Democracy revisited

A good friend of mind got me into this. He suggested a better model for democracy. There were a few things which I found quite alarming in his suggestion. I gave my views and he didn’t take it quite well. A few other friends gave similar response as mine. But he kept criticizing us back saying we are not looking for merits but just flaws. I think he was right in a way.

The biggest merit if his model is that it counters the biggest shortcoming in direct democracy, that is that people who are ignorant about the consequences of voting for any given candidate, get to vote, and their vote counts just as much as that of those who know exactly what they are doing.

I think that’s an idea worth chasing so let’s work on this thing.

The main flaw I see with his model is that it assumes that intelligent people are ideal people. I don’t buy that.

I propose that we amend the model with another goodness factor. Now intelligence and goodness will be two independent variables. Value of anyone’s vote depends on both.

Regarding the voters.

There is no minimum age to vote. Instead you should only be allowed to vote if you pass a certain knowledge exam. This exam should be a part of our education system like board exam followed by an interview. Interview is to make sure that one cannot just mug the syllabus without understanding the context and become eligible to vote. Another approach is surprise test methods (in which one can only score if prepared all the time). In this case, one will randomly get a phone call and will be asked his/her credentials (like unique identification number etc) to confirm that the person is correct. Then in next 10 minutes one has to answer a few quick fire questions which will later be used to determine whether one should be allowed to vote or not.

Also, there is no legal obligation to vote but if someone misses turn once, next time his/her vote has lesser weightage.

Voting Mechanics

Unlike page rank one cannot vote as much as he/she want. Let’s say one can vote for a maximum of “n” candidates. Obviously voting will be normalized. (i.e. if someone votes for 4, each vote will be counted as 0.25 vote and then further multiplied by his/her weightage). But voting is sector wise. What sectors mean is that before each election, main issues are highlighted by various agencies like planning commission in India etc and all candidates are required to give opinion in those issues first. For example, in India, main issues as of today are poverty, illiteracy, bad infrastructure, inefficiency in agriculture, energy etc.

Each candidate standing in election is supposed to have an opinion on these issues before local issues in his manifesto. Now when a voter votes, he will vote for candidate tagging the issue name to candidate’s name for which the voter thinks the candidate is most suitable. If you vote for only one guy, he is obviously tagged in all issues. If you vote for say “n” guys, you tag them as you want. However, if you tag two guys on same issue, it gets normalized. Issues in turn will have preset weightage (not known to general public) and this will be used in final count as tiebreaker (if needed).

Calculating Weightage

Also, now we come to the most important part of all, calculating weightage.

Whenever one votes, one gives references for himself. There will not be any class of intelligent people as calculated by the system who get more weightage. Instead, for each vote, one needs to give reference of someone who can vouch for him/her (at least one). The person who has been referred should accept the reference. More influential the person who can vouch for someone is, more the influence he/she gets. However, if an influential person refers more than one person, it gets normalized again. System calculates everything and there is no human intervention in this process. This direct reference gives you a lot of influence. Same will be applied for goodness too.

The person who gives reference to you, his goodness matters in the goodness of your vote. And so on.

However, there is another way to gain influence or goodness. A forum will be created under the system in which each individuals profile will be created. Here, politically minded people can give their opinion and promote them. The more people approve of ones opinions the more ones vote counts. (This also ensures that some random guy who doesn’t have a clue but simply votes for someone, will get not much value as he won’t get good reference and since he has no opinion of his own, not many will approve of him). Also, individuals will have some linkdin kind of reference system to measure goodness. Whatever you do, update on system and people will approve it if they like it. To make this water tight, approvals will also be normalized. So one can’t just go on an approval spree in the system. Now as for weightage, goodness*influence in weightage. Infact i think goodness should have higher value as that’s what is more important. We can argue on that but lets take it later.

Election

This voting process will be used to elect the senate which will be a large body. By now we have ensured that this senate has only the intelligent and good people. This senate then can directly elect the government.

This is just a pre- draft of this model. The next major task for me now is to come up with a mathematical model for this. I’ll take it up in my next post.
All suggestions / criticism are most welcome.

Muski

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