AdeleneDawner comments on Vote Qualifications, Not Issues - Less Wrong

10 Post author: jimrandomh 26 September 2010 08:26PM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 27 September 2010 10:03:37PM *  9 points [-]

I think "One person, one vote" is to blame, not democracy in general. A different voting system should be developed that weighs how much people care about a particular issue, and how much they know about it.

To weigh how much people care about an issue, you could:

  • Charge people a nominal sum to vote on an issue; or even let them buy as many votes as they want. I know everyone's first reaction is to say that this would favor the rich. I think it might favor the working classes. The rich already buy votes, and very cheaply relative to their market value. The working are unable to, because they are uncoordinated, and the barriers to entry are very high. It would at least drive up the price of buying votes for the rich, and reduce the deficit.
  • Give every voter a limited number of votes per year, which they may distribute among different issues as they see fit.

To weigh how much people know about an issue, you could:

  • Have voters choose areas of expertise from a menu; they will then be allowed to vote only on issues in those areas.
  • Award more votes to voters who: complete high school, complete college, complete an advanced degree, serve in the military, complete a government-authorized test on the subject area, score well on standardized tests created by the Dept. of Education
  • Require literacy tests. I am aware that literacy tests were historically used to deny voting to blacks. Times have changed. If someone in America can't read today, they shouldn't blame racial discrimination.
  • Have a short factual test at the polls. Voting weight will be proportional to number of correct answers.
  • Have Congress draw up a list of things to predict each year. Each voter must make their own predictions. Next year, Congress votes on what the answers to those things were. Voters have weights proportional to the correctness of their predictions. Alternately: Apply this to members of Congress.

You could frame legislation not as a binary pass-or-fail proposition, but as having a parameter that varies from, e.g., 0 to 1000, and have people vote on the parameter value, and take the average or median.

I am aware that these ideas have problems. It is not helpful to respond to ideas by immediately dismissing them because they don't work perfectly out of the box. There is a powerful bias toward de-emphasizing the problems with existing social arrangements. The problems with one-person one-vote are vast; and IMHO any of the above ideas, while problematic, would be less problematic.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 28 September 2010 10:43:06AM 3 points [-]
  • Have voters choose areas of expertise from a menu; they will then be allowed to vote only on issues in those areas.

This seems like it'd either be easily gameable or very intrusive, and complex to set up in the latter case.

  • Award more votes to voters who: complete a government-authorized test on the subject area, score well on standardized tests created by the Dept. of Education

  • Have a short factual test at the polls. Voting weight will be proportional to number of correct answers.

These suggestions seem rather subject to bias, to me, in a way that's not immediately obvious. Different factions consider different facts about an issue important, and if whoever is making a particular test is a member of or even particularly aware of the interests of a particular faction, they could weight the test to make it easier for members of that faction to pass it. This would not necessarily be obvious to people who don't know much about the issue.

For example, consider abortion. I expect pro-lifers to be much more likely to know how many abortions have been performed in recent years, and whether that number is trending up or down; it's a useful benchmark for them in determining if their activism is working. Pro-choicers are unlikely to care about that number, since they see the choice to have an abortion as a personal one, but might care more about rape statistics or the number of children waiting to be adopted or some other fact that a pro-lifer would probably consider irrelevant.

  • Require literacy tests. I am aware that literacy tests were historically used to deny voting to blacks. Times have changed. If someone in America can't read today, they shouldn't blame racial discrimination.

This is discriminatory against people with disabilities, particularly dyslexia, which does still sometimes go undiagnosed, and may be more often undiagnosed or untreated in minorities and poor people. (That is the case for some similar learning disabilities, but I don't know about dyslexia in particular.)

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