The Problem With Democracy

After the recent Alternative Vote Referendum and the Scottish Parliament election in the UK, I've been thinking a lot about the democratic process, what it aims to achieve, its methods, and its results.

In the AV Referendum, there were two options available: The status-quo "First Past the Post" system, or the "Alternative Vote" system. FPTP simply decides the winner of an election by the candidate who gets the highest number of votes in a specific region. AV consists of multiple rounds of voting (compressed into one ballot where the candidates are ranked in order of preference), in which the least popular candidates are successively eliminated and their votes redistributed to the remaining candidates - ensuring the winner is the candidate with the most overall support.

There is no question which system is more representative of the electorate in each individual constituency: Alternative Vote. This system ensures that at least 50% of the electorate support the winning candidate (minus discarded vote). Thus, no matter the outcome, the winner will always have majority support. Under FPTP, it is easily possible for the winner to have a majority of the votes, however it is equally likely for the votes of the electorate to be sufficiently divided amongst the candidates that the person with the most votes only has a small percentage of overall support. It is not possible to know if those voters who votes for other candidates are satisfied with the winner or not. Here's an amusing picture from the "Yes to fairer votes" campaign illustrating this example:



The above example assumes people will always vote for their preferred candidate. Because of the nature of First Past the Post, people often tactically vote for more popular candidates, in order to keep out a candidate they do not like. For example, in the above picture, maybe all the pub-goers would have rallied behind The Queen's Head, because that candidate is a member of a major national party, in order to prevent the Coffee Shop from winning. For this reason, FPTP tends to give a more decisive election outcome when all the seats are collated to form the makeup in Parliament, due to most seats belonging to major political parties.

So the question here is: What is Democracy, and do either of these systems achieve it? The word Democracy literally means "power of the people". Thus, the population themselves control their lives, rather than a subset of the population.

Under AV, each candidate must get a majority of votes, whereas under FPTP, a candidate can win with a minority. So AV is certainly more representative of most of the people at the constituency level. Which brings us to an interesting point. In the AV Referendum, 68% of the voters voted to keep First Past the Post. So we have a clear majority of people nationwide, voting for less representation at the constituency level. What does that say about democracy? Do people have a fundamental disbelief in the idea of representation?

Under First Past the Post, it certainly does not always result in a majority of the people being represented by the candidate they preferred. However, it is more likely that a single party will get a majority in parliament. Thus, in parliament the party most people voted for governs. If no party has a majority and a coalition is formed (as is currently the case in Westminster, even though that parliament was elected using the FPTP system), the electorate are arguably less represented, since the parties in power must agree amongst themselves what their policies will be in order to get a collective majority. These policies may be different to those they were advertising when the people voted for them. Anyway, this system can favour stronger and more decisive governments, arguably being more representative on a parliamentary level. This may be a contributing factor in why the public voted to keep FPTP in the referendum.

However, there is a larger issue which may be the root cause of the massive No vote in this referendum. Our current system of representation by definition does not promote "people power". We use a system of representatives. Whatever system is used to elect the representative, one individual represents each constituency. By the nature of the system, a large portion of the electorate are not represented at all. Every time that MP makes a decision that a constituent does not agree with, that constituent is not being represented by the MP. This scales up to the parliamentary level too. Every time there is a vote on an issue, those MPs on the losing side of the vote, and thus the constituents they supposedly represent, are not represented at all by the outcome of the vote. And even further than this, the government and civil service make many decisions in the name of "the public interest" on which the public or their representatives are not consulted at all. This scales up even further to the EU. Directives passed in the EU parliament are mandated through the UK parliament mostly by statutory instrument, again with no consultation of the people. At every link in this chain, certain individuals are making decisions in the name of all other people by their representative power granted to them through an election. It could be that the No vote was a massive expression of pessimism towards the political and democratic process in general: why bother to change one broken system for another?

The word democracy then, appears to mean in practice: delegation of individual sovereignty to specific individuals and groups by way of a popular vote, which by its nature is unable to represent the views and preferences of all individuals.

This is hardly "power of the people". It's more like "power of some people to tell all the other people how things are going to be". How can we have a genuine system where the people - that is all the people together: every single individual - has 'power'?

There are two things that make the current system of democracy ineffective. The first is described above: no matter how much one tries to perfect the system, it fundamentally cannot represent all of the people. There are always losers. The second is this: voting is not an effective method of deciding what should be done. This is the case whether the vote is for an elected representative, a new voting system, a common currency, whether brand X of goods should be bought over brand Y, or anything else. The reason I believe this is because in my personal experience, as well as by observation, human beings are not able to effectively foresee their desires. In other words: when asked, people do not know what they want. There is however a very easy way for a person to express his or her preferences in absolute terms: by their actions.

Here are a couple of observations of this. While I was at university, the students association (of which I was a member by default), decided to boycott Nestle. They did this through a democratic process, in the name of morality against Nestle's marketing practices of infant milk products in Africa. The interesting thing about this was that the association (the minority governing individuals) enacted the ban in the name of the majority. Thus, via the democratic political process, now nobody was able to purchase Nestle products via the union shops. Did this represent the views of all the people (in this case, Edinburgh University students and anybody else who used the union shops? No. If "the people" truly did not wish to support Nestle due to their marketing practices, they simply would not have bought the products. With no demand, the shops would no longer stock the products. In this case, people's individual actions allow every individual - and thus the people as a whole - to get what they want. Those who do not wish to support Nestle do not support them, and those who do wish to use their products, do.

My other observation is meat produce. As with Nestle's marketing practices, many people would probably not agree on moral terms with the methods of the meat production industry, be it animal treatment/cruelty, slaughter method, or just the very nature of killing animals. However, judged by actual individual actions, most people choose to eat meat. Those who do not wish to eat meat do not have to do so, and those that do, can. Personally, I only consume meat where I am comfortable with the production method, or on rare occasions due to peer pressure or social situation. Regardless, I am free to act either way at the time - I don't need to state my future preference in advance.

I'm not really sure where this line of thought stops. If the democratic process is fundamentally flawed, elected representation is not representative, and people-power is best achieved through a collection of individual actions, how does one achieve this system? Anarcho-capitalism? Stateless society? Certainly not Communism or Socialism - they are the embodiment of centralised control and decisions of the few affecting the many. I think I have some reading to do. :-)

P.S. Oh, was I supposed to reach a conclusion? Meh. It's my blog, I can do what I want.:P

An Open Letter to a Headhunter

I received the following unsolicited e-mail sent to my work e-mail address today. I've changed the names and contact details of the sender and organisation. I was going to post it up unedited, but I'm not that evil. Although really it would have just helped their advertising anyway.

From: Heavenly Colour [mailto:Heavenly.Colour@naughty-recruiter.com]
Sent: 24 March 2011 10:49
To: Millerchip, Adam
Subject: Expertise Request

Good Morning Adam,

My name is Heavenly Colour and I am a specialist recruiter within Life Sciences & Engineering in Scotland. We have not spoken before, but my reasons for contacting you today are 2-fold:

• I found your profile on LinkedIn and noticed that you are interested in Job Inquiries, and wondered if you would be interested in connecting with a view to any help I could maybe offer you in the future, and also
  
• I am working with a fantastic company just now within the Medical Device sector in Fife, and they have openings for Software Engineers.

Ideally these people will have experience within an optical manufacturing environment, as this is appropriate to the organisation. I'm really hoping that you may know of someone who could potentially be interested in such a role, and I would be more than happy to give you any further details you would require. My contact number is 0131 000 0000, and I'd be happy to take your call.

Thank you for taking the time to read my email and I hope to hear from you soon,

Kindest Regards

Adam


Heavenly Colour
Consultant
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There is a reason my work e-mail is not listed on LinkedIn. It is because I do not wish to receive messages originating from LinkedIn to that address.

While I have listed I'm interested in career opportunities (it would be naive of me not to be), the legitimate way to contact me is via InMail on LinkedIn. The fact that I've been contacted directly indicates two things:

1. That you have guessed my work e-mail address (and my colleague's too, by the looks of his inbox - well done).
2. That you have bypassed paying LinkedIn for their service against their User Agreement. (Section 7B), "Misuse of the Services includes ... abusing the LinkedIn messaging services; ... using the Services commercially without LinkedIn's authorization". Also Section 10B, "(Don't undertake the following): ... 7) Utilize information, content or any data you view on and/or obtain from LinkedIn to provide any service that is competitive, in LinkedIn’s sole discretion, with LinkedIn"; ... and probably some more.

Avoiding paying for the connection is against their Terms, but being a recruitment agency whose business is sourcing candidates, it's pretty cheap not to pay your sources of information for their services. I'm sure you've been stung hooking a candidate up for an interview and having the candidate cut you out to do the deal with the employer directly. You're doing the same thing here.

Another few points that contributed to annoyance:

• Your subject says Expertise Request but your message is a "Career Opportunity".
  
• You signed the e-mail Adam. I'm pretty sure I'm Adam, not you.
  
• I work for a software company. Your brush is pretty wide if you're looking for people with "experience within an optical manufacturing environment".

But most of all: you're spamming. And spamming is bad.

I hope that whoever the Fife-based Medical Imaging company is doesn't require candidates who appreciate best-practices, because they're dealing with an agency that's not very good at following them.

Alternative Vote: Changed My Mind!

I've always has an intuitive appreciation of the AV/STV system since first encountering it during student elections at university. Prior to the last blog post I decided to have a good look at it to see what all the fuss was about. After finding what I thought to be considerable shortfalls, I decided to take a firm stance, which would either convince others or force reasonable rebuttals.

I'm happy to report that after reading the responses I've had both here, on Facebook and in person, as well as some additional reading, I've changed my mind again and am now most likely to support it.

The main reason for this is related to the example I gave previously to illustrate how some voters were discriminated against and some were given more flexibility depending on whether they supported popular candidates. After analysing the origin of the system in more detail I've gained a better understanding and revised some objections. This is why:

Alternative Vote was known as Instant Runoff Voting before it was given its present moniker in the UK. What is Runoff Voting and what makes it instant? Runoff Voting is where the electorate is balloted with each voter choosing one candidate to vote for (using the traditional X). After the count, if a candidate has more than 50% that candidate is declared the winner. Otherwise, the candidate with the least support is struck off and the electorate is balloted again. Thus, the people who originally voted for the struck off candidate must choose a new one (or refrain from voting), and the people who supported other candidates may also re-vote for their preferred candidate or change their vote accordingly. The problem with this is that multiple rounds of balloting are needed. To solve this problem, *Instant* Runoff Voting makes the reasonable (but not perfect) assumption that those voters whose original candidate is still in the running will vote for them again in subsequent rounds. This allows all of the rounds to be completed from a single ballot paper with ranked preferences, where only the votes towards the eliminated candidates are re-cast.

...and breathe. I probably didn't explain that very well, but you can look it up.

The main point from this is that while it is true that those voters who support less popular candidates may re-cast their vote while those who support popular ones may not, this is because of the assumption that given the choice, those who supported the popular candidates would vote for them again anyway.

This removed my objection about votes being treated unequally depending on popularity. The other major concern I had was regarding the wasted votes. I discussed the two ways a vote could be wasted: vote exhaustion, and defeat to majority of 50%. The concern of voter exhaustion still stands. If a voter doesn't wish to support any of the remaining candidates the vote is wasted. First Past the Post also has this problem, but Alternative Vote at least minimalists it. AV allows a voter to exhaust all preferred candidates before the vote will be wasted, whereas in FPTP the vote is wasted immediately if not for the winning candidate.

The other concern about wasted votes - when another candidate gets majority - is really a flaw in electing a single candidate rather than a flaw in this specific choice of system. When electing a single representative to represent multiple people, some of them are not going to be happy. In Alternative Vote, more than half of them (not counting exhausted votes) will have at least consented to that representative. That's better than the complete majority of disenfranchised non-supporting constituents possible under FPTP.

One more point about vote exhaustion: it occurred to me that if a constituency only had two candidates, AV and FPTP are exactly the same. The candidate with the most votes wins. Any voters who do not support these candidates either don't vote or spoil their ballots.

Regarding my earlier objection to this not being a proportional system: this is also still a valid objection. However AV is more representative than FPTP; I've always had an innate dislike towards FPTP's traits of producing winners with a minority, and leaving voters who supported losers feeling disenfranchised, so I'm now going to be supporting AV as a step forwards.

Finally, I still do think we need a proper debate on the merits of proportional representation. Whether it be flat PR, or more local representation via Single Transferable Vote. Decreasing the representation from flat PR to regional levels in order to ensure "fringe" and "extremist" parties don't get seats seems to be very undemocratic. I suppose it comes down to whether democracy is a representative system of the electorate, or tyranny of the majority.

Why I’m leaning against supporting Alternative Vote.

When I first heard of Alternative Vote, my first thoughts were that it was quite a good system of representation when electing a single representative for Parliament. I’d prefer a proportional system for parliament, but since politicians seem set on a one representative per constituency system, this looked like an interesting and potentially more empowering voting system. From a voter’s perspective it seems quite intuitive: the candidates a voter wishes to vote for are ranked in order of preference. If a voter’s first choice candidate doesn’t reach the threshold of votes required to win (50% if instituted in the UK), his or her vote goes towards the voter’s second preference, and so on. If a voter doesn’t like certain candidates, no preference is given for those candidates.

Now, after examining the system in more detail, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is no fairer than First Past the Post, and in fact discriminates against voters who support popular candidates. Let me use a hypothetical scenario to discuss my understanding of the proposed options.

There are three candidates: A, B, and C. Candidate A receives 49% of the vote. Candidate B receives 48%, and candidate C receives 3%.

A: 49%
B: 48%
C: 3%

Under First Past the Post, Candidate A wins with the most support. 51% of the voters are disenfranchised, as they end up with a representative they didn’t vote for. Some of these people may have actively not wanted the winning candidate as their representative, some of them may have preferred the candidate as a second option, etc.; there is no way to tell. Regardless, the outcome is obvious: A got the most votes, so A gets the seat.

Under Alternative Vote, since no candidate has an outright majority above 50%, the candidate with the lowest number of votes, Candidate C, is eliminated. The votes for candidate C are redistributed between Candidate A and Candidate B using the second preference votes of those who voted Candidate C as first preference. Lets redistribute Candidate C’s votes. For simplicity, I’m assuming everyone who voted for Candidate C listed Candidate B as their second preference. This brings the results to:

A: 49%
B: 51%

So, B has a majority above the threshold, and is elected. Candidate A is eliminated, and 49% of the voters are disenfranchised. The obvious point here is that under this system, we have a different winner than if people had voted the same way* in First Past the Post. Upon first examination, this seems ‘fairer’: the candidate that had the most support got the vote, even if he or she was the second preference of some people. That’s better than the FPTP system where the majority didn’t get what they wanted at all, right? Well let’s examine what happened here a bit more. What happened to the second preferences of the people who voted for Candidate A? They weren’t counted. To continue my hypothetical example, what if everyone who voted for Candidate A had listed Candidate C as their second preference? The second preferences of voters who preferred Candidate A, combined with the first preferences of voters for Candidate C results in 52% support for Candidate C over candidate B. But due to the arbitrary method of eliminating the candidates with the fewest votes first, Candidate B is elected with less overall support than Candidate C. How is that fair? Of course this still hasn’t taken into account the second preferences of those who listed B as their first preference… it’s all just a bit of a mess. To make the system work, there has to be an arbitrary method of dropping candidates, and that gives some voters more choice than others. In Alternative Vote, the voters for supporting the least popular candidates get more expression than those supporting the most popular candidates.

There’s also a point to make about vote exhaustion. Going back to the first-choice votes above, any voters who voted for candidate C and did not list any other preferences have exhausted their vote, and their ballots are discarded. So under AV it is still possible to have a vote count for nothing, except now it can be done in two ways: either

1. none of a voter’s candidates were popular enough and got eliminated, or
   
2. they were too popular and the voter’s other preferences were ignored altogether.
   

Additionally, when votes are exhausted the ‘total’ number of votes is recalculated. This means the number of votes needed to win the seat is now lower. So in a constituency where 10,000 people voted, a winning candidate does not need to receive more than 5,000 votes as would be the intuitive assumption; he or she only needs to receive 50% of votes that do not get eliminated. Here’s an example from another hypothetical seat to illustrate the point:

Candidate Alpha: 35%
Candidate Beta: 33 %
Candidate Gamma: 32%

Assume that candidate Gamma is a single issue candidate trying to attract protest votes (The No to AV party, anyone? ^_^ ). Everyone who voted for Gamma didn’t list any other preferences. Candidate Gamma is thus eliminated, and because there are no second preferences for these votes, they become exhausted. The total is recalculated as follows:

Candidate Alpha: 51.47% (35% of total first choice votes)
Candidate Beta: 48.53% (33% of total first choice votes)

So Alpha has reached the threshold and is elected. No second preferences were taken into account at all (again, what if Beta’s voters has listed Gamma as their second preference?), and the winner had only received 35% of the vote, not the 50% the system suggests.

So here are my reasons for thinking AV is a silly system:

• Not proportional. It doesn’t claim to be but lots of people think it is.
  
• Doesn’t solve the problem of wasted votes. In fact it has two ways a vote could be wasted, but no way for a voter to tell if this is likely beforehand.
  
• It is discriminatory against voters who support popular candidates.
  
• It is arbitrary with its process of eliminating candidates with the fewest first preference votes first.
  
• The winning threshold in actual voter numbers can’t be predicted, although it gives the false impression that it requires 50% support (including non-first preference votes).
  

Now, this isn’t an argument for First Past The Post. That’s a pretty brutal system too. There are plenty of debates to be had about the merits of simple voting systems, strong government vs. coalition government, constituent representation vs. party affiliation, constituents represented by an MP they didn't vote for, proportional electoral systems, etc. Taking all of this into account, the most compelling argument I’ve heard for this is that the system needs reforming, and this is the way forward. If we don’t reform now, we’ll be stuck with the old ways for another generation. There is probably some truth in this, but is it really that bad? Sure, the majority of people in a constituency can feel like their votes were wasted, but this can happen in AV too. Except in AV people might not understand what’s going on. And in a democracy, a voter not understanding how his or her vote is working, or where it is going, illegitimises the whole system. I think that if we are going to change the electoral system, we need to discuss the reasons why first, find out what we want to achieve, and only then think about changing it. Change for change’s sake can be a dangerous thing, especially when that change is a misunderstood behemoth riding in on a tide of good feelings in the name of fairness – something that I don’t believe this system will achieve.

Unless I see some compelling arguments in the coming months, I’ll be voting no to Alternative Vote on 5 May.

^ Assuming they would still give their vote to the candidate listed as first preference. This may not be the case, because AV also introduces a whole new world of tactical voting.

Father Christmas

So. Santa. Father Christmas. Bringer of presents to goods boys and girls, and lumps of coal to those who are bad (I can proudly say I was never the recipient of the latter).

My mind decided to interrupt my hard-working self today to ask: Is it morally acceptable to knowingly give a child false beliefs, in the knowledge they will believe you absolutely? From personal experience, I had a lot of fun times waiting for Father Christmas, meeting him in the shopping centre, getting all excited before bed on Christmas eve, hearing tales from my parents’ friends about seeing a glimpse of him on the roof, of special shrinking potions so he could get down the chimney, the thought of reindeer, then waking up to see a full stocking on the door and presents downstairs in the morning.

On the surface it’s a bit of harmless fun and excitement for a child. A bit of wonder can’t hurt every now and then, be it fantasy or reality. However, things don’t stay so rosy for long. Children get older and minds get more inquisitive and analytical. Eventually the infeasibility becomes apparent and questions get asked. I imagine many parents attempt to prolong this belief. I know mine did; I often hear my mum talking about how she knows she could have got me to hold on for “one more year”. The thought that I might have been able to live the magic for one more year is spoken with regret. But I don’t think it’s something to regret. When the question was finally asked, it was provoked partly my own scepticism and partly by discussions had between classmates at school. No doubt some of them had themselves asked, some of them had been told because “it was the right time”. Throughout this time I had been stalwartly defending The Truth. These children were just stirring trouble. I knew he was real, I asked my parents and they told me, so I believed. Despite the dodgy stories about “helpers” appearing in shops. Despite visits to grottos with multiple doors leading off to “elfs”, “reindeer”, and one to the big man, even though the queue was divided equally between the doors and children were coming out the other end with gifts looking satisfied. Despite the insistence at a Christmas party by the majority of my peers that they could see reindeer on the rugby pitch, that Rudolf was there, a glimpse of a sleigh was visible in the shadows, and I could see nothing. I defended The Truth until my scepticism proved too persistent for my parents to bear (Incidentally I discovered the identity of the pesky tooth fairy by more experimental means: not informing her informant once day when a tooth had come out).

So, is it worth allowing a child to defend false information for the sake of prolonging a fantasy? What if they *want* to believe it, but are doubtful because of their peers? Is there a balance to be struck? I’m not sure. My instinct is that if they are ready to ask, tell them the truth. Make it a religious matter, present the facts, but tell them they can believe what they want. My mum tried this with me, but it didn’t hold much water :-). I guess everyone goes through the process at some point. Society puts the pressure on, even if parents don’t.

I think the key difference is that the distinction between fantasy and reality is blurred for children. They learn through lessons, fables, and tales of moral certainly. In this way, I suppose it is OK to allow the fantasy to be believed to be real. But once the two begin to be separated in the mind, the truth must come out. The fact that presents don’t magically materialise by themselves, along with the active charade required by the parents forces them to eventually concede the truth. It’s a shame the same can’t be said for any early-gained beliefs in ghosts, deities, other supernatural phenomena and all things uncertain.

Finally, the last word goes to a Penny Arcade cartoon, pointed out to me by @semanticist while this blogpost was materialising in embryonic form. It sums the topic up nicely. :-)

New Year, New Blog

So, it's another year, and it's resolution time. Despite reading an article yesterday about why resolutions are bad, I'm going to completely disregard it and make eight of them.

One of them is to make a blog, which is why I'm here. Bear with me while I work out how to use words on the internet. Also, the look and feel of this blog may be subject to sudden and sweeping changes while I learn what looks good and what works.

The Resolutions

1. Stop Procrastinating.

A bad habit fuelled mostly by endless cycling between Facbook/Twitter/News Websites and iPlayer. Must stop this and complete tasks at hand first. This will (hypothetically) produce more leisure time in which aforementioned activities can be carried out. Although I suspect considerably less time will be spent on them when I have better things to be doing.

2. Keep tidy.

The amount of time I spend in self-disgust at the state of my living environment, combined with the amount of time I spend looking for misplaced possessions are surely removed by simply applying some effort to keep things tidy and organised.

3. Learn Basic Japanese and all the Kanji.

An ambitious goal. The Kanji is really what I'm aiming for. I don't think many Japanese students learn them all in a year. Or 5 years. But I'm going to aim for that. Hopefully with a bit of basic conversational Japanese thrown in too.

4. Gym / exercise / eat intelligently, all regularly.

Healthy body, healthy mind, etc. etc. Also, feeling good about myself rather than mildly self-concious would definitely be a win.

5. Finance and Investing.

Make good progress on making money work for me, rather than solely working for money. This is probably my most ambitious but most vital resolution for the long-term. It's also the one (along with Japanese) that I'm most exited and motivated about. So we'll see what I can make of it.

6. Blog.

I think stuff. Cogs whirr, thoughts dislodge and go clattering to the factory floor. I thought that by blogging them, it will first of all force me to express and refine the thoughts, and second of all open them up to comments by others, further stimulating any hair-brained concepts I may have been mulling over.

7. Dance.

To do at least one Swing (dance!) and one Tango class a week. Good fun people, nice skill to know, social, terrifying. Being naturally introverted and looking for a new job (now happily found), I'd been slacking off with socialising and dancing the latter half of last year to focus on the job hunt, which must now be rectified. What's not to gain?

8. Fix sleep cycle.

Get up before noon when not working, go to bed when tired (especially when working). Be alert to face the day. This was a big weakness for me in 2010.


So there we have it. 8 resolutions for 2011, made available publicly so I can be held to account. Hopefully I will be able to update on progress in the near future, along with any other thoughts that my brain sends through my fingers and onto the keyboard.