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David Simpson's avatar

I feel there needs to be an audit function built in. I may be confident my agent is casting my vote as I would cast it myself, but how can I be sure a) my agent is being equally scrupulous with all their other voters b) all agents are doing so? The audit function should be independent of all agents, and should be able for example to sample 5% of all votes cast for / against a particular measure / policy / law, and then confirm with a random selection of that 5% directly with the voters, that they are happy with how their vote was cast by their agent. If the number of dissatisfied voters exceeds a certain threshold then the vote is declared unsafe. The threshold would vary according to the margin by which the vote was won / lost. So a very close result would require a relatively low threshold of mis-cast votes to be declared unsafe. Where a result is much more clear cut a correspondingly higher threshold of errors would be needed.

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Cliff's avatar

Jim - some immediate concerns/questions …

Presumably agents are individuals (not pieces of software), in which case how many of them do you envisage - one for every 10/100/1,000/10,000/more people? How do they keep track of the people they are representing? And how do they represent diametrically opposing views and keep the confidence of their ‘constituents’? (Oh, and how are they funded?).

Your proposal appears to be IT heavy when not everyone has computer/internet access, or the inclination to get it. Are you not in danger of disenfranchising a significant part of society? You need to cater for Brenda from Bristol (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2017/apr/18/does-brenda-from-bristol-have-the-best-reaction-to-the-election-news-video).

Obviously I’d like to see more democratic representation but am struggling to see how a panocracy could work in practice.

Cliff (being very mundane)

Ps maybe one day software will be the answer - when we can trust it!!!

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