Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

Andrew Coyne reports about the British Columbia electoral reform committee's decision to recommend the single transferable vote to a referendum occuring on the same day as the provincial election: “the “committee” was made up, not of politicians or lawyers, but common citizens, with almost none of the jiggery-pokery that signals to folks the fix is in: other than a requirement of gender parity (one man and one woman from each riding) and the last-minute addition of two aboriginal members, the principle of random selection was in general respected, in keeping with another bedrock democratic assumption -- that people of good faith are capable of representing the interests of others besides themselves. Their deliberations were by all accounts transparently fair, with due weight given to competing systems, including the status quo. Moreover, both the government and the assembly were bound by a like constraint: that whatever was proposed would be put to the people in a referendum, coincident with the next provincial election. So the government could not bury the assembly’s recommendations, and the assembly could not run amok.”

I'm a political opponent of the B.C. Liberal Party, but they did absolutely the right thing by first setting a date on which the election would be held and by creating the electoral system reform committee and by not, as Coyne notes, meddling in the process. The established political forces—both business and unions and even the parties—are unenthusiastic to say the least of the new system. I'm unenthusiastic about single transferable vote (due mostly to ignorance of the implementation details), but I do agree that proportionality needs to be introduced into the political system in Canada. I'm a fan of Germany's electoral system, which mixes local representation with ideological representation—which gives everybody two votes. Yes, proportional systems sometimes give small parties more power than they should have, such as when they hold the balance of power. But the critics over-estimate the power such small parties hold, because even they need to compromise their values if they want to form the government.

Proportional representation introduces negotiation into the mix, and since the British Parliamentary system is set up as an adversarial process (even in physical terms, since the members of the Opposition sit on the other side of the governing party). The current system has the advantage of efficiency: bills the government wants passed will more than likely be passed. The very fact that the words "poison pill" and "rider" and "block" aren't in the Canadian political lexicon should be evidence enough of that. With efficiency comes danger, however, that the governing party governs only for the people that elected them, which is more often than not less than half of the population, and while efficiency is a worthwhile goal, it is not when the legislation is wrong-headed.

(Originally written on the bus.)

James Surowiecki on odd-looking results in the recent Venezuela referendum: “with twelve thousand voting "tables," many with multiple machines, it was inevitable that some would end up with matching scores. (It's similar to the fact that if there are 23 people in a room, the chances are 50-50 that two of them have the same birthday.) Not surprisingly, then, when international observers audited a sample of the results, they found that while there were 402 tables with matching anti-Chavez votes, there were 311 tables with matching pro-Chavez votes, too. What seemed to be proof of fraud was most likely just a statistical artifact.”

Edward Felton, on the same topic: “What evidence is there for fraud? The opposition says that the election results were inconsistent with exit polling, which they say went 58-42 in the other direction. That's a big enough swing to raise eyebrows, but it's hard to evaluate the accuracy of the exit polls based on the information available to me.”

Richard Posner: “technological fixes for the sorts of problem that emerged in Florida in the last election, the simplest fix being to replace the punchcard ballot (especially when the votes are counted at the county rather than precinct level) by the optical-scanning (Marksense) system, are likely to be opposed by incumbents. Incumbents have adapted to whatever system they were elected under and are reluctant to take their chances with a new system. This is one example of the uneasy relation between law and technology, and another is the indifference (at least until 2000) of most students of election law to the serious technological issues involved in our election methods.”

I still favour the paper ballot system, but I grant that it probably works better for a small country like Canada than it would for a country like the United States.

Jay comments on my thoughts on democracy: “I was referring to an idealized definition of democracy not one of any particular government. By this, I mean to suggest that I don't think non-taxpayers should be considered citizens, i.e. voters. Note, this does mean a citizen taxpayer can violate the natural rights of a non-citizen (an immigrant or non-taxpayer) because the role of government is to protect natural rights within its borders, not within its borders for its citizens.”

Karl: “J'ai eu de nombreuses fois ce débat avec mon entourage et notamment sur celui du « devoir d'aller voter » comme élément fondamental du respect de la démocratie et surtout du reproche fondamental que si on ne se rendait pas aux urnes la démocratie était en danger. Combien ai-je vu ces personnes oublier leurs « devoirs citoyens » pour le reste de l'année. En effet, voter n'est pas l'ultime outil de la démocratie, il est un des moyens mais qui n'est pas suffisant et loin de là. La déresponsabilisation des individus face à leur environnement est généralisée et plus personne ne veut prendre part au débat social (social pris dans le sens relatif à un groupe d'individus). De nombreuses personnes diront : « C'est inutile » , « C'est inefficace » . Il est vrai que cela semble difficile, mais encore une fois avec cet abandon du terrain social, les personnes ont oublié la nature de l'engagement et de l'effort de cet engagement.”

Karl's article could well be read in conjunction with Jay McCarthy's article on democracy and natural rights. He defines democracy as “A regular [say] in the government that you are citizen of.” The difficulty with that definition is that people are not citizens of a government, but rather citizens of a country (or possibly more than one country, since some countries' governments think it's possible to be loyal to more than one country). Those of voting age—but even those who are not, since many non-voters also pay taxes, and many voters don't, legally and otherwise, meaning by definition, voters usually outnumber taxpayers—comprise the government. In democracies, they generally elect representatives to serve in the legislature on their behalf, since they, the people, have better things to do than argue the merits of the amendment to paragraph 3 subparagraph c. Also, in democracies, the courts and the executive—sometimes, like in the United States, elected, often not—are usually independent of each other. This is especially true of the United States, but not so much Canada since the executive (the head of state) is an appointed figurehead and the judiciary is de facto appointed by the prime minister.

Getting back to Jay's argument, he says that voting is not a natural right, and I actually think he's absolutely correct. Voting is a learned and socialized behaviour, and while some—like those who say the market should decide, or that a "benign" dictatorship should—think that this learned and socialized behaviour is bad, there are others—the majority, it turns out—that think otherwise. Karl argues that democracy is more than just voting: it's participating in social life and, however small the impact, participating in the decision making process.

Their articles touch different aspects, Jay focussing on rights (especially those of minorities and how they can be reconciled with those of majorities or other minorities) where Karl focuses on the market and its troubled relationship with democracy.

Darren: “If you don't vote, I'll stand for no future complaints about the government.”

d: “Vote on Monday. Vote with your heart and your brain. Vote with the past and the future in mind. Whatever you do.. vote.”

peechie: “GO VOTE, NOW! [...] SO JUST DO IT! MAKE YOURSELF HEARD!”

Steve: “The only wasted vote is the vote not cast.”

Well, I don't agree, with Darren's argument (you're allowed to complain about the government if you haven't voted) nor with the tone of d and peechie (do people really respond that well to being told what to do in caps?) nor with Steve (not voting is a legitimate form of political expression, and besides, if your candidate is going to win and doesn't need your vote, why bother?). I'm voting today—I feel no obligation to tell you for whom, since here in Canada it's a secret ballot—because it makes me feel important when a good sized chunk of our world's population doesn't have the right. But that's despite being told to do it by my peers. I say that if you're eligible and don't want to vote or have nobody to vote for or against, you're under no obligation to. Low voter turnout is not so bad; it may even be better for democracy. People telling others what to do, that's bad for democracy.

Robert X. Cringley makes the case for Canada's system of voting:

Forget touch screens and electronic voting. In Canadian Federal elections, two barely-paid representatives of each party, known as "scrutineers," are present all day at the voting place. If there are more political parties, there are more scrutineers. To vote, you write an "X" with a pencil in a one centimeter circle beside the candidate's name, fold the ballot up and stuff it into a box. Later, the scrutineers AND ANY VOTER WHO WANTS TO WATCH all sit at a table for about half an hour and count every ballot, keeping a tally for each candidate. If the counts agree at the end of the process, the results are phoned-in and everyone goes home. If they don't, you do it again. Fairness is achieved by balanced self-interest, not by technology. The population of Canada is about the same as California, so the elections are of comparable scale. In the last Canadian Federal election the entire vote was counted in four hours. Why does it take us 30 days or more?

I've argued this before. Since never having voted in the United States with their systems (yeah, plural) and being Canadian makes me a bit biased...well, you get the idea. Ben Adida responds, saying that the ballot in America is too complicated for the Canadian system to work in America (emphasis added):

We vote for more positions (sometimes as many as 50 or more), and we vote for propositions. The complexity of the US ballot means that hand-counting paper ballots is simply not doable given the timeframe that is expected for same-day results. You'll hear this from almost all election officials: hand-counting paper ballots just can't be done.

See also:

• Transparency over speed
• A Better Control (last item)

Electronic Frontier Foundation on voting machine standards: "EFF supports the IEEE in taking on the issue of setting standards for electronic voting machines. We also support the idea of modernizing our election processes using digital technology, as long as we maintain, or better yet, increase the trustworthiness of the election processes along the way. But this standard does not do this, and it must be reworked."

While remaining ambivalent about the ability technology in general to improve our lives, certain technologies have positive effects. The EFF, in general and in principle, is a good organziation and is usually correct in matters concerning privacy. It is wrong, however, with respect to using digital technology in the electoral process, specificallly physical voting. Any standard that uses digital technology must, in other words, not be re-worked, but rather scrapped entirely.

I've argued this before: faith in people, not technology. With the system I propose (essentially Canada's), people will make mistakes. Under any system relying heavily on digital technology, when the technology fails, the technology is blamed, but with a system of paper ballots and people counting said ballots, people would get the blame for any mistakes. Will counting the ballots slow down? Almost certainly. Will the counting be 100% accurate? Likely not. Will there be paper records of the vote, with human recollections to go with it? Yes. Will people be held accountable for their failures and given a pat on the back for a smooth election? Yes.

America's fetish with technological solutions to social problems—got school shootings? Then more metal detectors but no, not an improved education system or improved dispute resolution in the classroom and hallways—political problems—can't find terrorists? Then more intrusive satellite technology and a camera on every street to watch our every move, but no, not improved intelligence-gathering on the ground and no, not an international system based on the peaceful settlement of disputes—and economic problems—famine at home or abroad? Then genetically modified crops, but no, definitely not improved political situations in developing countries and certainly not the removal of agricultural subsidies—would be fed and encouraged. The same goes with the Florida Debacle: the problem was not a confusing ballot (okay, yes it was), but it was the belief by those in government (technically, that's you, the people) that voters don't know how to mark an X in a box with the candidate's signature and that counting must be done with machines and not people because "machines are more reliable". An adequate, nay, preferable system is one of paper ballots with people counting the results. Transparency over speed, people over technology.

[via the mighty kottke.org]