Better Voter Turnout With Catch-22

[RageAgainstVoid]

Regardless of the question whether our current democracy is the be-all-end-all system or not, I think we can agree that it works truest to its sense when there is as good a voter turnout as possible to legitimate the government.

Now, the problem is that democracy needs active participation on one hand, and on the other cannot really force people to participate if we don't want to endanger important principles, which means people are supposed to see the virtue and greater benefit of doing so by themselves to be motivated enough to do so, which, as we can see on votes every four years, is too blue eyed idealistic to expect: if you want people to do something you need to give them a direct and obvious incentive. We can waste time all day discussing that this shouldn't be and how it should be, but in the end it's just how it is: people have their personal lives full of problems, and often the least they want is additional problems, it's not only an egoistical thing, it's about survival in an overly problematic world.

So the question is how can we motivate people to participate in votes, communicate to them that this is a problem worth attention, without relying on convincing by idealism. And here is a possible solution: all too often politics is empty handed, let's change that for once, to really catch everyone's attention:

Every month a citizen pays VoterTurnout-Tax, let's call that tax Catch-22, for example 22 dollars a month.

Every four years, every citizen that participates in the votes gets the accumulated sum of his paid catch-22 back, which would be little bit over 1000$ dollars in our example. And thus Vote Day becomes Payback Day, this time verbatim.

But there is even more: since we don't want to make that tax look all draconian, but rather have it be something people perceive as advantage, there is a variable bonus on that payback sum. How big that bonus is depends on the prosperity of the state, and is asserted and financed through taking a certain percentage of all other taxes that have something to do with economy, like 1% of all yearly trade or something and maybe other things or just of the gross national product, to distribute splits of that reserved amount evenly as bonus to all voters. Though not only thinking economically may increase that bonus directly, even social improvements may yield better money indirectly, it's about the overall prosperity of the nation, and the calculation of the bonus should somehow reflect that, a measurement citizens directly comprehend, that they have a real stake in the success of the state they live in.

So the Catch-22 tax behaves more like a financial investment than actual tax. People actually gain from paying it, and also gain from having an interest in a well run state, so to get better return on investment they are interested in having the best people in office. But since this is just an added bonus, the worst a citizen can get back on voteday is the straight sum of what he payed.

So the starting formula is: VotePayout = (MonthsToNextVote * Catch-22-TaxFee) + Bonus

But even that is not all:
To engage the problem that there are people who just can't afford to even pay this catch-22, or not regularly, or don't have regular jobs but rather seasonal or as it comes otherwise, and we shouldn't go push people around with legal action to force them paying in manually what was due, and also rather save the state the costly organizational overhead caused by that, we rather link the bonus PayOut to the regular Catch-22 PayIn. So as soon as someone is registered to work, the tax is automatically taken in like any other, and if not then not, there is simply less for him to be payed back to, but he also gets a smaller share of bonus. This makes things all around more relaxed, but still gets done what this is about.

So the actual formula is:
1: SumOfAllRegularCatch-22-Taxfee = MonthsToNextVote * Catch-22-TaxFee
2: SumOfAllActualPayIn = Catch-22-TaxFee * MonthsActuallyPayed
3: VotePayout = SumOfAllActualPayIn + (SumOfAllActualPayIn / SumOfAllRegularCatch-22-Taxfee) * Bonus

This means, for example, that if your taxes somehow happen to pay in just 37% of the officially due catch-22 TaxFees up to the next voteday, you get that back, but you also get only 37% of the bonus.

Every registered citizen by default has an automatically generated official bank account with the state, On vote day, as soon as his vote is registered, the citizen gets the money payed on that as discussed above.

But what happens with the money of those who still don't vote; we can either be really nice or really reinforcing:

Version 1:
Either the money is always straight payed back on vote-day, but differentiates alone on whether the bonus is payed out or not by having registered the vote or not. That's the friendly version.

Version 2:
Not voting means not seeing any of that catch-22-tax-money payed back at all. More than 1000$ every four years is something not many will ignore. And even better, the money of those who didn't vote can be put into the bonus of everyone else who did vote. Voting is a duty for having the privilege of living in that state, and with this system we can be strict about that without using force, and really reward those who are true to their duty. It really drives the point home and gets people up their lazy asses.

Anyway, that's what came to mind.

So vote and Take the Money!


edit: made the last formula three parts to make it clearer.

[Dr.Willy]

So basically ... mandatory state shares with 4-year-dividend?

[RageAgainstVoid]

Actually, I'd rather interpret it more directly as good old savings practice, the amazing wonders of putting just a little bit money aside on regular habit and let it moderately grow on sane interest rate over some time, incredible concept I know, and behold this works pretty well too, gives calmer sleep, and something to look forward to, a valuable lesson in this credits and speculation crazy world. Super pro tip: spend what you have on what you can afford, not what you don' t on what you can't. And just think, that system teaches democracy and economic sanity in one go!

May also be a nice little economy boost injection on vote period, as there will be sure a lot who spend it at once on something bigger, and overall should make democracy a lot more likable, and god knows it needs some more love these days.

[Ensabahnur]

I like this idea.

[Myth]

I have to say I don't particularly agree with this. Yes, voter turn-out in democratic states is almost always disappointing. However, implementing some sort of tax and pay-back system will bring people to the polls just for the sake of getting their money back. I can see people just marking off boxes for sheer sake of getting the ballot filled out and their government check in their hands. It's not going to encourage or require anyone to actually learn anything about the people or referendum or whatever that they are voting for. Instead of small groups of ignorant people voting, you'll have ignorance en masse. While it's true more people may be voting, I don't see how this improves the state overall. Perhaps RAV might explain?

[Zeuter]

How about blank votes?

[Ensabahnur]

I have to say I don't particularly agree with this. Yes, voter turn-out in democratic states is almost always disappointing. However, implementing some sort of tax and pay-back system will bring people to the polls just for the sake of getting their money back. I can see people just marking off boxes for sheer sake of getting the ballot filled out and their government check in their hands. It's not going to encourage or require anyone to actually learn anything about the people or referendum or whatever that they are voting for. Instead of small groups of ignorant people voting, you'll have ignorance en masse. While it's true more people may be voting, I don't see how this improves the state overall. Perhaps RAV might explain?

Good point.

[Kaz]

Countries like France have mandatory voting and they don't seem to have that problem Myth

[Ensabahnur]

Or we could just remove Senators, Congress, etc.. and just allow everyone to vote on all issues themselves from the privacy of the home over the Internet.

[Half + Seven]

I think we can agree that it works truest to its sense when there is as good a voter turnout as possible to legitimate the government.

But that is not the case, we don't all agree. Our founding father's certainly didn't when writing the framework for what would become our government. Our original two party system was built to combat this directly. I think Adam's called it the "transient passions of the uneducated voter". I think it is far too grand an assumption to say high turnout is a necessarily good thing . Look at California and the gay marriage. High turnout lead to the wrong result. The rest of the post requires me to take this for granted which I don't. Therefore it's an overly complex way to solve a "problem" I don't think exists.

[RageAgainstVoid]

But that is not the case, we don't all agree...I think it is far too grand an assumption to say high turnout is a necessarily good thing.

Do you not see why I wrote "truest to its sense ... legitimate", instead of "good thing"? Reflect on that, this is a difference not small, made because I already foresaw your point. It is the "right thing", it may be a "good thing". What we should strife to do is the right that is made good, not the wrong that hopefully turns out good. As demonstrated on your next point:

High turnout lead to the wrong result.

Low turnout lead to the wrong result, it is the low turnouts that enables extremists to gain disproportional weight in representation by mobilizing latent fringe groups while counting on the disinterest of a moderate mainstream. What you are suggesting is that we should hope radicals are too lazy to go vote, when it is radicals that have always been the most active voters, the most dedicated users of the system for an agenda, while the mass of moderates are often distracted by finer things in life or feel disappointed, fed-up and give up on the system, and it is those we want to reach. It has always been in times of low mainstream turnout that high fringe group turnout made for so much trouble. The problem is that the special interest groups are far easier to systematically mobilize on minimum resources and with average personal because they draw on established symbolism that is known to easily stir their target clientel's singular ideology, while the much more varied and broad mainstream reacts only to tremendous investments and "once in a life-time" stars to counteract these mischievous influences.

The higher mainstream turn-out, the less relevant the spikes in radicals turn-outs. You can't run from these spikes, but you can soften their effect by creating a better average with more participants. Doing wrong on the foundations of democratic legitimacy in an ill-conceived hope that it is "good for how things will turn out" because of the "untrustworthy stupid masses" makes on more occasions for worse than better, because really broad masses are in fact more stable and trustworthy in outcome than gambling for a good group consistency of minority votership, and I'm pretty sure this can be statistically proven.

And even if high mainstream turnout would once happen to be worse in judgment, you have a much deeper problem with society that needs to be publicly exposed, discussed and attended quickly, instead of hiding the dirt under the carpet of silence, and that is what you really do: by using the democratic system itself to engage a problem of public opinion, you shift a problem away from society's discourse to a place where it does not belong, where it is out of sight and cannot be properly handled, brooding unattended, eventually coming back to haunt you some day a hundred fold. Instead of making unwelcome opinions a problem of democracy, you should make it a problem of education and campaigning to correct the course for good. But for that you need a good idea of what opinions really are in wide circulation, hence we use elections as representative opinion polls, instead of as unrepresentative opinion suppression. Therefore:

Therefore it's an overly complex way to solve a "problem" I don't think exists.

You never "solved" the problem that you deny to exist, although it bites you again and again, and is in fact hotly discussed by experts as one of the most urgent matters to democracy today. The democratic system of the "founding fathers" is not the be all end all, it needs to adapt its mechanic with the flow of time, change of social circumstances, technological possibilities and risen needs; you build on the past, not obey to it. The proposed system is not even complex, and it can run mostly automated once set in place.

And neither do I have concerns about people "just voting for the money", because most people actually do exactly that already anyway if you think about it, and that's not necessarily bad, since money is simply used as easy to comprehend measurement of how well a complex world is run, and this system just draws on that established perception and uses it--specifically with the bonus and how that translates--in favor of the people.

[Half + Seven]

You assume we all agree, we do not. The rest is unnecessary.

If you just wanted to artificially increase voting they're are much easier ways to do it (hence the complex comment). You could just require people to vote, like in France as previously mentioned.

[RageAgainstVoid]

You assume we all agree, we do not. The rest is unnecessary.

I already showed that you disagree on something I haven't said, even now you don't understand, and in your sweepingly dismissive conduct I begin to believe you don't want to understand, you are fixated on the idea that you disagree.

artificially

Democracy is entirely artificial in every way to begin with, it is pointless to worry about that now. What we should worry about is improving that conceptual construct because of obvious shortcomings discussed detailed in that which you dismiss.

(hence the complex comment).

The "complex comment" was to engage your rebuttal that has less to do with the workings of the proposed system change but with the trappings of the current system. It is an all too common trick to spout simple, short and catchy falsehood, and dismiss correcting in-depth explanations necessary to really understand the circumstance as "too complex" so to use that label as if that was a valid argument by itself.

they're are much easier ways to do it. You could just require people to vote, like in France as previously mentioned.

The proposed system is much more in spirit of democracy. It still leaves choice and does not hunt and punish people in legal action for doing mistakes; the people can only blame themselves for missing a lucrative opportunity, that is a lesson worth more. Beyond that, the system should provide for various synergistic effects, it's not an one trick pony. Furthermore, the maintenance of law based obligations is by far more complex, costly, messy than this system that runs almost by itself; it is easier in every way.

[Half + Seven]

I already showed that you disagree on something I haven't said

I think we can agree that it works truest to its sense when there is as good a voter turnout as possible to legitimate the government.

I disagree. I believe YOU think it works truest to it's sense blah blah blah, but that doesn't make it so. I won't bother with my opinions any further. If all you want is a simple way to ensure higher turnout your system is one of the worst I could imagine.

[RageAgainstVoid]

That democracy, the legitimization of rulers by the people, works truest to its sense when elections take into account all the people that are ruled by that leader, is nothing to disagree about with me, it is established fact of idea, so that you disagree with the world. The premise of what I proposed is the right thing to do in spirit of an idea that was created to supersede the older idea of oppression legitimized by a greater power unrelated to the people ruled, be it god or be it another people. So that with voting you give up part of your personal power to entrust a ruler with it--hence the power of a democratic ruler is the aggregation of these individual powers. But if you don't vote, you've not really taken part in an accepted process that determines who is entrusted to represent you, yet are still ruled legitimized on base of that, thus the sense of democracy is undermined.
This is the context hinted to by the words I used.

Perhaps you felt that at some point, which is why you started altering reality by laying words into my mouth, like "good thing", so you have something to disagree about with me personally, but in doing so you did not disarm the greater premise as you pretend to have done in your effort to simply dismiss all further discussion, thus I took my time for you to engage concern proper.

I won't bother with my opinions any further.

See, you've never bothered. Your opinions are "blah blah blah" and unreflected catch phrases, not investigative effort.

If all you want

What I wanted was an interesting spectrum in discussion on the matter, not mischievous rhetoric disguised as argumentation.

one of the worst I could imagine

Seeing how abysmal you've performed up to now, you disqualified your imagination.

[GraveI]

Studies show that countries with mandatory voting have highter percentage of invalid votes. The best way to get higher voting turnout is by changing voting system to variants of proportional representantion and do away with pre-registration.

[RageAgainstVoid]

The question then is whether the rise in invalid votes cancels out the rise in valid votes.

Furthermore, likely those studies compare traditional methods of increasing turn-out, not this one in particular. When reading them, have you thought about how their findings would relate to this case here, or if they are applicible at all? For example, in other methods, as long as you just voted, an invalid vote may have about no consequence for you, so you don't really care, but with this here an invalid vote would mean no money back. How do you think people would react to that mechanic here, compared to those in the study? Likely very differently, likely they'd be a lot more careful about their vote's validity.

Of course then you could question whether an invalid vote is a form of valid protest in a free society. But it isn't valid in terms of a functional democracy, since any form of higher organization needs to reduce impractical freedom to practical choice, and thus the valid form of protest there is shifting vote to another party, especially supporting a small special-interest upstart party. Which, in systems of proportional representation, is much more effective for protest than forms of non-participation anyway: In Germany, this year a new party was up to vote, the Pirate Party, that stands for privacy, freedom and balanced interests on the electronic frontiers. Even though it is their very first time being up for vote, with about no funding and hardly any structure, they instantly gained 3% out of nothing, enough for a first take to make the big parties wake up on that topic, so that suddenly they all modified their internet policies a bit friendlier in an effort to stop future voter exodus. As you can see, supporting smaller special-interest parties is more conclusive in protesting policies than invalid votes.

Many variants of proportional representation are already widely used through-out Europe, including Germany, and from those non-mandatory I know, some first-hand, despite the good it does, turn-outs still decline down to all time lows, so by plain experience this seems to not do much either for that, and why should it, people are fed up mainly with politics not the voting system, or at least they can't distinguish between them, so what by mere it should improve their motivation beyond what has been. Independently of that, this proposal here does provide very clear motivation and may be the only one to practically ensure near 99% turnouts, what other method has anywhere near this degree of effectivity on comparatively that low maintenance?

Last but not least, proportional representation in practice has two sides, and as it.. err turns out.. one of those sides is not sufficiently proportional in representation:
On one hand it is meant to have a more fluid representation of the people's will
But on the other, of what people? The problem is that while the politics are more representational of the people voting, the people voting are still not very representational of the nation's people at large:

For example, in Germany we have the problem that mostly old people in pension go vote and young people just don't and there is nothing you can do about that with common approaches, no adaption of our proportional representation, no trendy campaign, no moral scolding, nothing, because they simply have no interest, they feel there is nothing in for them, although time and time again the seniors manage to be exceedingly oppressive on the young in many an important topic, but the young are simply too stupid or too distracted to notice, simply because they are young. Thus in turn for politicians there is nothing in for them to cater to those interests, even worse, the interest of the young and old are mostly directly conflicting, supporting one means annoying the other, but since more often than not, annoying the young doesn't matter for political power as they don't give any, politics get exceedingly one-sided, up to blatantly aggressive against the young to gain favor with other groups.

Disproportional voter-turnout is the limit of even proportional representation, and this limit has become back-breaking.

[Kaz]

[GraveI]

One interesting thing I did come across when I was looking up the info on invalid votes (for hard numbers I referenced the IPU databases found at www.ipu.org), is that France, a country with mandatory voting, still only had 60% voter turnout in relation to total able-voter populations, very similar to Canada's. So, if voting is mandatory, why is their turnout just as abysmally low as ours?

I do find this a fascinating idea.

[RageAgainstVoid]

One interesting thing I did come across when I was looking up the info on invalid votes (for hard numbers I referenced the IPU databases found at http://www.ipu.org), is that France, a country with mandatory voting, still only had 60% voter turnout in relation to total able-voter populations, very similar to Canada's. So, if voting is mandatory, why is their turnout just as abysmally low as ours?

Interesting. Since I'm not that much invested in local issues there, I can't give a definite answer to that, but I have a suspicion on a higher level that you can decide on how well it applies there.

The trouble with enforced law-based mandatory voting is that it is costly organization hell, is not so much in sync with the overall vibe of democracy, and ignores the shady reality of people.

At first quite a few people will always be able to somehow duck out of what they perceive as oppressive obligation, use exception provisions with various excuses and so on, then more will dare, and once you have 40% of your nation's people refusing to participate, where do you draw the line? Do you really want to criminalize 40% of your people? Wage legal war on all of them? Even if you wanted, can you? Do you make a harsh example on few of them to scare the rest before things come to that? Did this work in file-sharing cases? Eventually, even purely technical, that many people are almost impossible to handle, completely clogging down the legal system stealing time for much more important matters, so that the individual perpetrator hides in the overwhelming mass of perpetrators. And when you start making your own people your enemy like that, democracy has become a failure all the same. Eventually the question looms, is this how we want things to end up with being that strict?

So what happens in normal day business is the same as with people crossing at red the street, and some such small-fry delicts: although written law forbids it, persecution becomes very flexible by principle of bagatelle, for soft-handed sanity of the system.

But from that point on, the reality of this "mandatory" voting has become as voluntary as the non-mandatory. And while "not crossing street on red" as written law is still important for deciding faults and persecution on worst-case accidents--keeping strain on the legal system down to these critical incidents only--what kind of worst-case accident can be used for issuing legitimate investigation and eventual persecuting of your people for faults on "gone bad"-elections? What does this mean, that the election didn't turn out.. what it should have been? While a traffic accident is defined a clearly bad event by everyone's common standard, can election results be as universally judged like that? Thinking all this, suddenly mandatory vote has become completely worthless even as written law.

But the interesting twist with this system here is that it is only semi-mandatory:
It is not mandatory by intimidating threat, but by irresistible temptation.

If you don't vote the system simply tells you: "Oh so you don't like money? Fine by me, the others will like your money as bonus all the better.", and that's it, no repercussions, just your own stupidity for missing out on one freaking thousand dollars for a simple vote, and since you are there anyway to also shape politics more to your interest.

This situation is unlike any other mandatory system out there, so that their success is not really telling of its.

You could perhaps field that some people will find other ways to somehow abuse it, but I believe the way it is setup, how people's own money is payed in via tax-account to be pay-out etc, there's a lot of safety and I'm confident most problems can be handled through minor adjustments. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be much better in its end purpose than what we have now, on a manageable amount of noise in the means.

One thing I want to add though: I don't guarantee perfect salvation on all things democracy, there sure will stay a lot of other problems, some of which may never be really solved, but we should at least try to get the foundations somewhat firm, and the least I can say is that the proposal here is worth a try, no one could convincingly argue that it's not, and let's be honest: democracy is one big dirty sloppy noisy construction site in progress, it's not like we put paradise on risk, so we might as well try making ourselves more comfortable in that hell.

[GraveI]

Using this system, voting remains anonymous yes?

How do you then determine whether or not someone is contributing a valid vote, and withhold their money if their vote is indeed invalid?

[RageAgainstVoid]

This is an astute observation and so far the most potent counter.

Although some part of me has this little tendency to question paranoid privacy concerns, I also agree that anonymity in the voting process is a good achievement bought with blood and we shouldn't arbitrarily sacrifice it so quickly.

This system builds upon modern capabilities that earlier generations had not, to engage modern problems they may have had not that bad either.

And do you not also think how ridiculous it is in this day and age that it is still possible to enter an invalid vote as of mistake?

A solution to this is excluding the human factor in assisting the vote process, be it mistakes or bias, with computer assisted voting on neutral voting machines. The voter enters the cabin, the machine identifies the voter and guides the voting process, registering only a valid vote, and informing the voter clearly about success, in case of which it marks the voter as "voted" in the database for unlocking the money and denying multiple votes on same name, but without associating his actual choice in vote to his name.

And this solution is also the greatest point of vulnerability, because as long as there are humans you cannot for sure exclude the human factor and its ambition for personal gains; in theory it sounds good enough, but I admit that I cannot dismiss concerns of security breaches for manipulation or privacy leaks. I can say that even in the old manual methods there have been plenty manipulations and other problems in elections all the time too, yet I also still admit that machine assistance can make manipulation more sweeping and easier and less obvious; or maybe the old and the new process trade different problems and vulnerabilities, and it is on us to decide which of them we rather wrestle with.

But what you point to is a valid problem, the system stands or falls by its concrete implementation.

I do ask myself if electronic innovation of the voting process is not inevitable anyway; for how long will we want to hold on to paper ballots? There will come the point where it feels too archaic and unacceptable, independently of this system, but since we are there then anyway..

[GraveI]

I've actually been mulling over this a fair bit even still...

Statistically speaking, assuming a known distribution, you barely need 1000 or 2000 people to get a very acceptable confidence interval; at 1% voter turnout the results of an election would be very close to 100% turnout.

One of the essentials of democratic freedom means the right to choose not to vote.

You can spin it however you like; I think there will be two main arguments against it: 1) Increased taxation.
2) Decreased freedom.

Regardless of what other plans you try to implement to evade those two arguments (such as the bonus), when it comes right down to it, those are two very significant drawbacks to your plan. And whatever strategies you use to try offset those two will be completely ineffective unless you change the core of the plan. Because whatever changes you make, unless you get rid of the money-comes-off-the-paycheck-to-come-back-after-voting element, those two arguments are completely justified.