Each: Voting Without Politics
Need for Polling
Polls are not a norm. Unanimous decisions are very common in small groups. People will usually agree to some decisions without much debate, because it is understood that everyone will have his say eventually. Groups work on the principle of reciprocity in human relationships.
When group sizes are large, it becomes humanly impossible to keep track of these implicit favours done by friends in group decisions. By large I means something close to Dunbar’s Number. This is when we start using polls or voting to take decisions based on majority opinion. The good thing about majority voting is that it lets the group take timely decisions instead of indulging in endless debates. The problem on the other hand is that by definition it only represents majority and not everyone. Hope is that everyone has independent decision making capacity and majority is not the same set of people for every decision.
Large groups cannot function when they try to achieve consensus (hence need polls) and small groups can easily function with just consensus because it is easy to remember and repay favours. Smaller groups are always more intimate and fair. Large groups are almost always composed of internal factions, fighting for power.
The key problem seems to be lack of tools to understand, acknowledge and replay favours at scale.
Voting without politics
Each is here to fix the problem of ensuring representation to everyone, over time, in group decisions even when group sizes are large. Each is inspired by market, money and auction design, applied to group decision making. If doing your job well depends upon ensuring trust and avoiding politics in a group of people, Each can help in delivering that value. Each does that by reducing the returns on politics. And it is wonderfully simple.
The main reason for politics in any group is that it offers more than fair returns. Control the majority and control the group decisions. Majority itself is a misnomer because when we have more than two factions, the majority is likely to be less than 50% and actually a minority. If we want group decisions without politics, we need to reduce the returns on politics.
Everyone who doesn't votes get to the keep their vote and use it in the future polls, just like money.
Everyone who votes but his choice is not the winner is returned his vote. It is as if he never voted. He too gets to keep his vote and use it in future polls
If we start treating votes as money, the above two changes to polls ensure that everyone will have his say eventually. Everyone who doesn’t votes or doesn’t votes for the winning option, keeps accumulating votes and will have a larger say in future polls. What this scheme of things ensure is that everyone gets to participate in the group decisions: majority group for majority of the decisions and minority groups for minority of the decisions. In fact, the percentage of decisions taken by any faction in a group is exactly proportional to the voting share of that faction in that group.
Each has one more rule. It is called same cost for every decision. The majority does win the poll, but it needs to pay all the votes. For example: in a group with 100 people, if the winning option got 50 votes, the winning option is short of 50 votes. Every person who voted for the winning option needs to pay one more vote to make the total 100. Each will debit one extra vote from every winner in this case. Some of the winner will see that they have -1 votes now. If the winning option got just 10 votes, the winning option is short of 90 votes. Each winner needs to pay 9 more votes so that the total is 100 votes. Some of the winners will see that they have -9 votes in their voting account.
Nothing special is needed from the users. The app will calculate and adjust the voting balance of each user. If the user doesn't have enough voting balance, the app with give them debt and their voting balance will go negative.
This is a bit complex, but important part of the voting process. This is what ensures that we acknowledge the contribution of others in accepting the majority decision. The winners get the make a group decision today by surrendering their right to future group decisions exactly by the amount they are lacking.
Does this ensures representation for all?
Yes. People with positive voting balance are those who have not got their share of representation yet and people with negative voting balance have already got their share of representation. Over time Each ensures that everyone gets their share of representation in the group decision making. No matter how many internal factions the core group has and what is their voting share, Each ensures that in the long term each faction gets to make decisions proportional to their voting share over time.
The key thing that Each does is simply keeping track of favours at scale. Being part of a group and following its rule is not given. People have the right to leave and form better smaller groups where they are heard and respected. By ensuring that they are heard and their opinions respected at scale is how Each helps in keeping the group together. By reducing the returns on politics, Each ensures that the best strategy for having power to make more group decisions is to care about as many people as possible and not just the minimum majority required as optimal for usual majority voting scenarios.
For lack of a word, let’s call this eachocracy. Group decisions blessed by everyone in the group, not just majority, but over time.
Each is available on play store Each App on Google Play Store and it can be installed as slack app as well.