Liquid Score Voting: Part II
In Part One of this series on a maximally democratic system, we discussed how new legislation can be proposed: either through an executive decision (e.g. by the agricultural minister) or through a public petition. This new legislation takes the form of a question (“What tariff should be levied on imported beef?”) as well as one or more proposed solutions (“All imported beef should have a 2% tariff.”). At this point, the legislative question is submitted for public consideration. In this chapter, we will take a closer look at how this consideration period operates, as well as how the actual bills (the proposed solutions) are written and refined.
How Legislation Is Written
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Executive-Submitted Legislation. Because executives are popularly elected, they are considered to have the mandate of the people. (More on this matter will be discussed in subsequent chapters.) Thus, along with their submission of the legislative question, they have also submitted their proposed solution to the question in the form of a completed bill, which they have directed their office to prepare and finalize. In this system, bills must be short, specific, and accessible, such that members of the public can easily read and interpret them. One possible option that has been enacted in many legislative bodies is to institute a character limit.
Petition-Submitted Legislation. In the case that a proposed question and solution have been submitted via petition, a sortition-selected deliberative assembly (e.g. a “citizens’ assembly”) will be convened. This works by randomly selecting a representative sample of the population, similar to the way that juries are currently selected. The citizens’ assembly is presented with the petition (a “plea”) and is tasked with creating a bill that best matches the intention of the petitioners while still being acceptable to the members of the assembly.
These assemblies are managed in a deliberative, rather than majoritarian, fashion. First, members deliberate and discuss the matter at hand. They have the authority to request or subpoena the input of anyone they believe can assist them in their task, including the petitioners themselves, experts, lawyers and legal assistants, affected parties, and so forth. Any member of the assembly can suggest a draft of the bill, which gets a period of time (e.g. three days) to be considered and discussed. During that period of time, any other member can suggest a new draft, can endorse the existing draft, or can do neither. To allow each draft a reasonable amount of time to be considered, and to prevent one person from monopolizing the discussion, each member of the assembly may have a limit to how many total drafts they’re permitted to submit. A draft is considered final when either all members have endorsed it, or when its consideration period has expired with no new drafts being proposed.
As a failsafe, after a particular number of drafts has been proposed and no consensus has been reached — for example, if a few contrarian members keep suggesting unpopular draft ideas rather than endorse — the body adopts a majoritarian democratic mode of operation and uses the standard method of score voting (discussed in depth in the next chapter) to select the most popular option from among the existing proposed drafts. This draft is then finalized as a completed bill and moves to the next step in the process.
Alternative bills. For a period of time after a legislative question and proposed solution have been submitted, the legislative question is open to the public at large to consider. Further proposed solutions can then be submitted via the same pathways: either through executive decision, or through gathering the required number of petition signatures. In the latter case, another citizens’ assembly will be convened to write a bill in response to this new plea.
Scope. All proposed solutions are submitted within a particular jurisdiction (e.g. city, region, etc.). Proposed solutions must include the “scope” of the law — where and to whom the law applies. Jurisdictions which disagree with the proposed scope, both those who believe they have been wrongly included as well as those who believe they should have been included but weren’t, have the ability to create alternative bills, by either executive decision or petition, which establish the scope according to their own preferences.
For instance, if one city proposes a law, and inhabitants of a nearby city also want to adopt this law, either through mayoral decision or through petition, the city can submit one or more alternative bills that include them in the scope of the decision. In this case, if more than 50% of the cities in a state petition to be added to a bill, it is possible to kick the bill up to the state level, at which point other states can directly petition to be added to the bill, and so forth.
On the other hand, if a state proposes a law that inhabitants of an individual city disagree with, they can propose their own legislation that exempts them from following this law.
Conflicts between legal jurisdictions and their proposed solutions will be discussed in future articles, when we will delve into what a maximally democratic judiciary might look like. For now, let’s continue to follow our legislative question.
Final format. So, once a legislative question has completed its public consideration period, it will take the form of a public referendum. This final referendum will include:
- The legislative question.
- The initial proposed solution, formatted as a concise bill.
- Additional bills that have been submitted within the consideration period, if any.
- The option “Status Quo”, in which no legislation is passed and the laws remain as they are. (Note: the scope of Status Quo is always the set union of all proposed bill scopes — meaning that every jurisdiction that’s included in any of the bills is also automatically a party to status quo)
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Let’s look at an example.
The residents of a small desert town, La Vista, are experiencing rolling blackouts as their energy grid struggles to keep up with the demands of the increasing population. A local activist circulates an official petition:
“Should we build another solar farm in La Vista?
Proposed Solution: Yes, we should build a solar farm in the Lake Shore neighborhood which supplies 400 kWh to the town.”
A citizens’ assembly is formed to translate this plea into a bill. They request the input of the petitioners, of residents of the Lake Shore neighborhood, of solar power experts, and of the local electrical worker trade union. They believe that the request in its current form is somewhat unreasonable, and craft a bill that endorses the creation of a solar farm that supplies 200 kWh of energy to the town. In the scope, they list the affected parties as La Vista residents, as well as members of the electrical worker trade union. (This means that an electrical worker who lives in La Vista will receive two votes come election day if they vote for this bill.)
Meanwhile, residents of the Lake Shore neighborhood are not happy about this development, as they worry that the solar farm will obstruct their beautiful lake views. Thus, they circulate an official petition:
“Yes, we should build a solar farm on the outskirts of La Vista which supplies 400 kWh to the city.”
A new citizens’ assembly is formed to draft this bill, which calls experts and deliberates, finally producing a bill which closely matches this plea. (It’s also estimated to have a higher price tag than the first proposed option, so it includes a small increase in taxes to offset the increased government spending.). The scope on this bill is the same as on the first bill.
Finally, the mayor’s office directly releases a bill that proposes a modest upgrade to the current solar farm. They list only La Vista residents in the scope. Because of this, trade union members could petition for a similar bill that includes them in the scope (so that they get more votes), but this option is so unpopular that they decide not to bother.
In the end, the referendum appears as follows:
Should we build another solar farm in La Vista?
A. Yes, we should build a solar farm in the Lake Shore area which supplies 200 kWh to the city. (scope: La Vista residents, electric worker trade union)
B. Yes, we should build a solar farm on the outskirts of the town which supplies 400 kWh to La Vista. (scope: La Vista residents, electric worker trade union)
C. No, we should modestly upgrade our current solar farm. (scope: La Vista residents)
D. Status Quo (no change) (scope: La Vista residents, electric worker trade union)
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At this point, the proposed legislation is ready to be submitted to a public vote, which will be the subject of the next exciting chapter of this series, How Legislation Is Voted On.