Delegative Democracy

Bryan Ford

Similar/related proposals:

A Proposal for Direct Democracy Based on a Non-Binding Proxy System by James Green-Armytage: a proposal along similar lines to the "delegative democracy" draft above, particularly oriented more toward improving existing direct democracy practices.
Candidate Proxy Methods by Forest Simmons: A brief proposal similar to "delegative voting" above for single-seat elections, in which all candidates meet after the main, popular election and act as proxies in an "Election Completion Convention" to determine the final winner.
Liquid Democracy: Another very similar proposal. See also:
- Liquid Democracy: When, not If
- Liquid Democracy at emacswiki.org
Two alternative voting system suggestions by Mike Ossipoff, one of which basically amounts to delegative voting or candidate proxy.
A Model for Electronic Democracy, a similar idea by Rob Lanphier.

Existing software that implements something like delegative democracy:

NetConferencePlus: collaboration software that includes support for "Delegated Voting"
VeniVidiVoti: an experimental Wiki-like engine based on voting with delegation.

Other interesting ideas:

Proposals involving representative bodies with weighted seats (seats with unequal voting power):
- Interactive Representation: A variation of Single Transferrable Vote where excess votes of seat winners are not transferred but instead affect the winner's voting power on the council.
- Weighted Delegate Councils by Barney Rehm: A similar variation of STV with weighted council seats.
- Direct Representation: A more ambitious proposed variation of STV, further along the lines of interactive representation, geared toward giving voters exceptionally broad choice of candidates in electing large weighted councils.
Local Balance Representation: A scheme to encourages parties to form across ethnic boundaries and hence help to avoid civil wars in highly volatile regions.
Guarding the Instant Runoff movement by Donald Davison: An interesting and entertaining discussion of "Top Methods" versus "Bottom Methods", particularly Instant Runoff versus Approval Voting.

Useful electoral system sites: