Introduction
Everyone is asking what happened.
In the end it doesn’t really matter what happened. There are infinite perspectives and reasons for what may or may not have happened, and they are all legitimate. The problem is that no one is going to understand or listen to others with different perspectives. So lets just go into the core problems and core solutions.
The core problem is democracy itself is failing. We have a system in the United States and many other countries that incentives polarization of elections. There are many reasons for this, but the bottom line is that the more polarization there is in elections the more instable they are, and the more power rich have over the people.
So the core solution is that people need to start standing up and insisting on scientific democracy and scientific based approaches to decision making. When you bring in science, it is easy to prove what is going on, and it is easy to see the long term lasting solutions if we are willing to accept the science.
What we need is stability and direct empowerment of the people. What we don’t need is instability, polarization, elections controlled by the rich, and we need to reduce the power of political parties and candidates, and instead focus on empowering people.
So how do we build stability? Lets first understand instability and why our elections are so unstable and so inaccessible to normal everyday people. Only by understanding the core problems can we then go into the science that shows us the solutions.
Problems
List of Core Problems in our Democracy (US Based, but some of these also apply to parliaments):
- Polarization
- 50/50 Split
- Spoiler Effect
- Closed System
- Seeing Candidates as People
- May other related issues . . .
So lets go over each one to make sure we understand them:
Polarization: This is when the decision making system incentives choosing a candidate that is more focused on the needs of a powerful minority group instead of the needs of the population overall, usually by plurality vote. The outcome results in the minority groups candidate to NOT be aligned with the majority of voters therefore creating a polarizing outcome. As time goes on, the polarization gets worse. The solution is compromise candidates and incentivizing majority rule and people empowerment not party empowerment.
50/50 split – In a winner take all system where only 50%+1 is required, there is never a need to have 51% or 55%, or 60%+ etc… Therefore the result overtime is that the system incentives achieving only the minimal 50%+1 required to win, especially in winner take all. This is especially true when there are 2 candidates or when you require 50%+1 rule of a legislative body like a parlament. The primary problem with this model isn’t that 50% of the population wins, it is that you always have 50% of population that looses every election. The solution is a decision making model that always strives for 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%+ of the people to support the outcome, therefore the goal is for the entire population to win, NOT have half the population loose.
Spoiler Effect – The Spoiler Effect happens primarily in plurality systems, especially during primaries. When you empower candidates over peoples votes the candidates are forced to step down to maximize votes for their party. If you have 6 candidates from party A, and party A has 60% of the population, and 1 candidate from party B that has 40% of the population. Party A will split their votes between the 6 candidates which could give 10% of the vote to each candidate, and party B will put all of their votes into a single candidate giving that single candidate 40%+ of the vote, ensuring that the single candidate form party A wins, even if no majority is achieved. This can be addressed with a runoff, but even a runoff is based on a plurality election where the candidate with the most support form the people is left out of the runoff. So the only real solutions in this situation is either ranked voting, or instant runoff voting (IRV) both which still result in the 50/50 split problem. So the only solution that solves this and the 50/50 split is Approved, Score, Star, or Olympic Voting. The key is compromise and understanding that people never only have one preference, everyone always connects with multiple candidates for different reasons.
Closed System – There are endless closed systems in our political models. From barriers to entry, barriers of money, barriers of ideology, barriers of gains, barriers to third parties, barriers to empowerment, and the Oligopoly dominated power structures of political parties and the trend towards monopolistic single party minority rule which is the ultimate closed system. It is possible to go on and on regarding this, but I will just say that very few parties, sometimes only 1 or 2, control our decision making processes. This is BAD. The solution, apply anti-trust and balance of power models directly to government decision making and political parties. No political party should be allowed to have more than 10% of the total control or power, to ensure internal checks and balances within any legislature. Coalition government should always strive to be built with 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%+ of the parties, Not just 50%+1. This is just the beginning of ensuring an open system where all people and view points are herd, engaged and empowered.
Seeing candidates as People – It is easy to see a candidate talking, and since they are a person, to think of them as a person and to apply how we treat people to candidates. But that is simply NOT reality. There is no such thing as an individual person running a campaign or running a government. It just doesn’t exist. Candidates are nothing more than a CEO of their candidate committee which has many officers and leaders including treasures operations officers, mangers, organizers and more. They are CEOs no different than any other business, and when they are in office, it is the same, they are running an organization of people who work for them. When you vote for a candidate you are NOT voting for the individual, you are voting for an entire team of people who work together, and the candidate is the CEO. So therefore the solution is simple, to understand, evaluate and vote on candidates like any other business by understanding their overall organization, not just the individual CEO. The best way as a society that we evaluate and rank businesses, is with star voting, like YELP. It makes so much more sense. When addressing businesses, it isn’t about the single business we like, it is about comparing businesses and shopping around to see what we like.
So now that we understand some of the core problems, lets start understanding the science of why this tends to happen.
Ising Model – Science
The Ising model is a scientific equation that shows how voters act like magnets in any election where there are two options. A general population tends to polarize and specifically hold a 50/50 split as a natural occurrence when there are only two options given.
There are two fascinating articles which show how humans follow natural physical properties of nature when voting on two choices.
The first article covers the 50/50 split of a electorate when Voting on two options. This is similar to a sports game with two teams, and the public tends to support the underdog regardless of their initial thoughts on the teams.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-close-elections-so-common
Here you can see the Visual dynamic of the Ising Model where random voters get aligned based on the two opposing options yet keep a 50/50 split.
Link to gif site: https://matthewrocklin.com/blog/work/2015/02/28/Ising
The second article is in regards to the natural polarization effect form our plurality primary model in the United States.
https://phys.org/news/2020-01-physics-democratic-elections.html
We an see that overtime the two party model naturally gets more and more polarized. This is an outcome of the progression of inevitable science when there is only two options with primaries that push their sides further and further to the extreams.
The bottom line is that according to the science, if a population only give two options and have an outcome that reflects a 50/50 split, the natural progression will always be an application of the Ising model, a tendency for the population to polarize and the continued 50/50 split and the halves and half nots, with 50% always loosing, and a increasingly unstable and erratic electoral trajectory leading towards olagopoly and monopoly party outcomes, which result in power of the few over the many.
So now that we understand the science of why this is happening, all we have to do as the people is support a scientific model of elections that has a result which keeps the integrity of the peoples initial perspectives and ensures outcomes where the maximum number of people can always win. Lets look at our options.
Stabilized Monte Carlo Model
When you look at the Ising model, you can see that it starts rather random and more even. Then overtime it concentrates and destabilizes the diversity and randomness of the alignments.
So our first goal is to simply stabilize the bringing of the model to not move as far towards aligned groups where voters are stuck surrounded all by the same type of mindset. This will ensure more individual engagement and empowerment, so individuals are not as influenced by those around them.
There are two very clear ways to do this. One is obviously shortening the time for elections, as the longer the election goes on the more time there is for everyone to group.
The second is a scientific mathematical equation to stabilize the long term effects of the Ising model. In the physical science the model “crystallizes” and gets more grouped as you cool the system. The exact opposite happens when you heat the system.
This is called the Monte Carlo phase transition and uses a set of equations that allow for tempeture to change the outcome of the Ising model.
When the system is cooled you quickly stabilize into groupings like this:
But then if you heat the system, you can stabilize the model to keep closer to its original starting point like this:
So basically the question is what in human democracy systems represents heat? Basically heat is adding energy to a system. So therefore the goal would be to ensure energy is going into the electoral system.
There are many ways to generate more energy into an election, and I’m sure we will think of more in the future, but for now the best option is by far the introduction of new information to actively engage voters. By having new candidates, and not old ones that are incumbents, and having shorter election time frames, we could more easily ensure that new information is more constant and that would keep engagement and energy high to ensure stability.
We would want to avoid and prevent cooling down and crystallization which could represent when the population is tired of the process because there is no information or anything additional to learn or you just have the same candidates and nothing adding to the model or system so it stagnates.
So lets take a look at what the Monte Carlo simulation with a Temperature = 3 looks like in motion, as you can see a more stabilized model.
You can see the new model stabilized at this link: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modelo_de_Ising#/media/Ficheiro:Ising_Criticality2.gif
So that is awesome. We now have a way to scientifically start the process of stabilizing our election outcomes. This is still just the beginning of learning about energy inputs into elections, but gives us a way to move forward.
One of the biggest problems is that we are still in a 50/50 split. So to really take our scientific model to the next level, we have to add not only more heat, but more colors and options to get rid of the polarization to begin with.
Multi Option Model – Non-Ising
By adding more options into the election that by definition adds more energy and information but it also does an other thing, it ends the polar magnetism of the Ising Model. Therefore when we start adding new options we have already stabilized the Ising model, and we can use various models of approved, score, star, or olympic voting to ensure that the outcome of the election still has majority or super majority democracy and compromise candidates worked in to prevent any spoiler effect.
Over time we will learn more about this new model, but we can already start thinking about what it might look like to have a multi option multi magnetic human electoral system. Lets see what it might look like:
There are clearly 4 different shades/colors simultaneously instead of just 2.
There is dark yellow, light yellow, dark purple and light purple.
Although there is some grouping, the grouping is less, and there is more stability in the peoples perspectives. Also the overall you get more stability because you have 4+ candidates which adds much more energy and perspective which will by definition engage and energize more of the population because people who otherwise would be disinterested have a candidate that represents their views.
So in this model, it is very easy to get to a point where each of the 4 candidates only has 25% of the vote. That would be plurality. So the best way to ensure majority and super majority for the winning candidates, is to have approved, score, star, or olympic voting. SOSAR Voting
Solutions & Evolution
Evolving democracy is actually easier than you might think. The People themselves have the power. All we have to do is start actively implementing these models directly into democratic organizations, and overtime work their way up through society. If these models bring scientific advancement, there is no stopping them. Evolving democracy doesn’t happen all at once, it takes experience and experimentation to learn and perfect implementation of scientific democracy principles. If the models we implement in our experiments don’t work, we need to keep doing more research.
Here is a brief description of each of the top solutions that we can work together to implement. (this is a partial list) All of these can be implemented immediately through practice and experimental voting organizations, and then nothing can stop them from being brought to the main stream if they are successful, because better decision making will automatically equal more power.
Multi Option Model – as the science shows, the easiest way to address the polarization and negative split of society is simply to ensure multiple options when making decisions. If there are only 2 options that is BAD. It seems to me that you need a minimum of 4-5 options, but can go up from there. Even if there are 100 options you can reduce the number of options in rounds. From 100 to 50, then 25, then 10, then down to the final 5 to finalize the priority. In the end the final decision should be a single option, which is always a single approval or not approval vote on a single option. Just cause your proposal gets more votes does NOT mean you have majority agreement.
Score Voting – When you have Multiple options, by defintion a single vote splits the options to have less than a majority. With 4 options you end up with about 25% for each option. Therefore you must implement score voting. The simplest form is “Approval” voting where you can approve as many options as you want. This allows all options to get MORE than 50% and prevents the 50/50 split. Score Voting is even better because you can support or go against an option which allows for much more detailed compromise process to scientifically prove which options that the majority of the people support.
TONDOs – This solution is so important it has its own post. So please read that. TONDO is a new type of organization. It stands for T- Transparent, O – OPEN, N – Neutral, D – Democratic, O – Organization. A TONDO is the OPEN civic engagement model for the 21st centry. This ensures that everyone can collaboratively participate on the future of humanity regardless of label, class, identity, ideology, or any other barrier to entry. If we are being serious about supporting democracy, everyone must have a voice.
Demographic Democracy – This scientifically proves whether a societal population distribution meets the threshold for majority rule. If you have a group of 20 white men who have college degrees, even if they make a decision by consensus, that has no bearing to actual demographic scientific evaluation of the decision. Demographic Decision making uses verifiable distribution of power between demographic groups to scientifically prooves that a population actually has majority support for a decision regardless who shows up and is actually voting on the proposal itself
Consensus Based Democracy – A vote is simply NOT enough. The only way to ensure that everyone has a Voice, not just the rich who can buy their voice, is to require striving to consensus for every decision. This ensures that every perspective and point of view is documented and herd before any decision can be made. In our winner take all model, typically only one or two points of view is herd, both controlled by big money special interest voices.
None of the Above – Everyone MUST be empowered to choose to not only not vote, but also to be against the options. If the options themselves are the problem, the people must be empowered to stop the process from moving forward and address the core problem, the options needed are not being presented. The most important agreement is to not make a decision as an organization, population, or society, but what happens when a decision is NOT made. That is the starting point of a real democracy, what can move forward even without agreement. Not having a plan for when a decision can not be made is just setting ourselves up for disaster and loosing democracy. This is a corner stone of any democracy and the question must always have an answer as no group should ever be forced to make a decision they don’t want to make without being able to push the pause button and think some more. “What happens if no decision is made?”
Multocracy – There are many many more solutions and options for evolving democracy. Only creativity holds us back. From sociocracy, ideocracy, inter generational democracy, economic democracy, inter model democacy, and so much more. Lets be creative together, democracy and decision making should not be a political chore, it should be an artform and as fun and exciting as painting a picture and building a sculpture that is so beautiful that we are proud to present it to future generations. You can order the Evolving Democracy Book here.
Immediate Engagement & Resources – None of this matters if we don’t build resources and engage people to support and get invovled. Without resources of either time or funds, we can not implement these new models. Please help and get involved. www.A4R.net
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