Possible Route to Power

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William Waugh

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May 13, 2015, 10:46:32 AM5/13/15
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What if some organization polled more than half of the electorate (as many of them as feasible), using Score Voting for the poll, and checking identities so no one could vote twice in the polling, to determine which pro-democracy (not "Democratic" Party) candidate for each seat in each State legislature had the most support, and what if that organization published the results of that polling? Then in the official election (still using single-mark Plurality), everyone would be armed with the knowledge of which pro-democracy candidate had the most support. They wouldn't have a reason to vote against that candidate, would they?

Warren D Smith

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May 13, 2015, 12:00:57 PM5/13/15
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At present the media usually only covers 2 candidates. So almost
nobody knows anything about the others. So polls are useless and meaningless.

One can try to get around that by polling those rare elections where
more than 2 candidates are interesting; or by creating an entire new
branch of the media which does not suffer from this flaw.
You seem to be proposing the latter.

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William Waugh

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May 13, 2015, 9:30:14 PM5/13/15
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I propose the formation of a voters' union, to be named Voters' Union. It would be an organization of, for, and by voters having the purpose of empowering voters. It would convey information from voters to voters and also from candidates to voters and from voters to candidates. Since it would convey information, I suppose that would make it a "branch of the media".

Voters' Union would recruit voters to join. Perhaps it would be worth distinguishing two overlapping classes of member: dues-paid members and identity-checked members. The latter could participate in the union's polling. But perhaps all should have equal power in the internal government of the union. So maybe the dues-paid distinction wouldn't be that useful, but there may be reason to at least ask for money from members so as to be able to buy commercial means of checking identity, advertising for recruitment, and web services. The union would never register itself as a political party nor take positions on questions other than those that bear on the political power of the voters.

A primary operation of the union, as I mentioned, would be to poll voters (this would be limited to voters who are members, but I think that is not a significant limitation, as the union would try to recruit all voters to join, and I see no reason a voter would not want to join except for the case of voters who oppose the principle of equality of political power), and to announce the results of those polls. I should think that this operation, if sufficient proportion of the voters participate, would remove the fuel (or the oxidizer) from the fire so to speak that happens when a candidate is accused of being a "spoiler" as Mr. Nader was. No one would be a spoiler. If the voters like a candidate the best, they can then go to the official election and experience plurality. Why? Because they are informed where their fellow voters stand, a condition missing in the absence of the union and missing in the Prisoner's Dilemma.

In addition to the primary informational function of conducting the polls, the union could provide a common form and forum where candidates could inform the voters about the candidates' positions on any kind of political question, and could take questions from the voters if they so chose. This could be done on a web site. Accepting the statement of one more candidate would have microscopic incremental cost, except perhaps on the time and attention of the voters and on the signal-to-noise ratio of the candidate forum. If that becomes a problem, I suppose the union could put in place a system where voters (maybe even by faction) could rate the interestingness of candidates and that would determine their order of presentation or readers could invoke filters based on such ratings.

So, a branch of the media? Yes, in the sense that the operations of the union would inform people about what other people say. But the union would differ markedly from the Washington _Post_ for example in being owned by the voters, and controlled by the voters via the union's internal political mechanism, and therefore could be expected to exercise whatever flexibility its charter allowed, in favor of the voters and not in favor of any interest that conflicts with the public interest.

On Wednesday, May 13, 2015 at 12:00:57 PM UTC-4, Warren D. Smith (CRV cofounder, http://RangeVoting.org) wrote https://groups.google.com/d/msg/electionscience/b0cBni8GGh4/H75v-ji2l78J

Frank

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May 13, 2015, 11:25:53 PM5/13/15
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This would probably work in certain city Mayor elections. Despite assertions to the contrary, coverage of mayoral elections in Philadelphia routinely covers half a dozen Candidates, if not more. Granted, given the Voter registration patterns of the city, almost All those Candidates are Democrats. Nonetheless, Philadelphia would be a prime place to test Your idea.

On 13 May 2015 at 10:46, William Waugh <2knuw...@snkmail.com> wrote:
What if some organization polled more than half of the electorate (as many of them as feasible), using Score Voting for the poll, and checking identities so no one could vote twice in the polling, to determine which pro-democracy (not "Democratic" Party) candidate for each seat in each State legislature had the most support, and what if that organization published the results of that polling? Then in the official election (still using single-mark Plurality), everyone would be armed with the knowledge of which pro-democracy candidate had the most support. They wouldn't have a reason to vote against that candidate, would they?

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Warren D Smith

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May 14, 2015, 9:43:32 AM5/14/15
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there are already plenty of pollsters who poll voters, though
admittedly such polls get published only for major elections, and usually
not using the voting methods that I would prefer, as the polling methods.

it costs a goodly amount of money and/or effort to do such polls, and it helps
also if you have more experience doing them.

William Waugh

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May 14, 2015, 12:45:41 PM5/14/15
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"it costs a goodly amount of money and/or effort to do such polls, and it helps also if you have more experience doing them."

I'm thinking the identified members would fill out the polls on a web site. That would be the only polling.

Maybe I shouldn't use the term "poll", because it connotes going up to people and asking them. I should say "shadow election". The identified members of the voters' union would participate in an election run as it should be in order to determine who should be elected, and then they would put that into effect by voting in the official election. Of course if someone was not OK with the shadow winner, she might vote otherwise. But the shadow winner should still win if the identified membership in the union amounts to sufficient proportion of the voters in the official election, if my intuition about the math is right and if my intuition about human behavior is right.

I'm thinking recruitment will be a significant expense, however. People aren't smart enough to see the advantages of the union. There will have to be heavy propaganda promoting the purpose and convincing people it is worthwhile.

Warren D Smith

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May 14, 2015, 1:20:36 PM5/14/15
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On 5/14/15, William Waugh <2knuw...@snkmail.com> wrote:
> "it costs a goodly amount of money and/or effort to do such polls, and it
> helps also if you have more experience doing them."
>
> I'm thinking the identified members would fill out the polls on a web site.
>
> That would be the only polling.

-- that would produce ridiculously unrepresentative samples, and poll
results which were pretty worthless for the purpose of predicting
honest election results.

William Waugh

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May 14, 2015, 5:03:53 PM5/14/15
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Do you think that on the grounds that you think the organization wouldn't attract sufficient proportion of the voters, or that having joined, they would fail to participate in the shadow elections?

William Waugh

Warren D Smith

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May 14, 2015, 6:03:40 PM5/14/15
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PEOPLE WHO JOIN AN ORGANIZATION SUCH AS YOURS, or for that matter
who join any organization whatsoever, are atypical, nonrepresentative people.

It'd be like if you conducted a poll of Nazi party members to predict
our next election in
the USA. Then when the results disagreed wildly,. the Nazi party
would complain their poll
proved the USA electoral system was corrupt?!

Good polls are of representative samples...

William Waugh

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May 14, 2015, 6:18:24 PM5/14/15
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On Thursday, May 14, 2015 at 6:03:40 PM UTC-4, Warren D. Smith (CRV cofounder, http://RangeVoting.org) wrote:
PEOPLE WHO JOIN AN ORGANIZATION SUCH AS YOURS, or for that matter
who join any organization whatsoever, are atypical, nonrepresentative people.

...

So you're thinking it would not be possible, or not cheap enough, to recruit say 90% of the eligible voters.

William Waugh

Warren D Smith

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May 14, 2015, 7:13:04 PM5/14/15
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> So you're thinking it would not be possible, or not cheap enough, to
> recruit say 90% of the eligible voters.
>
> William Waugh
>

--of course that would be impossible (unless they were coerced).
I believe there has never been, in the history of humanity, an
organization 90% or more joined (if not coerced).
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