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Is quadratic voting being significantly used anywhere in the world right now? Especially in any type of political system or social structure (beyond blockchains)?

Julius Hamilton
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  • Any shareholder meeting maybe? – NoDataDumpNoContribution Feb 04 '24 at 20:45
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    "He believed the two main problems of the majority-rule model are that it doesn't always advance the public good and it weakens democracy." The majority winning weakens democracy? To the waste dump, please. – ccprog Feb 04 '24 at 21:52
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    You forgot the following paragraphs: "Historically, to discourage political participation of minorities, the majority doesn't hesitate to set legal or physical barriers. As a result, this success of a temporary election is causing democratic institutions to weaken around the world. To combat this, Weyl developed the quadratic voting model and its application to democratic politics. The model theoretically optimizes social welfare by allowing everyone the chance to vote equally on a proposal as well as giving the minority the opportunity to buy more votes to level out the playing field." – Obie 2.0 Feb 05 '24 at 10:12
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    One might be skeptical that quadratic voting would actually reduce these issues, as I am, but it's not as facially contradictory as you make it sound. The idea seems to be that, for instance, a majority of Christians in a country might mildly like to make it harder for people of other religions to participate in politics, whereas a minority of Muslims, Hindus, Jews and so might strongly want to prevent such barriers from existing. – Obie 2.0 Feb 05 '24 at 10:16
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    So if everyone votes in a simple majority system on (for instance) whether non-Christians should have to pay a poll tax, the poll tax will always win. It does not cost the Christians anything. But if everyone has 10 votes, the non-Christians spend 9 of their 10 voting against the poll tax—whereas the Christians, who only care a little, spend one each and spend the rest voting on abortion and things like that. So in that sense, democracy is strengthened, because minorities can defeat measures aimed at stifling their participation. – Obie 2.0 Feb 05 '24 at 10:19
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    Whether it is a good solution is another question. It would probably reduce overt political attempts to disenfranchise minorities, which could usually be defeated by organization of those minorities, but at the expense of reducing democracy in other areas: basically, any areas that some reasonably large group does not view as an existential threat to their lives or political rights. For instance, if I strongly want polonium to be legal for purchase, but most people mildly want it to be illegal, my view would probably win out under this system. – Obie 2.0 Feb 05 '24 at 10:26
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    @ccprog Yes, majority rule is undemocratic and leads to political violence and war: http://leastevil.blogspot.com/2012/03/tyranny-of-majority-weak-preferences.html Constitutions are meant to prevent majority tyranny, and better consensus-based voting systems alleviate it, too. – endolith Feb 05 '24 at 15:13
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    @endolith There are certainly valid issues that can be raised with majority rule and lots of good reasons to use a constitutional democratic republic instead of pure majority rule, but it's pretty difficult to reasonably argue that majority rule is undemocratic. It might quickly devolve into something that isn't democratic, but majority rule is itself democratic pretty much by definition. – reirab Feb 05 '24 at 23:32
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    @reirab: I agree: majority rule is "democratic" by definition. Of course, this doesn't mean that it's necessarily good, or even that it's utilitarian, since it's possible for the majority decision to impose negative utility on the losing side, as in the idiom "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." – dan04 Feb 05 '24 at 23:34
  • There's something like this in Sid Meier's Civilization VI, where you can "buy" extra votes on a World Congress resolution with a special resource called "diplomatic favor". – dan04 Feb 05 '24 at 23:40
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    @dan04 haha, yes, I was thinking the same thing. It's actually exactly this, complete with the quadratic costs. – reirab Feb 05 '24 at 23:48
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    Doesn't the Wikipedia page you linked to already give examples? – user103496 Feb 06 '24 at 03:38
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    Sorry but I had the roll the edit back. It made it into a different question. – Julius Hamilton Feb 06 '24 at 04:39
  • @reirab I don't agree. Democracy is about electing the best representative of the voters, and majority rule does not do that. They are commonly confused with each other, because of two-party systems, but they are not the same thing. – endolith Feb 06 '24 at 16:01
  • @endolith If you're trying to argue that first-past-the-post voting systems are undemocratic, then I would be inclined to agree. However, what makes those undemocratic is precisely that they are not majority rule. That is, no majority is required for a candidate to win (nor is one required to determine who even appears on the ballot.) To quote Merriam-Webster's dictionary, though, 'democracy' just means "government by the people; especially: rule of the majority." So, actual majority rule (not first-past-the-post) is 'democratic' by definition (though it does suffer other problems.) – reirab Feb 06 '24 at 18:04
  • @reirab No, I'm saying that majority rule is incorrectly perceived to be a synonym of democracy because FPTP devolves into a two-party system, in which the majority-supported candidate is considered to be the rightful winner. – endolith Feb 06 '24 at 20:06
  • @user103496: in fact, isn't the answer below almost entirely a reproduction of those wikipedia examples?! It's not entirely clear to me if the OP read those, but thought they were past examples and wants a "currently active" one, or what... Anyhow deciding whether some city in Brazil or a European (rather obscure) political party is "the most signficant" seems rather opinion-based. – the gods from engineering Feb 07 '24 at 02:51

2 Answers2

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Colorado's Recently Terminated Experiment

Quadratic voting has been used for limited matters (setting budget agenda priorities) by Democrats in Colorado's state legislature since 2019. In Colorado, the Democrats currently have a two-thirds majority in the state house and are just one seat short of a two-thirds majority in the state senate.

A Colorado judge ruled against this practice in early January of this year (2024), because the internal caucus voting process was anonymous and secret, contrary to state constitutional requirements. As explained at this link:

Democratic leaders argued the process wasn’t a true vote, but rather that its outcome was a data point that members considered as they decided how to spend limited state money. While the unofficial vote was secret, they contended it was more representative than the prior practice in which key members of the legislative majority set funding priorities without broader input.

But that secrecy is what Denver District Court Judge David H. Goldberg took issue with, even while agreeing that the tool could be valuable for figuring out lawmakers’ broad interests quickly.

“Simply put, ranking a bill and emphasizing the importance of a bill evidences that legislator’s mental impressions, including strategic considerations, trading relationships, and sympathetic ideologies with other legislators,” Goldberg wrote. “These considerations may conflict or be consonant with a position that the legislator has taken with his or her constituents. The public has the right to know.”

This ruling came immediately prior to the 2024 legislative session (Colorado state legislature meets for the first 120 days of each year).

Three Other Examples

Wikipedia also notes examples of (1) one pan-European political party (Volt Germany) to priorities issues for its party platform on a one time basis at its second party Congress, (2) a city council in Brazil (to prioritize issues annually), and (3) a government sponsored, non-binding, online citizens input portal for budget issues in Taiwan.

ohwilleke
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Taiwan's annual Presidential Hackathon has used Quadratic Voting to judge contestants since 2019.

From GovInsider.Asia's interview with Digital Minister Audrey Tang:

If you were to share one piece of advice that you learned in 2019, what would it be? Quadratic Voting (QV) works really well. In this year’s Presidential Hackathon, we introduced QV: Each participant received 99 points, and voting for proposals required 1 point for 1 vote, 4 points for 2 votes, 9 points for 3 votes, and so on. Thus, the points spent are equal to the square of the total votes. The traditional one-person-one-vote design often fails to effectively reflect the strength of opinions. In QV, the more concentrated the votes, the more points must be spent, so that the effect caused by each vote is proportional to the cost for each additional vote. This avoids vote rigging, voiding, or other behavior that hides a genuine intention.

Quadratic voting was still used in the latest June 2023 Hackathon: See 2023 Quadratic Voting Results.

I believe it will also be used in 2024 and so this is a "currently active organization" that uses quadratic voting.

user103496
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