On Voting, Legislative Complexity, and Legitimacy

Also: Musical Directive Tests, The Future of Gaming, and Writing a Home

This weekend, I voted abroad in the USA for the 2024 South African elections. One of half the world voting this year.

My first time voting abroad. I’m glad that I can. Voting from embassies and missions abroad only happened from 2009. I’m always (fortunately or unfortunately?) thinking about governance and electoral systems.

This time, however, a case brought to the Constitutional Court ruled that independents should also be allowed to stand for parliament (which previously was only made up of political parties and closed lists).

The resulting overhaul was the bare minimum, avoiding creating new constituencies one might see in countries like the USA. Instead, independents can now stand in 9 regions (based on the 9 existing provinces). This required adding an extra ballot, bringing up the total ballots for a national general election to 3. A Regional Ballot (containing parties and independents per region), National Ballot (only parties), and a Provincial Ballot (independents and parties contesting contesting provincial legislatures).

The seats for national parliament are allocated as follows:

1. Using only the Regional Ballot and up to 200 available seats (divided up proportionally per province), independents are seated using calculations of all the votes in the Regional Ballot.

2. Using both Regional Ballots that voted for parties and the National Ballot, the rest of the parliament are seated (eg, if only 5 independents get the necessary votes on the Regional Ballot, then 395 seats are allocated in step 2).

3. A remainder allocation process.

So, voting for independents can mean wasted votes since there’s no additional compensation for seating more than just the independent. Not ideal.

Voters from abroad only get a National Ballot. Thus, give or take a bit, it amounts to “half” a vote. It kind of sucks, but hey, at least I can get to vote from overseas in some form!

Given all this complexity, it’s given me thoughts again on electoral & governance systems and particularly how we might imagine it having to change into the future.

1. Reducing Legislative Complexity in the 21st Century and Beyond

2. Legitimacy & Ritual

3. Interstellar Courts and Legislatures

Reducing Legislative Complexity in the 21st Century

One of the unintended outcomes of digitisation is that it’s made it easier to make more laws (because you aren’t constrained by physical limits) and thus, subsequent complexity.

Arguably, this is good or bad. Good, because a government can enshrine more necessary things (like voting rights, environmental protections, etc) or bad (too much unnecessary complexity and confusion). It might also be that this is all just necessary as civilisation grows. Metaphorically, if you want to build a taller skyscraper, you have to build a stronger foundation.

Regardless, when I think about what humans will have to do when we might become 100+ years old, is regular “garbage collection” maintenance on ourselves. We currently seem to live long enough to not have to worry about the extra mental cruft that accumulates over the years: what we would call our “baggage”. Maybe we live just long enough to exit as a grumpy curmudgeon. But, living longer and being able to enjoy life would necessitate that many of the things we do now, like institutions of marriage, friendships, personality, and interests might require turning a more active lens on it: to once in a while filter, reset, and clean. We don’t know what this will look like, but some changes happening right now might be proto-adjustments. Is Bryan Johnson’s focus on health the future or is polyamory a more sustainable long-term approach to relationships? As

Eli Dourado

writes, increasing complexity is ultimately a problem.

Often, the resource demands of one piece of complexity necessitate more complexity, as when a higher tax rate necessitates new resources to be put into legitimization and coercion. The complexity accumulates as a system. At first, the cost-benefit ratio of this added complexity is very favorable, and the marginal benefits are high. As more complexity is added, the marginal benefits diminish, then go to zero, before turning negative.

Governments that then actively also include processes to re-evaluate itself will likely succeed over those that don’t. This could look like something where governments actively sunset laws that require them to be re-legislated. Or, just more nimble legislatures at different scales of progress.

One option that I enjoy is that different parts of a chamber (like House vs the Senate) act on different timelines which ensure that it both caters to stability and longevity while remaining nimble to change. 6 years vs 2 years is a great system. I’m also a fan of sortition and citizen’s assemblies that act as checks on power of legislatures. For example, if people are unhappy and the choices that they can vote for does not suit them, they can vote for a “people’s chamber” that essentially just uses sortition to select random citizens from the people to fill the legislature. Or, sortition as an extra legislative house that has veto power only. Like jury duty being used in the judiciary, there could be a legislative duty, calling up citizens to serve as a veto chamber. Heck, could even be a legitimate and equal chamber in and of itself, but it might be hampered in that it can take too long and be too complicated to educate people on the legislative process. Alternatively, this “people’s chamber” can sit on committees, but not vote. Thus, taking part as a normal citizen in the legislating process, but not as a voter.

Legitimacy and Ritual

Which brings me to a second point. Adding in systems that allow for flexibility in a legislature could come with the trade-off that make it seem less legitimate. When we’re used to ritualistic friction, removing it for the sake of ease can feel like it’s not real, or true. There’s a certain gravitas to the process of legislating that makes it more actionable: the conversation, the media, the negotiation, the voting (both for the chamber and inside the chamber) all are a necessary part of legitimising laws. You know, I think randomness is such a great tool when done correctly, but it ultimately suffers from a lack of feeling legitimate. Most people don’t even understand why if you poll a 1500 people (that’s representative), it’s actually a good estimate for results. Or unintuitive outcomes such as the fact that if you do Chaumian random sample voting, you only need to poll ~16,587 for 900 million people: the ballpark size of the voter roll for the largest democracy in the world, India.

It’s also why in general, people prefer paper ballots in some jurisdictions (the security trade-offs between paper and digital is quite complicated). Paper ballots *feel* more legitimate as much as buying a vinyl makes you connect more to the music than just streaming it on Spotify. There’s a ritual to it.

I think much of the discontent around current democracies is that we don’t sometimes feel like our vote matters. That is in part due to electoral systems themselves, but there’s a disconnect in the process. A part of reducing this disconnect can come from merely adding more ritual to the process (without disenfranchising voters). Like, dress up voting stations with the necessary flair and importance of the act. Not just some random booth in a school hall. The voting process itself is so damn important, but it always feels like an anti-climax. Celebrate it. Treat voters with the respect they deserve.

The third and final thought I sometimes think about is: how will we build governance systems when bandwidth across stars becomes an issue? Do we employ blockchain courts as solar intermediaries? Galactic? While I’m a sucker for the Galactic Senate scenes in Star Wars, there’s just no way it will actually look like that. I’ll leave this one for a future short story. ;)

To the South Africans voting on the 29th May. Good luck, and remember the importance of it. 30 years into a democracy, it becomes even more important to cherish it.

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Bonus Content!

I recently finished reading the Liveship Traders series from Robin Hobb. I started reading it when I was in high school, but didn’t finish it. Coming back to it as an adult, I really enjoyed it. It’s also interesting what resonates with me now vs what resonated back then. I still enjoy political dramas with expansive casts against interesting backdrops. This kind of concludes my recent pirate media era. I did want to get more into One Piece, but I’m not enjoying the manga as much as I did the Netflix series. Thinking I should maybe watch the One Piece tv show. Will see.

Musical Turing Test and GPT4-o

“What would it take for a machine to jam?”

I enjoyed Adam’s take on a particular form of Turing test → not just output, but a “directive” test. In other words, playing with AI as one would jam with other musicians.

Some of the most fun I’ve had playing music has been when you - as they say in jazz - “find the pocket”. That connection, that conversation with other musicians as you improvise, find grooves, and try to swerve a song not unlike a murmuration, is a joy.

I kind of think that Adam is right in that, a part of that appeal comes from it being a specific conversation. We’ll probably be able to jam with machines, and heck, this week GTP4-o demo’ed AIs trying to (badly) sing together.

But, jamming is much as about the process than the music coming out of it. It reminds me of my article:

We will have conversations with AIs. But, we will also still have conversations with your friends, family, colleagues, collaborators, and lovers. The point of a jam is the music and for that, I look forward to jamming with AI. But, I also want to jam with people as a way to have a conversation.

It did make me wonder though. Music has a “live” component to it. The only “live” writing I can think of, is freestyle rap? As LLM’s insert themselves more into our world, will we see innovations in writing-as-a-process?

Alice Munro on Writing

Speaking of writing. Alice Munro passed away this week. How she thinks about stories is really great.

A story is not like a road to follow… it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.

This is what writing stories also feels like. It feels like I’m visiting friends and living in the world with them.

Future of Gaming

I love a good shitpost. Web3 + Gaming. It’s the future. Every shot onchain.

Metsä

A friend and collaborator recently released a new EP and thoroughly enjoying it!

We previously collabed on a piece for my debut novel, Hope Runners. I contributed some of the music.

That’s it for this week folks. Hope you get to enjoy a nice sunset!

Simon