen automatically from the expert group, by using randomness, the complete opposite of deterministic choosing and by introducing a little bit of variation and diversity into the whole selection process.

Now you have 8 groups in total, 2 large groups and 6 smallers groups, two with 8 people, 4 groups with 4 people, the expert and the layman group. Each of the smaller groups pick 4 members from their respective group of which they have been chosen to fill them up to 8 members, for example: the layman group chose 4 members from the expert group to form a smaller group, this smaller group chooses democratically 4 members from the expert group again to get to 8 members.

Now you have 2 large groups and 6 smaller groups of 8 people. Each of the groups get one-eighth (1/8) of the total number of votes of the whole population, be it a country, company or some other organization. Each of those groups pick one member amongst themselves democratically to form a board of directors (presidents à la Switzerland), two exceptions, 1. for the ones directly picked by the list, one member there would be picked (semi)randomly or via some condorcet method, 2. the random group doesn’t pick one. Now you have 7 members that govern the day-to-day operations, this special board has no special voting rights.

At the end you have 2 large groups and 6 smaller groups of 7 people. Of which there is 1 large group and 3 smaller groups of experts; 1 large group, larger than the expert group and 3 smaller groups of layman; 1 mixed group that are the board of directors.

Everyone can vote on every issue and/or law, except for the board, because the members are already in a group, but adhering to the one-eight rule of the group you’re in. The term on which people can govern should be the average duration of a business cycle of about 5 years or whatever is democratically decided on, but this should only be decided or voted upon at the end of the reigning term, for example the last 6 to 12 months, to avoid conflict of interest. Also their should be some sort of maximum term limit. People can vote for their preference and we pick the average or median number.

At the re-election, the list with features is going to be updated, the same people can be elected again if they receive at least the same voting percentage on the first time around, except if a competitor reached that same percentage, then they need to have a higher voting percentage. People should only be elected for a maximum number of consecutive times or a maximum number of years and the voters can vote on how many times that should be, I think ideally it should be five or six times and a duration limit of about 8 years (half of the duration when the person is allowed to vote, I set it at 16, but we can democratically vote what that age is), though we shall take the average or median number of what the voters want. Afterwards they can only be re-elected after certain conditions, I think ideally every sixth election.

How people are voted can be voted upon. For example choosing between proportional ranked choice voting or star voting. The population votes on the best method. Though majority vote should be banned, because that won’t result in proportional voting. Of course several political tools, like vote of no-confidence or a petition, that I don’t know much about can be included as well, if it would improve the voting-expertise model.

The way I divised this, is by maximizing expertise and democratic voting control. At each stage you can either work harder, be chosen if you want to represent the expert group or the layman group (like regular politicians) or lastly, if you didn’t get chosen, you have the ability to choose a group member and vote on every issue or law still. If you work harder, you can be automatically chosen if you’re the top 8 or be more favorably democratically chosen, because you are in a smaller expert group, which increases the probability or possibility. The act of choosing happens democratically and the determining of the list with features and the “exams” happens democratically. So we use democracy to incorporate expertise in our model.

Also I tried to maximize diversity and variety at each group level and at whole the selection process level.

Teams solve problems faster when they're more cognitively diverse

The reason that I picked a maximum of 7 or 8 people is so that there won’t be a strong or weak link when working in groups. A group with 5 or 6 could be considered strong link, like basketball and volleyball, and a group with 9 to 10 players could be considered weak link, like baseball and lacrosse (men). Strong link means the performance of the group depends on the strongest member of your group and weak link the opposite, where the performance depends on the weakest member. So you don’t want your population be totally dependent on your strongest member if they could be corrupt and in return you don’t want your population be dependent on the least skilled or most irrational member(s) of society. That’s what I tried to balance with the group formations.

Strong links weak link framework

It turns out that this an excellent balance of what are called direct and representative democracies. Direct, because you can directly vote on laws and it’s representative, because any other method than majority voting is proportional and representative of the voting population. With a balanced focus on expertise or technocracy, because the people decide the list of required skills or features the representatives should have and also balanced with a focus on performance by working harder to get in the expert group, meritocracy. I dub this model: dianomocracy or dianomarchy after greek διανέμω: to distribute; -ocracy from ancient Greek -κρατία (-kratía), from κράτος (krátos, “power”); -archy from ancient Greek -αρχίᾱ (-arkhíā), from ἀρχή (arkhḗ, “rule, government”). Because you distribute the key values: agency, power, expertise and merit in a fair, but knowledgable way. Let’s stick with the term dianomocracy.

As a result this new model of voting would also encourage trust in the business or government that implements it and will reduce corruption. There is another big way to foster trust and reduce corruption, see my post: Fiscal policies and wealth ownership to prosper society | Solving society's problems VI.

Since initially writing about dianomocracy, I discovered something called futarchy: Introduction to futarchy. It has a similarity in the fact that people can vote on values or metrics, but not on what the people should have, but on what path your government should take. I mention something similar about metrics that government can choose to improve society, in this post: Is money everything?

The fact that you can bet on beliefs with prediction markets is something completely different from the linked post.

After a while I researched similar forms like technocracy called: noocracy and epistocracy. “Nous meaning 'mind" or 'intellect', and kratos meaning 'power' or 'authority'. It is a type of government where decisions are delegated to those deemed wisest. The idea is classically advanced, among others, by Plato, al-Farabi and Confucius.” Epistomology: “the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion”.

Building on top of the insights of futarchy and the similarities with my linked post, the government should take a path that adheres to goals or missions and better methods or indicators to measure a country’s status and the wellbeing of it’s citizens, which is democratically voted upon; ideally through dianomocracy and non-majority voting methods like RCV or STAR voting.

“As a side effect, there will be less polarization in politics, because the actions politicians take, directly result in quantifiable measures that will affect society and your country, making the politicians easier accountable.”

If this holds true for the indicators, then it will hold for the goals or missions as well.

RCV or STAR voting are different way of dealing with single vote or plurality methods, usually first past the post (FPTP), when the winner has the majority of the votes. The problem with FPTP or plurality methods is that one large group decides for the rest of the population, that is marginally better than a dictator or feudalism, so you want something better that is more indicative of the preferences of the whole population, in other words the distribution matters as well. RCV and STAR voting are single winner methods trying to take that into account, even better would be proportional representation (PR) or better yet, my model: dianomocracy.

The problems with FPTP, plurality or “majority voting” are:

1. Because of the winner takes all method you will rally for the largest party or most likely to win, not accounting per se for your preferences. This will always result in a duopoly.

2. The fact that you have a duopoly means when campaigning, you won’t need to show the best parts of your vision, you just need to show the worst parts of your opponent, i.e. mudslinging, making this a toxic situation. As a result this will polarise the population as well. The people who aren’t automatically for your party aren’t floating voters, but dual haters. If they vote, they’ll vote for the ones they hate least, they’ll vote for the lesser of two evils.

3. Another fact of the duopoly is, when the running party or person underperforms in the last election. You’ll most likely get voted in because there is no other options, meaning you don’t need to do your best when in office, you only need to do less worse then the opponent to get re-elected.

4. Let’s say you’re mudslinging, you’re the lesser of two evils, you’re party underperforms and it’s still a close race, then to garner the most votes, your vision just needs to be more at the center of the political spectrum than the opponent’. This will also be a party that will most likely not appeal to your preference, because they just do it for the votes.

5. At the end you’re doing everything right, but both are mudslinging, you’re both trying to be less evil, you’re trying to perform on par with the opponent, you’re both trying to be at the center. In the end it’s 50-50 depending on who your voter “feels” like is the best, on which bias dominated the voter.

A famous philosopher, Karl Popper, talked about the problems of PR, but he argued for FPTP voting. However we can try to fix them instead of reverting to in my opinion to an inferior model like dictatorship or FPTP voting. Or upgrade to a better model: dianomocracy.

From the archives: the open society and its enemies revisited

Problems about PR:

1. Choosing for a party. “Thus, his main loyalty must be to his party, and to the party’s ideology; not to people (except, perhaps, the leaders of the party).”

2. Coalition government and minority rule. “A coalition government means, more often than not, that small parties can exercise a disproportionately great—and often decisive—influence, both on the formation of a government and on its resignation, and so on all its decisions.”

Solutions:

1. From the major two problems I agree with this one. So choose people in a representative way, i.e. single transferable vote or proportional RCV.

2. I don’t agree with everything he writes in this paragraph, but we need to make it possible to let the people have some sort of influence in the formation of a coalition. I propose that on the ballot we can rank and vote for the top 3 candidates and we rank and vote for the top 3 candidates we don’t want. This way, the candidates will get judged for their perfomance in the (coalition) government and the losers won’t likely be in the coalition. Also when the coalition is formed the aggregate of the top 3 of all the people will likely determine (a large part of) the coalition.

In the rest of this post I will be talking about further improvements to the government with various systems that will also improve PR indirectly.

Instead of governing models, I want to talk about laws. Before I mentioned RCV or STAR voting to determine democratically, goals, missions and indicators, but also the list and the two groups of dianomocracy. Why can’t we use these methods for voting on which laws get passed? Because the same problem arises with laws. Even though you have non-plurality methods, proportional representation or dianomocracy the majority vote determines which law gets passed, however there’s a disconnect between the laws getting passed and the governing model. So while we improved from a dictator or feudalism to plurality voting methods to non-plurality voting methods and eventually dianomocracy. The final step is getting laws passed with non-plurality voting methods. How this would work is when submitting a law about a certain issue, the coalition government could propose 5 different versions of the law with minor variations on which you can vote, another option to debate it further about if the 5 versions are sufficient (you maybe want to replace one) and one option to dismiss all of the other options and go vote on another law.

A more extreme version could be when submitting a law is, you don’t have a coalition and every party or candidate submits a law about a certain issue, but all the members vote for the top 5 laws they want to rank. After the votes are counted you can rank the top 5 that passed. Then through RCV the winner is determined. This version would remove a coalition government almost entirely and would fullfil the initial vision of PR.

For the first version it depends on the method, let’s take RCV.

In RCV, as with other ranked voting rules, each voter orders the options from first to last. The counting procedure is then as follows:

1. If there is an option that has a majority of the top preferences of the valid, active ballots, then that option is elected and the count stops. If not, go to step 2.

2. If there is more than one option left, eliminate the one with the fewest top preferences.

3. Reassign votes held by the eliminated options to the highest available preference indicated on each ballot paper (or digital method) (setting aside any with no remaining preferences). Return to Step 1.

Here’s a video explaining RCV.

One of the best applications of direct democracy, proportional representation and minimal/optimal central government, is the Swiss political system. The main focus of that style is: direct democracy, Federalism (the division and sharing of power between the national and state governments) and decentralization. Direct democracy is achieved through referenda for example, on national policies and the constitution can’t be changed unless it goes through a referendum. Decentralization through annual limitation of mandates: the president can only run for one year, and the bicamaral system that seeks consensus between the different parties. Direct democracy and decentralization through Communes (Swiss municipalities) deciding on local issues through show of hands at periodic meetings. The central state only manages foreign policy, armed forces and high-capacity infrastructure. The communes only deal with primare education and local services and the cantons or the “states” govern the rest, like taxes and health services. The video’s go more in-depth, especially the second one. One thing to note that I haven’t seen mentioned in the video: “The rise of Switzerland as a federal state began on 12 September 1848, with the creation of a federal constitution in response to a 27-day civil war, the Sonderbundskrieg. The constitution, which was heavily influenced by the United States Constitution and the ideas of the French Revolution, was modified several times during the following decades and wholly replaced in 1999.”, Switzerland as a federal state. The constitution of the United States (of America) came into effect on March 4, 1789. “The U.S. Constitution was a federal one and was greatly influenced by the study of Magna Carta and other federations, both ancient and extant.” “The idea of Separation of Powers inherent in the Constitution was largely inspired by eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophers, such as Montesquieu and John Locke.”; Constitution of the United States. The inspiration, modification and improvement of the US constitution along side gradual modifications and improvements through the years, has made it in my opinion the most effective democracy or political system. Though it’s not a dianomocracy. The only major downside is it’s veto system, similar to the EU’s, though the EU can be considered a confederation, it was heavily influenced by the Swiss system. The veto system means any (small) canton can block a law it doesn’t agree with. I have two solutions to that:

1. Implement non-plurality voting methods like RCV or STAR voting on laws, as explained above.

2. Also implement a veto variant. Every one out of six laws you’re allowed to “challenge”, asking for a referendum (with citizen’s or expert councils, as explained more in-depth below). Every one out of the six “challenges” or one out of 36 laws you’re allowed to “veto”, denying the law of passing through, though the other parties or senators can overrule that decision, but then they aren’t allowed to use their “veto” for the next 35 laws. The party or senator belonging to canton/state/region who got vetoed is allowed to propose the law, propose the debate about another law or issue, propose a debate about a previous accepted law or some other form of proposal that can be introduced.

We’ve gone over governing models, goals, missions, indicators and laws. With direct democracy forms (dianomocracy is a semi-direct form), the population has a lot of influence on laws for the industry, our means of production, which in turn affects the industry. So we have then control by proxy over our means of production. However any other forms of democracy weakens that connection, this is the case in almost all democracies, more precisely we have political democracies. To spread democracy to the industry, our means of production, we need to implement an economic democracy. An example of that is worker coops, I mentioned that in my post: Change how we work or vote, change the world | Solving society's problems III. There workers can vote on issues in the company. Instead of a implementing a law that makes every company (above a certain size), a worker coop, let’s try to pass a law with a lighter variant: one member, one share, one vote. This way you also don’t force a relatively unknown model like a worker coop through the nation and let people get used to democracy in the workplace. Worker coops can serve as substitute to unions, because you now have directly influence over the company, instead of just good pay and/or working conditions. Of course you can also implement a dianomocracy in the workplace.

Dianomocracy is a radical form of governing and people are hesitant to and won’t want to implement such a change (immediately). I thought of a method that is maybe a third to halfway to dianomocracy. It’s a mix between proportional representation, deliberative democracy, (semi-) direct democracy and economic democracy:

1. Implement the improvements to proportional representation (PR): single transferable vote and rank the top 3 preferred and non-preferred candidates.

2. Implement deliverative democracy in the form of citizen councils and expert councils (experts are chosen from the industry and research institutes). People in the government can decide when to use such a tool. The opposition could use it as a kind of veto, see the veto variant or the main coalition could use it when they want to verify it’s policies;

3. Implement (semi-) direct democracy through giving more referenda, as a veto variant or otherwise, to the general population for passing laws or approving general policies, exclude the government and experts from the general population. Again people in the government can decide when to use such a tool. However make it binding, so it’s really direct form of democracy, but these referenda can be weighted, the outcome of the referenda determines 20% of the vote, the government 20%, experts (from the industry and research institutes) 20% and citizen and expert councils 20% each (it’s not nicely divided by 8 to get 12.5%, but it’s something);

4. Implement the goals, mission and indicators, which the people can vote on through referenda. Same distribution as above, general population 20%, government 20%, experts 20% and citizen and expert councils 20% each;

5. Implement Swiss style decentralization and Federalism, by giving the central government the only necessary policies it should handle and delegate the rest to the regions, cantons, states and communes, municipalities.

6. Implement non-plurality voting methods on laws;

7. Implement economic democracy, by passing a law that makes every company (above a certain size) a worker coop variant, with one member, one share, one vote.

Citizen councils, kind of work like judges in a court. In this analogy you have the government that is the suspect, while the general population are judges, that will determine the suspects’ fate.

The workplace is one of the last places left in a free and (political) democratic country that has not a democracy. Making it possible, we would have an economic democracy.

Finally, improve proportional representation (PR); use different governing models or electoral systems like: deliberative democracy, (semi-)direct democracy, ranked choice voting (RCV) or STAR voting and economic democracy (worker coops (variant)); use Swiss style decentralization and Federalism and use goals, mission and indicators for the government. Ideally you would use dianomocracy as that includes most of all of the others systems and includes technocracy and meritocracy as well. That would result in a protopia, that would help people, society, the country and the world to be a better place.