Write-In Asset Voting

[Brian Langstraat]

Write-In Asset Voting (WIAV) would allow voters to vote for any candidate with high confidence that their vote will contribute to the final election winner(s).

Write-In Only Voting (not Mail-In Voting) is discussed in the post:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/electionscience/nOS7FHstz_g

Asset Voting and "Weighted Congressmen" is discussed at:

http://www.rangevoting.org/Asset.html

Overview of WIAV:

Voters would fill-in ballots by writing-in candidates.

The total votes for each candidate are their assets.

Candidates negotiate with other candidates and redistribute assets to elect the winner(s).

More Detail:

Every citizen is assigned a unique (random ten-digit) identification (ID) number (similar to a Social Security Number).

Each candidate would publish their ID number as part of their campaign.

Voters would be allowed to bring a list of ID numbers with them to the voting booth.

Voters would fill-out their ballots using the ID number (with filled-in bubbles) for a candidate in each office.

Ballots would be placed in voting machines that would briefly and privately display the names matching the ID number of the candidates that the voter selected.

If the displayed candidate's names are incorrect, then the voter can correct errors to avoid spoiled ballots.

The votes for each candidate would be summed in a centralized public database after the election.

The total votes for each candidate would become their assets (similar to "Weighted Congressmen").

Candidates would negotiate (for about 2 weeks) with other candidates to determine how their assets could be redistributed.

(For sanity's sake, access to the election convention would require an asset threshold of about 1% of total votes, so candidates below the asset threshold would need to redistribute assets.)

Candidates would meet in the election convention (about 2 weeks after the ballot election) to determine final distribution of assets (similar to political party conventions).

The candidate(s) with the most assets by the predetermined end of the election convention (9:00 PM?) would be declared the winner(s) (similar to the electoral college).

[Brian Langstraat]

To prevent voters from voting for themselves just so they could participate in the asset negotiations, there could be a vote threshold to receive assets at about 0.01% of the total votes.

For example, an election with 1,000,000 votes would require a vote threshold of 100 votes to receive assets and an asset threshold of 10,000 votes to access the election convention.

This would mean that some voters' choices would not count as assets toward the final election results, but a candidate that cannot even get 0.01% of a population to vote for them is probably a poor choice.

[William Waugh]

I find your original proposal without the thresholds you added in your follow-up writing, a vast improvement over the current system (choose-one plurality).

On Monday, April 3, 2017 at 11:59:10 AM UTC-4, Brian Langstraat wrote https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/electionscience/JmJ54V9oQ6M

[Brian Langstraat]

William,

I appreciate your reply and our previous discussion about Write-In Only Voting.

Since the choose-one plurality voting system is terrible, most voting systems would be an improvement.

How does this compare with other voting systems, since Range/Approval and Ranking may not work well in WIAV?

Both Write-In and Asset voting are non-deterministic, so a simulation may not be possible.

The thresholds were added to address potential issues such as chaotic or corrupt asset redistribution.

If some people just voted for themselves, what would prevent them from being coerced to redistribute their asset to a certain candidate?

Perhaps, the asset threshold would be unnecessary, if there was no election convention and a strict redistribution deadline was set.

If there were no issues with voting publicly or digitally, then ballot votes may not be necessary.

Each citizen could redistribute their asset to delegates who could redistribute assets to candidates.

There could be a series of redistribution deadlines with increasing minimum amounts of assets that are allowed to be redistributed such as:

Week 1 - 1 asset, Week 2 - 10 assets, Week 3 - 100 assets, Week N - 10^(N-1) assets