Liquid Democracy for Decision-making

I first read about Liquid Democracy here. Similar to direct democracy, each member has a right to vote on every issue. However, each member also has the option to proxy their vote on a decision-by-decision or topic-by-topic basis. In this way, it seems similar to representative democracy, since you are allowing someone else to vote on your behalf. But there is a very important difference: that representation is temporary, and can be very narrowly defined. In traditional representative forms of government, representatives are elected for a period of several years, voting on your behalf on every issue within that governement's jurisdiction. To continue the example above, the Customer Service expert may decide to proxy her vote to one of the Engineering experts for this particular decision. However, she may choose not to proxy her vote in the same way for a subsequent decision. And she may choose to proxy her vote for a Sales-related decision to one of the organization's Sales experts. This liquid voting structure has three important aspects: 1) informed decision-making, 2) immediate accountability, and 3) maintenance of equal voting rights. If members choose to proxy their votes on decisions for which they are not experts, the effect is that the votes by members with expert knowledge with carry a heavier weight, which would lead to more-informed decisions. Because proxies can be taken away at a moment's notice, or given to someone else, there is immediate accountability. In a government example, if you don't like the way a representative votes on a particular bill, you might give your proxy to another representative on the next vote. Finally, this approach maintains each member's right to have a voice and vote on every issue, since proxies can be taken back at any time. Of course, this assumes that members of the Blog Cooperative are rational, having the best interest of the organization in mind, and that they will choose to abstain or proxy on decisions for which they do not have an informed opinion. But how do you know who to trust with your vote, on what areas of expertise? One of the most important elements to the operation of a Blog Cooperative will be an effective reputation system.

I see great potential for abuse in any proxy voting system, however temporary. Just imagine someone canvassing for "proxy power" to forward their agenda. I believe it would be preferable to have anyone free to vote (if they have an interest) but no one obliged to vote and no system to accumulate voting power for any one agenda.

Proxy power makes a fair amount of sense to me, having seen what happens in standards committees and the like, it is not always easy to focus everyone on a given agenda at a given point in time.

In business, some decisions need to be made quickly, others much slower - I think a measured proxy system might be very workable.

i.e. all members could grant a proxy to the member appointed "webmaster" to execute agreements with respect to technical/hosting/software issues, up to a certain point.

This is approximately what happens in current corporations. Individual employees have restricted authority in certain areas, however in many cases approval needs to be given by an officer of the corporation, and in even bigger cases by the board of the corporation. Likewise, a business such as a blogcoop will need to be able to conduct day-to-day business without requireing or needing a vote on every matter, but "impact the business" matters might need to be handled at the full membership level, in a like manner to the board of directors of a public corporation.

It's a fascinating idea, but I'm skeptical. I expect that over time proxy blocks would form and become entrenched by rationally ignorant coop members. The proxies would certainly be more fickle than representative positions in modern democracies, but I still don't see anything to prevent cartel voting, considering that direct democracy is simply too burdensome for most people.

Also, I'm assuming that proxies would be transitive. That is, if A gives his vote to B, and B gives his vote to C, then C votes for both A and B.

I can also forsee a lot of control problems. If proxies are indeed fickle, how does the group handle the transition of power? If an individual has been given power of attorney, for example, it could take quite a considerable amount of time to remove that power when the proxies change. Who would be in charge of that? Someone selected by proxy?

Without discrete terms of office, it's difficult to imagine how power could be used and transferred efficiently and effectively.

Michael,

I agree with you, there would need to be some rules to prevent cartels from forming. As discussed in the Consensus vs. Majority thread, perhaps a supermajority of 2/3 could act as a barrier to cartel formation.

With repsect to transition of proxies, I see that as all happening in software. A software based voting tool would allow members to give or recind proxies at a moment's notice, making transition of voting power instantaneous.

It's important to note that there is no fixed 'way' of doing Liquid Democracy.

If you want an organisation so have slightly different decision making rules to another, just change the algorithms of the software.

A good article on Liquid Democracy, written by Sayke (who coined the term) to clarify a few things, can be found here

In it he states:

" Liquid Democracy is a fast, decentralized, collaborative question-answering system, which works by enabling chained answer recommendation. It occupies the middle ground somewhere between direct and representative democracy, and is designed to ensure that the things we all hold in common stay properly maintained (by small, stealthy, distributed teams of anarchist kung-fu badasses, if need be), even in the face of radical technological change."

The most critical issue concerning informed decision making, in my opinion, is that each individual voter is, in fact, informed.

If an uniformed individual is allowed to pass on, via proxy, his or her vote to someone who they think is informed, the individual vote itself is still an uninformed vote (based upon is origin).

It is only the uninformed individual who believes that their vote is in better hands with another individual who may or may not be better informed. Of all the so-called informed voters, how can an uninformed voter determine who might better informed than the others and to whom they may give their priviledged vote?

The integrity and sanity of the voting system depends on an informed vote. And each individual, alone, can only determine how informed he or she is on any particular issue.

The only way that decisions can be made concerning difficult specialty matters is to have whoever considers themseves to be informed to develop various propositions for the organization. In order to preserve the integrity of the vote those so-called "informed" voters, who designed the various propositions, also have the responsibility to develop qualifying questions that can properly and fully determine a minimum level of understanding concerning the issue. Once the qualifying questions are developed, they can be asked at the time of the final vote -- before anyone (including those who have claimed to be informed all along) can actually register their vote on the issue.

Everyone in the organization retains their equal footing in the voting process since they can participate in the final vote of any issue -- even though, up to that point, they may not have been involved in the development of the propositions. Just because a member did not participate in the proposition development phase of an issue, does not mean that they cannot view the results, study them and make an informed decision on their own behalf. Each voter simply needs to demonstrate their minimum level of understanding of an issue before they are allowed to vote on the issue.

This is a fair, isonomic and sane approach that equally maintains each member's priviledge to vote, the integrity of the voting system and the integrity of the organization as a whole. The overall health of any organization is in the hands of each member individually, using their own minds to the best of their ability to assist in making decisions for the organization. This is the power of the collective mind. Any process that short curcuits the unhindered use of the collective mind is detrimental to the organization.

This is the process used on http://www.1062.org

Definitely the issues faced today require a high level of involvement and "informed"-ness. Just read "Will Cancun Go the Seattle Way - The Breakdown of WTO's Agricultural Negotiations" or the "Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations (CJS) Bill Affecting the Management of Fisheries in the North Pacific". Legislation is *complex*!

Not sure if there's a better way through "liquid" (transitory) democracy, where the process may take on more significance than the end-product. My own observations from communal living and worker-coops is that "liquid" decision making is just a proxy, or microcosm, of the "system", only a lot more jibber-jabber, to quote Mr. T, as the same few leaders rise to seize & hold power roles.

There are plenty of opportunities to become involved in decision-making already without breaking the voting system into sub-modalities. In fact, I'd argue the the mechanisms for change are stronger, given a vociferous media and an informed voting population. (Yeah, good luck! ; )