Vote Sizing Institute

If you've read our feasibility page, you know that vote sizing is possible now - we can do it. So now let's talk about how we'll do it. First off, if you haven't yet, take a look at our what won't work page and read through some of the vote counting methods (winner-take-all, choice voting, instant runoff, cumulative voting, approval voting, compulsory voting, etc.) and responsibility-based vote sizing methods (by tax contribution, aptitude, occupation, etc.) that are valid in their own right, though we don't consider them appropriate for our current situation. Once we've cleared those out of the way, there are a few factors we need to consider in order to come to a consensus on how to go about calibrating the computers for vote sizing.

Measuring Wealth

In order to size votes relative to 'wealth', the first task we're confronted with is figuring out how we'll measure it - and in order to do that we need to understand what we mean when we say 'wealth'.

On our philosophy page we talked about how wealth allows us to produce, consume, and experience the world - functioning as capitalism at the social level and as money (liquid capital) at the individual level. (Yes, it's true that we can use money to effect change on others, but ultimately that's really a result of corruption and not its true role is as a medium to enable experiences.) So how do we measure wealth? The question may sound trivial - but only because we rarely stop to consider it. Since we're going to size votes individually, trying to size up 'capitalism' won't do - we'll need something more related to our individual amounts of money.

Even when it comes to money, wealth can still be measured in three ways based on: the value of our possessions and bank account balance; the amount of money we are responsible for; or somewhere in between the two. (It's the same triad which we used in the action page to evaluate the measurement of power.) Let's take a look at these in a little more detail:

Wealth triads work within our lives to allow us to participate in the overall capitalist system.

[no-glossary]External Wealth: Influence[/no-glossary]

Our external wealth is derived from our level of financial responsibility in our professional lives. For example: A stock broker who manages millions of dollars of other people's money, trading it in the market everyday, has a lot of external wealth - no matter how large a paycheck he takes home. The same for a movie producer who keeps a list of financiers closely hidden from others; or a bureaucrat responsible for managing a large budget. A brain surgeon, on the other hand, is not externally wealthy, despite the fact that theirs is an extremely delicate job that requires them to take lives into their hands. Nor is a highly paid entertainer externally wealthy; while they may earn tens of millions of dollars every year, they have no responsibility over anyone's money besides their own.

[no-glossary]Internal Wealth: Assets - Debts[/no-glossary]

Internal wealth, in contrast, can be measured by the size of a person's net assets (that is, the value of our possessions after our debts are subtracted). For example: The heir to a family fortune, with a multi-million dollar house, stock and bond holdings, and several expensive cars has a lot of internal wealth, even though they may never have worked for pay a day in their lives. A wealthy philanthropist that lives a modest lifestyle, on the other hand, may not have a lot of internal wealth if all of the income he brings in is turned around and given to charity and spent on consumable goods like food, gas, and rent.

[no-glossary]Synthesis Wealth: Income - Expenses[/no-glossary]

Synthesis wealth comes out of the union of both external and internal wealth. It's measured by the amount of money we take in less the amount we spend: income - expenses. This way of measuring money is the most accurate in reflecting our relationship with wealth: we go out into the world each day to earn money so that we can buy the things we need, like food, shelter, clothing, education for our children, and a little bit of fun every once and a while. Some people use portions of their income to buy durable possessions - like homes and cars - while others can barely bring in enough income to meet their most basic needs (like food, rent, and transportation to and from work). And some people's incomes reflect the level of financial responsibility they have in their professional lives (people who handle large amounts of other people's money are usually paid high incomes).

Synthesis wealth is also the easiest of the three types of wealth to measure - making it the best candidate for vote sizing. That's because no matter how much money we earn, we confess it to the government every year on our tax statements (or we risk getting in a whole lot of trouble, that is). Because our income information is already stored in a centralized location it can be made easily accessible for vote sizing, and we won't need to add any additional layers to the currently sizable bureaucracy.

Relating Wealth

Even though we've decided on using income as the indicator of our wealth, we still need to decide on how to compare each of us to one another. (On the wealth/power graphs below, this number would determine where on the x-axis each of us would be placed, which then can be used with a formula to calculate each of our specific vote sizes.) At the extreme ends of the vote sizing placement debate are two basic ways of charting values: specific wealth and wealth positioning, with an averaging method somewhere in the middle.

[no-glossary]Specific Wealth[/no-glossary]

Using each of our specific wealth values in the formula gives the most advantage to the poorest of people, while encouraging the wealthiest to close the income gap. The problem with this kind of measurement is that if the very wealthiest person in society is far ahead of the rest of us, then everyone ends up with a sizable vote, including those who we would still consider very wealthy.

[no-glossary]Wealth Position[/no-glossary]

By ignoring the exact wealth of individuals, and instead assigning them incremental values based on their relationship to each other (it would be as if we stood everyone shoulder-to-shoulder by increasing income and then assigning them values of 1-2-3-4-etc) we could avoid a situation where people are very investigative into specifically how much each other has, instead focusing on how society functions on a whole just as people with different priorities. On the other hand, this kind of wealth indication doesn't address the size of the gap between the richest and poorest, and remains the same over time regardless even of extreme economic reforms (which might be a good thing).

[no-glossary]Averaging[/no-glossary]

This way of calculating a person's placement on the wealth axis tries to take into account both the actual values of people's incomes as well as their relationship to each other. Some ways to analyze these statistics are to consider using averaging, mean averages, medians, standard deviations, etc. By bracketing some people in a strata of some kind, we are using a ladder configuration of some kind, as oppposed to a more precice scale based on their actual measurement.

Calculating Each Vote: Different Sizing Formulas

Okay, now that we've got a fix on how we can measure wealth, we can use it to adjust the weight of each individual's cast vote - but we are still left with the question of exactly how to figure it into some kind of calculation. Of course, there are different formulas to use now that we've agreed that vote sizing is beneficial; but the beauty of vote sizing is that it is not a one-size-fits-all solution to all our woes. Instead people get to decide for themselves how to go about using it. Before going into the details of a few of the different proposals, we should first try to understand how we currently view society by plotting our own version of the wealth/power curve in its current form. Though it sounds simple enough at first, a vote sizing curve actually accounts for many of the factors that influence the interaction between wealth and power: wealth distribution; social welfare programs; people's spirituality; the role of the media; resource dependency; and geographical and geopolitical circumstances - but the real point is that because of vote sizing (and the technological mindset it brings with it) we're looking at our corruption ills - and remedies - in new, fresh and political ways that we never have before! These different perspectives result in different goals, which implies that the DEP may easily split into different parties, each with their own unique idea of how to size votes - this we see as a natural and healthy evolution of the movement, as at least now we're discussing our differences not as vague dogma, but as real-life lines on a graph.

Various voting formulas show how different goals can be achieved

The one common denominator of all the situations that these curves represent is the linkage of extreme wealth and power (corruption). So in order to infuse some sanity into society we'll have to insist on formulas that work to separate wealth from power. To do that we must only consider formulas that give greater weight to poorer people's votes and lesser weight to richer people's votes. (This sets up the vital democratic feedback loop which we describe in the vision page.) It's also easy to keep the traditional one-person-one-vote election results as part of the formula, or to monitor in parallel and use as a comparison to see just how different society behaves with vote sizing. Here are just a few of the calculations people have suggested for vote sizing:

[no-glossary]Arc Sizing[/no-glossary]

Arc vote sizing is the formula that the DEP currently prefers and promotes. It is, in our opinion, the most radical form of vote sizing (at least no one has come forth with a more radical idea yet). The perfectly curved arc ensures that while everyone can have their own fractions of power and wealth, each one of us is equally distanced from having nothing, and so none of us are any more advantaged or disadvantaged than anyone else. Arc vote sizing also works by wealth position, independently the same in a society where the gap between the richest and the poorest is $1,000 as it does in a society where that gap is $1,000,000,000.

Arc vote sizing: Everyone, regardless of wealth, is equally distanced from having nothing.

 

How do we calculate that arc? Using this formula (by devolving Radius2 = x2 + y2):

Formula used for arc sizing, basically describes an even circle with a radius of one.

[no-glossary]Inverse Wealth Sizing[/no-glossary]

One version of the inverse wealth sizing formula sizes a person's vote on the inverse of that person's income relative to the largest income in the population. A slightly different version sizes a person's vote on the inverse of that person's income relative to the aggregated income of all people in the population.

Formulas used for inverse wealth sizing.

 

[no-glossary]1+ Sizing[/no-glossary]

This is the hybrid formula: it offers a combination of two formulas, the first of which is new. The first formula is simple: it offers the poorest person one whole vote. As people's income increases, the size of their vote decreases, until we reach the richest person, who gets no vote at all. That's the "1" part. The "+" part refers to any of the other three formulas we discuss on this page. In other words, the votes in between the poorest person's whole vote and the richest person's nonexistent vote can be sized according to any other method: arc sizing, inverse wealth sizing, or computerized sizing.

 

[no-glossary]Computerized Sizing[/no-glossary]

If your brain is tired of thinking, bookmark this page, take a break, and come back again later; because this next method definitely ventures into some real deep science fictional waters.

The computerized vote sizing formula is so far out there that it really will only be feasible once we've perfected a simpler method. In essence this formula uses complicated flocking simulators to calculate how many more factors might determine how wealth and power affect each other; and how they all can be resolved for maximum public satisfaction.

Please take a look at our constantly evolving capitalism / democracy flocking simulator to see how different factors can be plugged into a computer, and then the computer can simulate the results of different calculations to figure out which one formula works best to insure the most satisfaction for the most people (results in plotting a line which brings the most amount of people the closest to a harmonious position).

Putting Our Money Where Our Mouth Is - Vote Sizing in Operation!

In order to show how different vote sizing methods work in real time, all of our polls pages in the community allow (albeit optionally) each voter to enter their annual income; and then sizes their votes accordingly for each of the different methods and displays the results as pie charts.

All our polls are live, real-time demonstrations of how vote sizing would work, and how government's priorities might be way different with vote sizing in place.

[no-glossary]PHP Vote Sizing Code[/no-glossary]

For the mega-brainiacs out there, here's the php code used to generate the graphs (sorry, no programming yet for computerized vote sizing):

Pali Productions Inc. - Excerpts of PHP 5.0 functions for sizing votes: ... class clsVoter {   ...   function One_to_One_Vote() {     return 1 ; }   function Inverse_Wealth_Vote() {     return 1 - ( $this->income / $this->total_income ); }   function Arc_Sized_Vote() {     return sqrt ( 1 - pow ( ( $this->income_position - 1 ) / ( $this->income_participants - 1 ), 2 )); }   function One_Plus_Inverse_Maximum_Wealth_Vote() {     return 2 - ( $this->income / $this->maximum_income ); }} function Ballots_Pie_Chart_Calculator_BeforeShow()   ...   global $arrVoters;   $arrIncome_Participants = array_map( "Income", array_filter( $arrVoters, "Is_Income_Participant" ));   sort( $arrIncome_Participants );   $Total_Income_Participants = count( $arrIncome_Participants );   $Total_Income = array_sum( $arrIncome_Participants );   $Maximum_Income = $arrIncome_Participants[ count( $arrIncome_Participants ) - 1 ];   $arrIncome_Position_Counts = array_count_values( $arrIncome_Participants );   $Row_Counter = 1;   $arrIncome_Position_Averages = array();   while ( current( $arrIncome_Position_Counts ) ) {     $arrIncome_Position_Averages[ key( $arrIncome_Position_Counts )] = Row_Position_Average( $Row_Counter, current( $arrIncome_Position_Counts ));     $Row_Counter = $Row_Counter + current( $arrIncome_Position_Counts );     next( $arrIncome_Position_Counts ); }   for ( $id=1; $id <= count( $arrVoters ); $id++ ) {     $arrVoters[ $id ]->income_participants = $Total_Income_Participants;     $arrVoters[ $id ]->total_income = $Total_Income;     $arrVoters[ $id ]->maximum_income = $Maximum_Income;     $arrVoters[ $id ]->income_position = $arrIncome_Position_Averages[ $arrVoters[ $id ]->income ]; }   $arrOne_to_One = array();   $arrInverse_Wealth = array();   $arrArc_Sizing = array();   $arrOne_Plus_Inverse_Maximum_Wealth = array();   foreach ( $arrVoters as $voter ) {     $arrOne_to_One[ $voter->choice ] = $arrOne_to_One[ $voter->choice ] + $voter->One_to_One_Vote();     if ( 0 < $voter->income ) {      if ( $Total_Income_Participants < 2 ) {         $arrInverse_Wealth[ $voter->choice ] = 1;         $arrArc_Sizing[ $voter->choice ] = 1;          $arrOne_Plus_Inverse_Maximum_Wealth[ $voter->choice ] = 1;      } else {         $arrInverse_Wealth[ $voter->choice ] = $arrInverse_Wealth[ $voter->choice ] + $voter->Inverse_Wealth_Vote();         $arrArc_Sizing[ $voter->choice ] = $arrArc_Sizing[ $voter->choice ] + $voter->Arc_Sized_Vote();          $arrOne_Plus_Inverse_Maximum_Wealth[ $voter->choice ] = $arrOne_Plus_Inverse_Maximum_Wealth[ $voter->choice ] + $voter->One_Plus_Inverse_Maximum_Wealth_Vote(); }}}   ...

If you have your own ideas of how to best formulate vote sizing, send an email to Vote_Sizing_Suggestions@VoteSizing.org and we'll consider using it in our polls.