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Note: this document is under construction!
It is not even a finished draft yet, just parts of a draft interspered with notes.
The purpose of this document is to collect my thoughts about a better constitution. Particular design goals include scalability (many parts of the organizational structure should be applicable to small groups as well as nations), simplicity, direct democracy, protection of civil liberties. Of course there is also the usual design goals of stability, high-quality deliberation and decision-making, etc. More on the design goals can be found in the Justification and Analysis section after the constitutional text.
Capitalized words are those which have a special meaning. Definitions of these words, and others, may be found in the glossary.
This document defines, limits, and structures the State
The Legislature makes the laws and sets policy. The Legislature is composed of three houses, which are the House of the People, the Senate, and the Board of Foreign Affairs. The House of the People uses direct democracy; the Senate and the Board of Foreign Affairs are small bodies composed of indirect representatives.
The Government, which is administered by the Prime Minister, carries out the laws, with the exception of military and foreign policy, which is carried out by the Foreign Minister. The Prime Minister is appointed by the Senate, and the Foreign Minister by the Board of Foreign Affairs.
The Courts interpret the laws.
The Tribunes investigate, with the aim of checking and restraining both the State as a whole, and also powerful elements within the State.
The section Rights and Principals sets fundamental limits on the power of the State.
These are accorded to all people, citizens and non-citizens\footnote{This is less verbose but has the same effect as Article 2 of the United Nations Declaration, which reads "everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty".}.
Basic rights are always negative rights, meaning that they could be fulfilled without placing any obligation upon any private individual, except for an obligation NOT to do certain things. However, it is the primary function of government to protect the basic rights of citizens.
todo: some of these rights concern fair process, are they negative rights? are they basic rights? must basic rights be able to be fulfilled in the absence of the existence of any government?
(todo: finish looking at other lists of rights and pick the ones i agree with)
More principals may be found in the Details section.
The State consists of the following entities:
All sovereign power rests in the electorate. The electorate is the head of the state.
The House of the People is one of the two chambers of Legislature. The House of the People is a direct democracy process.
Each Member of the Electorate gets one Vote on each issue. On any particular issue, or set of issues, a Member may choose to assign their Vote to any other Member or Members of the Electorate, as a Proxy Vote. A Member may also pass on any Proxy Votes that they have received to other Members.
The Senate is one of the two chambers of Legislature. The Senate is a small representative body chosen by general election. The election uses a recursive representation scheme (todo: define).
The Senate appoints the Prime Minister. At any time, the Senate may replace the Prime Minister.
The Senate may dismiss any member of the Cabinet.
The Senate may dissolve itself.
The Board of Foreign Affairs is like the Senate, except that it considers only foreign policy, and except that it is smaller.
When one chamber passes a Bill, the other chamber has three months to Veto it. If there is no Veto, the Bill becomes law.
Neither chamber may pass more than 10 pages of Bills per day. Unused page quota may be "saved up" up to a limit of 1000 pages.
The voting threshold for bills in both houses is 60%, except as specified below\footnote{This fixes two problems in the USA system. (1) In the USA, when there are two opposing factions each of which have close to 50% of the vote, the fulcrum of power thrashes back and forth as one faction or another gets slightly more than 50%, and each faction imposes its policy during its brief stay in power, leading to policy instability. With a threshold of 60%, however, the vote would have to change by 20% before a policy may be replaced by its opposite. (2) For whatever reason, the USA system seems to structurally tends towards having two parties each of which control 50% of the vote. There is little incentive for compromise between parties, and this leads to partisanship/infighting. With a 60% threshold, even if the system unintentionally creates two parties of roughly equal power, those parties will have to compromise in order to pass bills.} \footnote{Because I belive "consensus"-ish processes are workable and good, I'd like to make this threshold higher, say 75%, but I'm being conservative by remaining closer to current practice.}.
The voting threshold for bills which do one of more of the following is 2/3\footnote{To date, governments have been observed to have a bias towards increasing their size and power. This provision is intended to fight against that bias.}:
The voting threshold for bills which repeal laws and which do not do any of the of the above is 50%\footnote{This makes it easy to reduce the amount of legal text, aiding simplicity.}.
The voting threshold for bills solely composed of provisions which do not do any of the above, and which each do one or more of the following, is 50%\footnote{Another provision intended to correct for the tendency of governments to increase their own size and power.}:
The voting threshold for amendments to this Constitution is 75%\footnote{I'd like to make this even higher, say 90%, but I am being conservative by remaining closer to current practice.}.
A Renewable bill may be Renewed with a 50% threshold\footnote{Some bills, such as budgets, must regularly be re-issued and have very bad consequences (such as non-payment of government employees and defaults on debt) if they are not re-issued on time. A high voting threshold could make it hard to pass these bills on time. Therefore, such bills may be marked "Rewewable", in which case, as a stopgap measure, the bill may be re-issued exactly as before if a compromise cannot be reached.}.
The Prime Minister is the head of government. The Prime Minister is appointed by the Senate.
The Prime Minister may dissolve the Senate.
The Prime Minister appoints and may dismiss members of the Cabinet.
The Foreign Minister is the head of foreign affairs. The Foreign Minister is appointed by the Board of Foreign Affairs.
The Prime Minister may dissolve the Senate.
The Prime Minister appoints and may dismiss members of the Cabinet.
A new Tribune is elected at the same times as the Senate has elections.
The Tribune's duty is to preemptively watch for, investigate, publicize, and prosecute undesirable, corrupt, or illegal behavior in the functioning of the State\footnote{The Tribunes are an idea I took from Simon Bolivar's four part government; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricameralism. He called them Censors, but I renamed it to Tribune because of the association of the word Censor with "censorship". The Tribunes are "prosecuting attorneys against the government". They are a combination investigative jornalist and prosecutor. They can be expected to investigate, expose, embarrass, persecute, and prosecute the government. Sometimes you hear the phrase "enemy of the state". The Tribunes are the enemy of the government.)
The tribune can compel any part of the State to release any information to hir. There is no type of information which is off-limits to the Tribune. The Tribune may make public any information to which s/he has access. The Tribune has the standing to prosecute anyone for any offence relating to undesirable, corrupt, or illegal behavior in the functioning of the State, or dereliction of duty of an official in the functioning of the State.
A majority of the Tribunes can pardon anyone of any crime, or commute their sentence.
Another example is when the body of law grows too large; people are held responsible for following laws which they do not know exist, and it would be impractically expensive to read through and become aware of all of the laws which bind one.}
This is already implied by the above, however, since in the United States the practice of "civil forfeiture" has been implemented in which property is taken without a standard or jury trial with the justification that "it's the property, not the person, being prosecuted" -- we here say explicitly that the usual standards of a fair trial are required to take property from a person, just they would be required to convict that person.
The number of members of the Senate is ln(number of members of the electorate).
The Senate may dismiss Cabinet members at any time for any reason.
The Senate may dissolve itself at any time.
All issues except issues of foreign policy or external relations are handled by the Senate and the Prime Minister. Issues of foreign policy or external relations are handled by the Foreign Minister.
Constitutional questions are always handled by the Senate, not the Board of Foreign Affairs. Issues surrounding the question of what is and is not, "foreign policy" or "external relations" are handled by the Senate, not the Board of Foreign Affairs.
The size of the Board of Foreign Affairs is ceil(sqrt(size of the Senate)).
The method of election of the Board of Foreign Affairs is the same as for the Senate.
The Board may dissolve itself at any time.
Upon the passage of a Bill in either chamber of the Legislature, the other chamber has three months to decide whether it wants to Veto the Bill. The other chamber can also affirmatively Assent to the Bill, in which case it becomes law immediately (without waiting for the rest of the three months).
If the other chamber does not act, the Bill automatically becomes Law at the end of that period.
Upon Vetoing a Bill a chamber may also choose to do none, one, or more than one of the following things:
Amendments to this Constitution which deal with the powers of the Senate do not have to be passed by the Senate, only the House of the People. However, in this case, the Senate can still pass a Resolution to Delay the bill.
All budgetary bills must be Renewable\footnote{One could imagine that, as a compromise or as a tactical maneuver, the Legislature might wish to pass an annual budget without a Renewable mark. This could cause trouble the next year if a new budget could not agreed upon in a timely manner. Therefore, it is prohibited.}.
A bill for the government to borrow money or otherwise to make a financial committment is considered an increase in spending.
The Prime Minister may not dissolve the Senate in the first six months after a Senate election.
The Prime Minister may dismiss any member of the Cabinet at any time for any reason.
The Tribune has free reign to publicize any information that s/he has access to, but is not permitted to __selectively__ publicize information. If the Tribune gives any information to someone outside the Bureau Of The Tribune who is not normally allowed to access that information, the Tribune must first make the information publically available and announce its availability. The Tribune must continue to make that information available from that point forward (at the expense of the government).
If the Tribune does selectively release information, they are then acting in their capacity as a private citizen rather than in the role of Tribune, and they are liable to the same degree that another private citizen would be liable for that release.
The Tribune is supposed to protect the integrity of the State; however, ordinary crime within the Electorate is the concern of the police, and not the concern of the Tribune, even thought the Electorate is the Head of the State.
Even during emergency conditions, the freedom of speech or of movement of Tribunes may not be in any way abridged, and no citizen may be prevented from communicating with a Tribune without the consent of that Tribune.
Tribunes may be removed from office by a 2/3 vote of the Legislature.
The Legislature may issue a Declaration of War.
No person is permitted to use or to authorize military force without a Declaration of War, except according to the three exceptions below.
One, the Foreign Minister may authorize the use of military force for purely defensive purposes against an unexpected attack for a length of time not exceeding one month, while the Legislature deliberates upon a Declaration of War. The Legislature may remove this authorization at will, even preventatively.
Two, the Prime Minister may authorize the use of force, in accordance with the Constitution as in effect at that time, during a Condition of Martial Law.
Three, the military is always authorized to retreat and to cover their retreat with an absolute minimum amount of force necessary to preserve the safety of their personnel, or to prevent military equipment from falling into the hands of the enemy\footnote{Practically speaking, retreating soldiers will fight for their lives while retreating whether or not they are legally authorized to use force. We accept this and make it legal. Similarly, we do not expect our soldiers to allow the enemy to capture our equipment. However, the "absolute minimum...necessary" part ensures that this is not made into a loophole with which to attack or to extract retribution from the enemy without the consent of the Legislature.}.
An attack is considered unexpected if a reasonable person with the same access to information as the Foreign Minister would have thought that such an attack was very unlikely a month prior to the attack\footnote{The intent is to force the Foreign Minister to seek the approval of the Legislature for any use of force, even defensively, except when a surprise attack is launched, in which case a response must be made before the Legislature has time to deliberate. Now, imagine the case in which there are many small unknown military groups, any one of which might at any time pop up and attack. Clearly, the Foreign Minister must be authorized to defend against these attacks when they happen. But there cannot be a declaration of war against a nonspecific enemy. So it would seem that there is no way for the Foreign Minister to seek approval in advance. This is covered by the surprise exception because, whichever one attacks, the Foreign Minister wouldn't have known that that particular, specific group would attack, only that some group would probably attack. If, on the other hand, the Foreign Minister's intelligence had in fact, more than a month ago, ascertained the identities of some of these groups and decided that they might attack soon, then it would be possible for the Foreign Minister to seek the consent of the Legislature, so in this case the Foreign Minister is compelled to seek the consent of the Legislature in order to respond}.
Any attempt to use or to authorize military force in violation of this section is a felony and in addition constitutes a resignation from any official position by the individual making the attempt, effective at the time that the attempt is made.
A Declaration of War does not in any way permit the suspension or abridgement of normal rights and procedures; this would require a Condition of Dire War.
A Declaration of War must specify a specific enemy. Wars must be declared against specific people or organizations, never against other abstract entities or phenomena\footnote{I.e. a War Against Drugs or a War Against Terrorism is prohibited}.
A Declaration of War must specify a time limit; at this time, the Declaration automatically expires unless renewed by the Legislature. A Declaration of War may be renewed by the Legislature an arbitrarily large number of times. The time limit may not be longer than 5 years.
The Legislature may cancel a Declaration of War at will\footnote{Can the Legislature micromanage the conduct of a war? They cannot directly issue orders to the military, but they can dismiss the Foreign Minister and replace hir with someone more to their liking. They can also set policies which the Foreign Minister is obliged to follow as s/he issues orders to the military.}.
High officials include the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, members of the Cabinet, the Senate, the Board of Foreign Relations, the Supreme Court, and the Censors. Other officials may be deemed high officials by statue.
No high offical may give or accept or lend or borrow any money or gifts or exchange goods or services or have any business relationships with anyone during their term of office.
The financial needs of high officials must be provided for entirely by the government during their term of office. High officials must be completely divested of any business ownership or financial holdings during their term of office.
An exception is made for a total amount of one twentieth of the salary of the offical per year.
Furthermore, an exception is made in that the officials may buy a basic level of consumer goods and services through normal channels for the same price as available to the typical person.
Furthermore, an exception is made in that the officials may visit or reside for free at any residence.
Transactions pursuant to these exceptions must be made public.
A high official may resign at will at any time, at which time these restrictions immediately cease.
In all Emergency Conditions, the Government may exercise its additional powers only as clearly and directly neeeded to respond to the particular threat.
This Condition (which is not an Emergency Condition; rather, it is the opposite) obtains when there is no Condition of Temporary Emergency, Condition of Dire War, or Condition of Martial Law.
The Prime Minister, or either house of the Legislature, or a majority of the Tribunes may at any time cancel any Emergency Condition\footnote{It may be impractical to take the time to talk to these entities before dealing with the emergency, but the intent is that if/when they do hear about it, they will agree that it is an emergency. Basically, emergency conditions may only be imposed by near-consensus}.
In addition, the individuals who were at the time of the declaration of the Emergency Condition serving as Senators or as Tribunes may, by a majority of those who were Senators or a majority of those who were Tribunes, cancel that Emergency Condition\footnote{So if, during the Emergency, the Prime Minister or other attacker manages to replace, say, the Tribunes with new Tribunes, or perhaps to raise the number of total Tribunes and appoint ones loyal to hir, then the old Tribunes can still cancel the Emergency; same with the Senators.}. If these individuals are unreachable, these majorities shall be calculated out of the reachable members\footnote{So even if a majority of these individuals are kidnapped or killed, a majority of the remaining ones can still cancel the Emergency Condition}. Similarity, the individual who was at the time of the declaration of the Emergency Condition serving as Prime Minister may cancel the Emergency unilaterally. Similarly, the individuals who composed the Electorate at the time of the declaration of Emergency may cancel the Emergency by an Act generated according to the normal procedure of the House of the People as of the time of the declaration.
Some threatening, unexpected situations may require fast action by the government with less constraints than usual. Therefore, the Prime Minister may unilaterally declare a Condition of Emergency.
Although some of normal procedure and rights may be suspended during an Emergency, these changes are not decided unilaterally by government officials, but are specified by statutory law.
A Condition of Emergency automatically expires in two weeks unless renewed by the Legislature.
If the full Legislature is unable to be reached, a partial Legislature may function as the Legislature for the duration of the Condition of Emergency.
A Condition of Emergency may not last longer than two months.
Some conflicts may be so threatening to the lives of the citizens so as to require an extended suspension of normal domestic procedure. In such a situation the Legislature, with the consent of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister and a majority of the Tribunes, may declare a Condition of Dire War.
A Condition of Dire War may only be declared with respect to a specific, prior Declaration of War.
Although some of normal procedure and rights may be suspended during Dire War, these changes are not decided unilaterally by government officials, but are specified by statutory law.
This condition automatically expires unless renewed annually by the Legislature, with the consent of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister and a majority of the Tribunes.
No Condition of Dire War lasts longer than 8 years.
The Prime Minister and a majority of the Tribunes may impose a Condition of Martial Law when extremely dire conditions require it. The principal feature of Martial Law is that temporary legislative power is given to the Prime Minister.
A Condition of Martial Law is a very serious thing and those invoking it should only do so when they are each individually convinced that there is no other recourse. When possible, a Condition of Emergency or a Condition of Dire War are preferable, as neither of these give the Prime Minister unilateral legislative power. As the other conditions already permit the Legislature to temporarily suspend normal procedures and rights, it may be reasonably hoped that Martial Law will never be needed.
If a majority of the Tribunes cannot be reached, the Prime Minister may unilaterally declare martial law, but only until a majority of the Tribunes become available, at which time Marital Law is automatically cancelled unless a majority of them ratify the decison.
During Martial Law, the government and military are placed under the command of the Prime Minister, who may unilaterally suspend statutory rights and laws, authorize force, and command the military to keep order domestically. The Prime Minister may not deviate from or unilaterally suspend parts of this Constitution\footnote{In this way, Martial Law concentrates power less than the Enabling Act which played a part in Hitler's rise to power}. However, the Legislature may pass laws providing for parts of this Constitution to be temporarily suspended during Martial Law, subject to the limitations in section Limitations on Amendments during Emergency Conditions.
As noted in section Rights and Principals, Martial Law is absolutely limited to a period of 6 months. This is a fundamental right and this limitation may be not be altered or suspended even under Martial Law.
Except for a Condition of Emergency, no Emergency Condition may be renewed after its expiration time limit has been reached without at least one year of a Condition of Normalacy elapsing. If such an Emergency Condition which did not reach its time limit is renewed before this, then for the purpose of determining the new time limit, the intervening Condition of Normalacy is counted as if it were part of the Emergency Condition.
A Condition of Emergency works the same way, except that the fallow period is two months rather than one year, and except that this requirement may be waived by the Legislature, with the consent of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister and all of the Tribunes and every member of the Senate. To prevent the abuse of this provision, in the event of such a renewal the procedures for a Condition of Emergency may not in any way make changes to the decision-making structure of power structure of the State, or impede normal deliberation by the Electorate including but not limited to the rights to Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, and Freedom of Peacable Assembly.
One way that this Constitution might be attacked would be for an Amendment to be made during a Condition of Dire War, Emergency, or Martial Law; in this way, the normal procedures for the Electorate to deliberate might be bypassed\footnote{this was in fact similar to the mechanism for Hitler's rise to power; see the Enabling Act, which was passed during a state of emergency established by the Reichstag Fire Decree, during which normal deliberation was suppressed (Communist and some Social Democratic representatives had been arrested, and the Reichstag was intimidated by the SA during voting). The Enabling Act permitted Hitler to ignore the constitution. With this power, he turned the legislature into his puppet and had the Enabling Act renewed.}.
To protect against this, if the Constitution is amended during a Condition of Dire War, Emergency, or Martial Law, these amendments shall expire with the cancellation or expiration of such condition, and shall not be re-enacted for a period of at least one year. If they had an effect on the distribution of power (for instance, if they affected who is a Senator, who is Prime Minister, who is a Tribune, etc), this effect is reversed upon such expiration.
If the amendments are desirable, the Legislature is encouraged to re-enact them after the fallow period.
Neither this section nor the part of this Constitution which defines Emergency Conditions may ever be amended except when a Condition of Normalacy has been in effect for at least one year directly proceeding the time of such amendment.
The Senate is merely one component of a larger body called the Allsenate. The Allsenate is a body of indirect representation. The Allsenate has a layered, pyramidal structure whose pinnacle is the Prime Minister, and whose base is the entire Electorate. The lowest layer of the Allsenate is the Electorate itself. Members of the electorate organize into voluntary constituencies. Each of these constituences elects a representative into the next higher layer. These representatives themselves organize into voluntary constituencies, and elect a representative into the next higher layer. And so it goes. Eventually, one of these layers is called the Senate. The Senate elects a Prime Minister.
Each representative is directly responsible only to the members of the voluntary contituency that elected hir, that is, only to representatives in the layer immediately beneath hir who voted for hir.
No person may simultaineously serve as a representative in multiple layers of the Undersenate, or in the Undersenate and the Senate.
The lowest layer of the Allsenate is the Electorate. The layer of the Allsenate immediately below the Prime Minister is called the Senate. The other layers are called the Undersenate.
For any representative,
We refer to the lowest layer of the Undersenate as layer 1.
The role of the Undersenate is not over after an election. An election serves not only to select representatives, but also to pair each representative with their direct constituency.
Since their representative is only directly responsible to them, and not to their constituents, the representatives of the Undersenate are expected to pass information between their representative above, and their own constituents below. They are expected to communicate with their direct contituents, to discuss issues with their peers, and to advise, monitor, and judge the decisions of their representative.
A representative may be recalled, for any reason, by a majority vote of their direct constituency. After a successful recall, the direct constituency of the recalled representative chooses a replacement by a Condorcet method. The recalled representative is automatically a candidate in the replacement vote.
An election proceeds by rounds, with one round per layer of the Undersenate, and one final round for the Senate. Each round has a fixed time period. During each round, the representatives who will serve in a particular layer of the Undersenate are selected, starting with layer 1 and proceeding upwards in order.
During each round, there is a threshold: the minimal number of votes that any person must collect in order to win a seat.
Each round has two parts.
Part I of round n involves only the representatives in layer n-1. In round 1, the "representatives in layer n-1" are just the Electorate.
At the beginning of Part I of each round, each participating representative starts out with one vote.
During Part I of round n, each representative in layer n-1 may lend their vote to any other member of the electorate who will accept it
A lent vote may be transferred again by the recipient. Each single vote may be transferred a number of times.
At the end of Part I, the destination of each member's vote becomes public knowledge.
During Part II, each layer of the Allsenate below layer n-1, in descending order, has a chance to examine how their representatives are voting (and how their indirect representatives are voting). At this time, each member may choose to reassign their vote to any representative of the layer immediately above them who will accept it.
At this time, a representative may also choose to give back votes that they had previously collected (i.e. to withdraw their acceptance of that vote).
A member may only participate in Part II of later rounds only if they participated, either by lending or by accepting a vote, in Part I of each round in which they were an active representative.
At the end of each round n, the number of delegated votes held by each representative are calculated. Each member of the Electorate has one vote. The votes held by the representatives of layer 1 are the sum of the votes of the members in their constituency. Next, the votes held by the representatives of layer 2 are calculated as the sum of the votes of the members in their constituency. And so on, until the number of delegated votes held by the representatives of layer n-1 have been calculated.
In Part I, we found out who received the vote of each representative of layer n-1; at this point, we now know the relative strengths of those votes. Therefore, we can now calculate how many delegated votes were received by each member of the electorate in the current round.
At this point, those members of the electorate who have collected more than the vote threshold for that round win a seat in the relevant layer of the Allsenate, and the results of this round are announced.
Even though, as a consequence of Part II of future rounds, a representative may lose votes before the election terminates, pushing them below their threshold, they remain representatives.
After the end of the election, after the representatives have been selected and announced, forfeit votes are assigned as provided in sections below.
In between elections, for the purpose of recall votes and replacement votes, Undersenators vote with strength proportional to the delegated votes that they received in the previous election.
However, each Senator has one equal vote in Senate business; the number of delegated votes that they received in the election has no effect after the election.
A member who had been elected as a representative of layer n-1 in the previous round and who is also elected as a representative of layer n in the current round forfeits their position as a representative of layer n-1 and hence forfeits the votes that they had collected directly from representatives in layer n-2.
These votes, as well as votes which disappeared because they were last held by a member who did not achieve some round's threshold and hence did not become a representative in the next round, are not lost, however; they are still active, and the holder of such a vote may reassign it during Part II of the next round to any representative in the layer immediately above hir.
After the final round, after the representatives have been selected, the forfeit votes of a member who had been elected as a representative of the layer below the Senate and who then was elected into the Senate are distributed between the direct constituents of the new Senator in proportion to their votes\footnote{This step is necessary so, on the one hand, Senators are not also Undersenators, and on the other hand, each person who cast a vote is represented in the Senate.}.
After the final round, after the representatives have been selected, votes which were last held by a member who did not achieve the round's threshold are randomly divided between all of the Senators in proportion to their votes\footnote{This allows groups of voters to choose to "infilitrate" the other candidates' constituencies against their will, and therefore expose them to criticism and recall. However, since this infiltration is spread over all of the candidates, infiltrators cannot hope to target any particular enemy, so this is not a good strategy for attacking a particular opponent; long before you had the numbers to inject a significant number of your supporters into a particular opponent's constituency, you would have the opportunity to instead elect another candidate supporting your faction into the Senate. I suppose that the strategic effect of this clause will be small, and that the greatest effect will be to interject a tiny amount of cross-factional dialog into the Undersenate}.
A member of the electorate may, at any time when they are voting, anonymously opt to cast a secret ballot in addition to their public ballot.
If they do this, their public ballot is invalidated, but in an anonymous fashion so that it seems to everyone else that is is still active.
The secret ballot does not take effect until the final round of senatorial elections. Even then, these effects are anonymous.
If a representative casts an anonymous secret ballot, the secret ballot substitues for only their single, personal vote. The votes that they cast on behalf of others are unaffected.
No representative may give or accept or lend or borrow any money or gifts or exchange goods or services or have any business relationship with any of their direct constituents.
Define "ceil(x)" to be the least integer greater than x, and "log(x)" to be the natural log of x (sometimes written "ln(x)").
Define P to be the number of individuals in the Electorate.
The number of representatives in the Senate shall be floor(log(P)) - 1. For brevity, let S = ceil(log(P)).
The number of layers within the Undersenate shall be ceil(log(S)) - 1. For brevity, let L = ceil(log(S)).
Let k = (log(P)/log(S) -1 - L)/(\sum_{j=1}^L j).
Denote the threshold of layer n by T_n (where layers 1 thru L-1 correspond to the Undersenate, and layer L corresponds to the Senate). This threshold is determined by:
T_n = \prod_{i=1}^n S^{1 + k (L - i)}
First, I decided what I thought the size of the senate should be. I wanted a formula that took as input the size of the electorate, and yielded the size of the Senate. I wanted this formula to be scalable, that is, to give reasonable answers for moderately small groups and also for groups the size of the entire population of Earth, and larger. In numerical terms, I require a rule that scales for groups of about 1000 up to groups of about 9 billion. If possible, it would be nice if the rule would scale down to 15 and up to about 1e18.
Some approximate example group sizes to help get a handle on these numbers:
30 the number of students in a small graduate program 65 the number of students in my elementary school class 1900 the number of developers in Debian \footnote{by counting the names in http://www.debian.org/devel/people} 2500 the number of UCSD graduate students\footnote{according to according to http://physics.ucsd.edu/was-sdphul/dept/pr/gintro.html} 1.2e6 the population of San Diego 3.5e8 the population of the USA 6e9 current population of the Earth 9e9 an estimate of the peak population of the Earth during this century 1e18 10x an estimate for the population supportable by a Dyson sphere\footnote{15 is about when a group stops being a small group, and 1e18 is an estimate of the population supportable by a Dyson sphere (swarm, whatever).
To estimate the population supportable by a Dyson sphere, I'll look at energy and land. The total energy output of the sun is about 4e26 watts (according to http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-dyson-sphere.htm and http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/dysonFAQ.html). The current energy flux into the Earth is about 174e15 watts (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget). So energy-wise, a Dyson sphere would gain a factor of about 10^11 compared to the Earth. A Dyson sphere with a radius of one AU would have a surface area of at least 2.72e17 km^2, around 600 million times the surface area of the Earth. (according to http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/dysonFAQ.html). http://users.rcn.com/jasp.javanet/dyson/ estimates a factor of about 300 million. So land-wise, that's a factor of about 10^8 compared to the Earth. So land appears to be the bottleneck. So we estimate a population gain of about 10^8. http://class.ee.iastate.edu/berleant/home/Research/Future/Course/sessionGott.html agrees with this estimate.
A current estimate for the peak population of the Earth, for the foreseeable future, is about 9e9; so 90 billion is that with an order-of-magnitude margin of error. Multiplied by 10^8, we get something on the order of 1e18.
Of course, if we were to build a Dyson sphere, other things would probably change in the meantime that would render these estimates incorrect, and perhaps someday there could be an assemblage of more than 1e18 individuals. But 1e18 is anyhow a number that is much, much, much, larger than anything we'll have to deal with in the forseeable future, so I think it's a safe bet to say that if a system can scale to that, it's extremely scalable. }
By the reasoning given elsewhere, I felt that the current size of the U.S. Senate, 100, is significantly too large. The Senate, I feel, should be as small as possible, a tiny body that is small enough to sit down together and have serious discussions; the only reason it needs to grow with population at all is to allow all of the major political viewpoints to have a voice (and to allow each major viewpoint to be represented by more than one member so that the personal preferences of one person doesn't overly dominate the expression of the will of their faction).
Let me emphasize that: I see the proper role of the Senate as a guide for public discourse and a focus for attention. So, the number of Senators should grow in proportion to the number of points of view that the public should be made to focus upon. This is in opposition to an idea in which the number of Senators should grow roughly in proportion to the size of the population itself, in order to ensure each faction of some fixed size at least one representative in the Senate.
Now, the simple fact is that, no matter how much you would like the public to devote sufficient time to be able to understand all of the subtleties of politics, that people will refuse (and rightly so) to spend too much time on this, and so the media will simplify the world into a small number of factions. In the United States today, by looking at how the media talks about political factions, I guess they divide domestic politics into about 6 factions: (religious Republicans, other Republicans, anti-corporate Democrats, other Democrats, greens, "other"). So let's say that the magic number is between 5 and 7. Since we will allow each of these factions (except "other") to field 2 reps, we have a body of at least 9 to 13. Now, if even the small factions such as the greens have 2 reps, surely some of the larger ones will have more. So we want a Senate of about 13 to 24 members.
Nth-root formulas are one alterantive, but n must be 6 or more in order to bring the Senate below 50 for 350,000,000 people. I worry that this scheme would not scale too well if the population continues to increase exponentially. For example, for 18 trillion people, the 6-th root rule yields about 162 senators, which seems like a lot to me. Does this fit with out intuitions? This would mean that with a population 3000 times larger than the current population of the entire Earth, the media would pretend that there is about 40-56 factions. This seems like too many to me.
On the other end of the scale, this formula gives Senate sizes that I feel are too slightly too low for small groups. For example, the 6-th root rule would give 3 senators for a group of 500, which seems like too few; would a 500 employee company have a board of directors of only 3 people?
In addition, the 6 seems like a kludge.
All in all a 6-th root rule would not be too bad, but log seems better. Log gives answers that seem better for very small and very large groups.
To start with, I tried natural log. log(350000000) \approx 19.7, which seems like a reasonable size for the Senate of the United States. log(25e9) \approx 24, so even with a population of more than twice current projections for the maximum world population within the forseeable future, this rule yields a suitably small Senate size. log(18e12) is only 30.5. Does this fit with out intuitions? This would mean that even with a population 3000 times larger than the current population of the entire Earth, the media would pretend that there is only about 7-11 factions. This seems too small to me, but I think it's closer than the guess of 40.
On the other end of the scale, for a 30 person group, which is about the size of the computational neurobiology graduate subprogram that until recently i was part of, we get a senate of 3.4, which seems about right. For a 65 person group, about the size of my class in elementary school we get a senate of 4.2, which also seems reasonable. For a
One model that would justify this is if we assume that the cognitive cost of holding in mind n factions is exponential in the number of factions, and the benefits of adding a new faction is directly proportional to the number of people who will be represented by that faction.
In this case, if we have P people and F factions, then that must be because the benefits of creating the last faction outweighed the costs. The benefits are proportional to P/F. The costs are proportional to exp(F) - exp(F-1). We have
exp(F) - exp(F-1) = P/F
F*(exp(F) - exp(F-1)) = P
F*(F e^{F-1} - e^{F-1}) = P
F*e^{F-1}*(F - 1) = P
ln F*e^{F-1}*(F - 1) = ln P
ln (F*(F-1)) + ln(e^{F-1}) = ln P
ln (F*(F-1)) + F-1 = ln P
F = O(ln P)
Natural log seems to wor
For example, according to http://physics.ucsd.edu/was-sdphul/dept/pr/gintro.html, UCSD currently has on the order of 2500 graduate students. The Senate would correspond to the size of the Graduate Student Council, our student government.
(log_S P -1 - L)/(\sum_{j=1}^L j) = k
log_S P = 1 + L + k*(\sum_{j=1}^L j)
log_S P = log_S S^{1 + L + k*(\sum_{j=1}^L j)}
P = S^{1 + L + k*(\sum_{j=1}^L j)}
P = S^{1 + L + k + 2*k + .... + ik + .... + L*K}
P = S^{1 + (1 + k) + (1 + 2*k) + .... + (1 + ik) + .... + (1 + L*K)}
P = \prod_{i=0}^L S^1 S^{1 + k} S^{1 + 2*k} * ... * S^{1 + ik} * .... * S^{1 + L*K}
P = \prod_{i=0}^L S^{1+k i}
x = \prod_{i=0}^{ceil(log(ceil(log(x))))} (ceil(log(x))^{1+k i}
If each individual in the electorate
\footnote{"voluntary constituencies"}
Corporation: An abstract entity representing a group of people in some capacity which is not itself capable of consciousness.
Person: Sentient being.
Renew: A Renewable bill may be Renewed by being repassed, exactly as before, except with dates advanced to the current time period.\footnote{For example, a budget for 2006 may be Renewed}
Renewable: A bill is Renewable if it specifies in its text that it is Renewable.
The Tribunes might be thought of as the "conscience of the State", or as the "enemy of the government", or as "anti-Prime Ministers".
I created the position of Tribune to fulfill some of what I consider the useful function of the USA President which are not fulfilled by the Prime Minister under the parliamentary system.
The U.S. President is a powerful, prestigious individual who is independent of the other branches of government. This allow hir to point out/publicize/preach against whatever systemic failings afflict the other branches (partisanship in Congress, etc). The Tribunes are also powerful, prestigious, and independent, and they are uniquely empowered to attract publicity and preach.
The U.S. President is an individual with the powers of veto and pardon. This allows hir to use their individual conscience to check the other branches of government. The Tribunes are also individuals, and although they do not have veto power, their power to publicize wrongs will allow them to effectively check the other branches.
The Tribunes improve on the USA President in, while the USA President is often someone who supports the expansion of government power, the Tribunes can be expected to frequently be opposed to the Prime Minister and the Senate.
The Tribunes also improve on the USA President by fulfilling a new function, a function not fulfilled by any official in the USA: looking at the most secret information. This allows them to expose high-level corruption and conspiracies. Just as important, their very existence will act against the expansion of secrecy and the use of secrecy for tactical political ends, since there is always the danger that a Tribune will choose to declassify something that they personally consider not worthy of secrecy.
The Tribunes might be called Anti-Prime Ministers, but that sounds too silly.
Because Tribunes are supposed to be individuals, and to gain all the prestige that attaches to the USA President, it would be nice to just have one Tribune, instead of three. But having three provides important benefits:
In the modern world, we see how only the few most prestigious individuals in politics attract the attention of the nation. Attention is a limited quantity, and there are too many political representatives for a typical individual to become aware of. For example, a typical individual can vote for their mayor, their state assemblyperson, their state senator, their state governor, their federal assemblyperson, two federal senators, the federal president, possibly other state officials, and possibly some state and county judges. This is a total of more than 7 people. This proves too much, as most people seem to only pay attention to the presidential candidates, and even the more informed often pay attention to only 3 or 4 of these positions.
In addition, it would seem that the public "should" pay attention to the personalities and doings of the 12 Supreme Court members and the leaders of the two major parties in the two houses of the legislature. The more informed pay attention to maybe another 3 out of this list.
Furthermore, it would be nice if the public could pay some degree of attention not just to their own representatives, but also to the other representatives of other parts of the country. To the extent that this is possible, the public could pay attention to the debates in the legislature.
Therefore, the number of high officials to which the public needs to pay attention should be minimized.
The USA House of Representatives initially had 65 members, in 1789. In my personal experience, this number is about the same as the number of people in my class in elementary school. I'd guess that this is about the maximium number to effectively have "collegiality", or a situation in which each member of a group has a vague idea of who each other member is and where they stand, and in which each person can consider each other person an acquaintance. Of course, politicians can be expected to be better at this than ordinary humans, and so perhaps the number is a bit higher for them, but it seems to me that the number shouldn't go above what can be expected for ordinary humans.
Certainly, the number should not exceed Dunbar's Number (150) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number).
In 2007, the size of the USA House of Representatives is 435. This is way too large.
While I think around 65 is the maximum that should be tolerated, I think there are benefits to going as low as possible. I would imagine that with 65 people, it might be possible to stay acquainted with everybody, to learn their positions on important issues, and to negotiate on important issues with a majority of the other members, but I imagine that these activities would be in themselves a full time job, leaving little time to actually learn about, weigh, and discuss with others the merits of the issues.
With around 20 people, I imagine that there would be time to keep in touch with everyone, to know everyone's position, and to spend some time actually discussing the issues themselves rather than merely negotiating.
With 12 people, I would imagine that everyone would know each other very well, that substantial issue discussion would be the norm, and that substantial compromise would often be feasible.
With 4 people, I would imagine that compromise would be the norm and that business could be transacted rapidly.
Each person has to vote for three federal representatives; the Tribunes, their delegate to the under-Senate, and their delegate to the under-Senate of Foreign Affairs.
The small size of the domestic Senate (20, for a population of 350,000,000) ensures both collegiality and allows the more informed segment of the public to actually keep track of Senate politics.
The small size of the Senate of Foreign Affairs allows the more informed segment of the public to keep track of what is going on, and
The total number of important people to keep track of is:
Total: 33
Compare to the US government:
Total: 113
The structure is in some sense an embodiment of the One (the Prime Minister, and , the Few, and the Many.
One phenomenon that I noticed in modern democracies is that often top officials are given the power to set policy over both domestic and foreign affairs. However, often those officials are elected based mainly on the public's affinity for their views on just out of these two spheres, and often their views on the other sphere does not match the public's. In addition, often they have experience or competence in only one of these two spheres, and sometimes they appear to be incompetent in the other one. Finally, individual voters will often agree with some candidate or party in one of these spheres but not in the other.
This division could of course be said to exist for any two issues, but when you think about categorizing and clustering voters and candidates, it seems like the distinction between foreign and domestic issues is often one of the most useful distinctions to be made.
Therefore, one design principal is to have one set of officials with power over foreign affairs, and another set of officials with power over domestic affairs.
This is realized in the separation of the legislative upper house into Senate and a Board of Foreign Affairs, and the parallel separation of the executive into Prime Minister and Foreign Minister.
I observe that generally people are more concerned with domestic affairs with foreign, and hence I have given the domestic side, the Senate, the greater portfolio. By default, matters fall to the Senate, except for foreign affairs, which fall to the Board of Foreign Affairs. Emergency powers fall to the Prime Minister, rather than the Foreign Minister. The question of what constitutes a "foreign affair" falls to the Senate.
You might think that this would encourage the Senate to define "foreign affairs" ridiculously narrowly and so to effectively conduct foreign affairs itself; but remember that the Senate cannot pass bills without the House of the People.
here's an example of a real-world legislature with 42 members, all elected from the whole country, all by STV: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_South_Wales_Legislative_Council
21 members (half) are elected each cycle
note that the wikipedia STV page points out that its proportionality is lost if there is gerrymandering (voters are broken into districts)
Unfortunately, I was not able to completely achieve this important goal, and this is currently a weakness of this system.
The fundamental problem is introduced by vote delegation. It is desirable for the original voter to know how their vote was ultimately spent by their representatives. But this seems to require that the vote by the representatives be public. It has been proposed elsewhere\footnote{I'd like to cite the twisted matrix lisquid democracy pages, but they're down and they're not in the Archive.} that representatives or proxy holders be able to cast each of their votes differently, and that each original vote holder would only be told the final disposition of their own vote. The idea was that, if someone was trying to intimidate you to vote a certain way, you vote that way with their vote and their friends' votes, but vote the rest of your votes the way you want. However, it seems to me that a corrupt organization trying to use intimidation to control others' voting would likely to be able to scrounge up a few tattletales, people whom you didn't know were their friends, who would rat you out if you tried to deceive them in this way. So, my current hypothesis is that transitive proxy voting, and also indirect representation, is antithetical to a secret ballot. In support of this, you notice that in today's systems, representatives (legislators) are required to openly disclose their votes, whereas individuals have a secret ballot. I'm guessing that the reason this is so is that representatives are in a sense casting the vote on behalf of others, and hence must be accountable to the original vote holders, and also that representatives are few enough in number and powerful enough that they can resist intimidation better than individuals. Whereas individuals are too weak to resist intimidation, but on the other hand don't need to be made accountable to others.
But in a transitive proxy voting system, individuals are also representatives. So we have a problem.
My solution is to allow individual voters to secretly divert their own, personal vote, but not to provide any secrecy or anonymity to the representatives or holders of proxies, insofar as they cast their borrowed votes.
Principals:
The last principal is because this would allow representatives to be their own constituents. This would, first, take up their time, as they would have to deal with two groups of constituents (theirs as an upper-layer rep, and theirs as a lower-layer rep), and second, it would allow high-profile individuals to run for Senate "directly", by accumulating a massive amount of votes from individuals in the first round, and then passing these votes up to themselves.
The second situation is not really prevented by the proposed system, however, in order to accomplish this, high-profile individuals would have to ask voters to entrust their votes to allies who would pass the votes up to the high-profile candidate. This ensures that after the election, the high-profile individual is still responsible to other people, even if these people are their allies.
design principals of the direct democracy:
design principals of the senate:
more ideas for determining levels:
log(log(x)) = levels
log(log(x)) = multiple of log(x) added at ea level
example: 350000000:
log(x) is about 20 ceil(log(log(x))) is 3
260*200*140*80*20
log(log(x)) = difference between multiples of log(x) added at ea level
example: 350000000:
380*200*80*20
---
so let x be the total population. #lvls is ceil(log(ceil(log(x)))) + 1, where the lowest level is the electorate, and the highest level is the senate.
ceil(log(x)) * k * ((\sum_j=0^i j) + 1)
where k is chosen to give enough reps to represent the population, that is, k is chosen to make the following equation hold:
x = \pi_{i=0}^#lvls (# of reps per group for level i)
expanding,
\pi_{i=0}^{ceil(log(ceil(log(x))))} (ceil(log(x)) * (k * (\sum_j=0^i j) + 1)) = x
and solving for k,
\pi_{i=0}^{ceil(log(ceil(log(x))))} (ceil(log(x)) * (k * (\sum_j=0^i j) + 1)) = x ceil(log(x))^{ceil(log(ceil(log(x)))) + 1} * \pi_{i=0}^{ceil(log(ceil(log(x))))} ((k * (\sum_j=0^i j) + 1)) = x \pi_{i=0}^{ceil(log(ceil(log(x))))} ((k * (\sum_j=0^i j) + 1)) = \frac{x}{ceil(log(x))^{ceil(log(ceil(log(x)))) + 1}}
so we see that this equation is a polynomial in k of degree ceil(log(ceil(log(x)))) with constant factor 1 - \frac{x}{ceil(log(x))^{ceil(log(ceil(log(x)))) + 1}}, and with coefficients ...
wait i guess we can make it simpler by taking out the senate as a special case:
ceil(log(x)) for i=0 or ceil(log(x)) * k * (\sum_j=0^i j) o.w.
hmmm but then the properties of the gap between the sz of the senate and the size of the guys underneath changes with k.
but the effect is just that, for k > 1, k will end up a little bit bigger than otherwise, and the assembly a little smaller. which is good if we want a small assembly (but bad if we want recursive properties).
that way would boil down to:
i guess that's good. the recursive properties aren't as important as ensuring collegial discourse in the senate.
although if the recursive solution gave something nearby, that would be even better.
what would the pure recursive solution look like, with only the # of levels fixed, and the 0th level now not the senate, but rather the prime minister?
it would be:
k * ((\sum_j=0^i j) + 1)
not much different, i guess
so, if there were four levels (which is right for x = 350,000,000), then we'd have
\pi_i=0^4 k * ((\sum_j=0^i j) + 1) = x (1)(k * ((\sum_j=0^1 j) + 1)(k * ((\sum_j=0^2 j) + 1)(k * ((\sum_j=0^3 j) + 1) = x (k + 1)(3k + 1)(6k + 1) = x 18k^3 + 3k^2 + 6k^2 + 18k^2 + k + 3k + 6k + 1 = x 18k^3 + 27k^2 + 10k + 1 = x 18k^3 + 27k^2 + 10k + (1 - x) = 0
for x=350000000, k= between 268 and 269 is a root
meaning that the levels would be
1, 269, 3*269, 6*269
1, 269, 807, 1614
multiplied together, these are
350371972
so that's about right.
note that all the polynomial coeficients are positive, so i think there's only one real positive root.q
the senate came out to be too big, tho. maybe if we add one to the number of lvls (to make up for the addition of the "prime minister" level?)
\pi_i=0^5 k * ((\sum_j=0^i j) + 1) = x (1)(k * ((\sum_j=0^1 j) + 1)(k * ((\sum_j=0^2 j) + 1)(k * ((\sum_j=0^3 j) + 1)(k * ((\sum_j=0^4 j) + 1) = x (k + 1)(3k + 1)(6k + 1)(10k + 1) = x 180k^4 + 18k^3 + 30k^3 + 60k^3 + 180k^3 + 3k^2 + 6k^2 + 18k^2 + 10k^2 + 30k^2 + 60k^2 + k + 3k + 6k + 10k + 1 = x 180k^4 + 288k^3 + 127k^2 + 20k + 1 = x 180k^4 + 288k^3 + 127k^2 + 20k + 1 - x = x
for x=350000000, k= between 36 and 37 is a root
meaning that the levels would be
1, 37+1, 3*37+1, 6*37+1, 10*37+1
1, 38, 112, 223, 371
multiplied together, these are
352111648
so that's about right.
compare this to the arrangement that i found by the old method that i liked:
380,200,80,20
that only multiplies to
121600000
so actually, in that system, k should have been about 4.5, rather than 3.
in that case, the levels would have been
20, 5.5*20, 14.5*20, 27*20 20, 110, 290, 560
this suggests that if we want a rule without an exception for the senate level, and we want the senate to stay small, then we need to scale more nonlinearly than that.
how about if we find a power? didnt i do that before? mb not
level i = senate^{ki}
x = \prod_{i=0}^{ceil(log(ceil(log(x))))} (ceil(log(x))^{1+k i}
for x = 350000000,
k = .428 is close, yielding
20,73,260,937
which multiplies to 355685200
so i guess that's the best system so far -- it's simple and recursive and has a natural way to insert the constraint on the senate size, and it gets a pretty good answer, even though i think it is a little too nonlinear.
for x = 6 billion, k = about .474, yielding
23,102,450, 1986, 8781
) (how does that compare to how many people per rep in the current house of representatives? maybe there are about 600,000 per rep? in this system, each 2nd-level rep represents 17438966 people for 6 billion, and there are 23*102*450 second level reps; for 350000000, they represent 234620, and there are 20*73 second level reps)
for 18 trillion, which is the upper limit that i'm considering, we have a senate of 31 and four levels of representation (i.e. 3 levels of intermediate reps in between the people and the senators)
(btw i wonder how all this would come out if we also varied the base of the log? that would give us less levels at 6 billion, which seems appropriate; maybe base 3 would be better? does that make a diff?)
