Intro to enacting policies

Project Funds

Empower Everyone.

Setting budgets.
to voting tasks and voting systems

Fair-Share Voting™ empowers everyone to help select projects.

Humor 6 for politicians: Who said, “We have always known that heedless
self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.”
1) FDR, 2) Ronald Reagan, 3) Vladimir Putin, 4) Tom DeLay ?
 

HOT!  The presentation about Fair-Share Voting
from the 2012 Participatory Budgeting Conference!
English: Open Office slide show, Printout (PDF).
Español: Open Office diapositivas, impresora.
中国版 Chinese: Open Office 幻灯片, 打印.

Budget Failures and Tragedies

All democracies now recognize the minority citizen's right to vote․ And most recognize the minority voter's right to representation.  But even with Fair Representation, only the majority may allocate funds.  The needs of the minority parties are often ignored or underfunded.  For many interest groups, winning seats does not lead to power.

Free-rider and poison-pill amendments occur, as in policy decisions.  Such scams waste the taxpayers' money, their potential benefits from a public good, and their respect for government in general.  The first items on the agenda may use so much money that none is left for later items.  So the sequence of decisions is often crucial to an item's chances.  Better rules let all items have a fair chance.

These failures lead to thousands of personal tragedies when they weaken public health and safety or cut a child's chances for a good education.

 

A project's funding may rise or fall abruptly when the majority shifts from one group to another.  Administrators cannot manage efficiently on such a budget roller-coaster. 
Texas has a colossal example:

The Super-Conducting Super Collider was a hotly debated project in the 1980s.  This effort to build the world's largest cyclotron was supported by a majority of Congress for a few years – then terminated.  The only things left were partial plans and a huge, “billion-dollar hole in the ground”.

Enthusiasts might be more careful about starting projects if they could not spend the opposition's share the budget.  And they should have the power finish their projects with their own share the budget.

A Democratic Solution

Better allocation methods are now available.
The tally is tedious but the work to mark a ballot is easy:
Simply rank or grade the proposed projects:
“These are A plus efficient, those are C plus efficient, and that one is a Z minus waste of money.”  That gives the vote counters enough information to tally fair-share rules.  (The easiest ballot lets a voter drag items up and down his list.)

 Many empty hands  Fair shares

Many empty hands Fair Shares

Fair-Share Voting

We should recognize the right to equal spending power for all members.  Fair-Share Voting (FSV) gives all reps or voters equal power to allocate discretionary funds.  It recognizes their right to funds just as Proportional Representation (PR) recognizes the voters' right to representation. Both are forms of Proportional Voting.

There are several systems for FSV.  The best use Movable Money Votes (MMV) that work very much like Transferable Votes for PR.  For several years, Twin Oaks Community has used MMV for their annual Trade-Off Games and/or “One-Time Resource-Allocations”.  Over 37 years they have tested and used several forms of “Participatory Budgeting”.

Later pages will explain how MMV works.  But first, consider the benefits in any system for fair spending.

Merits of Fair-Share Voting

Fair-share allocation rules let geographic or other groups within a jurisdiction fund their own projects without new layers of taxes and administration.  For example, in a city-wide vote, each neighborhood or interest group may fund a few school, park or road improvements.  The city's taxes then pay for the projects as the School and Road Departments administer the contracts.  Every neighborhood and interest group has its share of spending power; no one is shut out.  This makes (hidden) empires less profitable.

When the majority controls all discretionary spending, their last allocation adds little to their happiness.  After they spend $900... on their favorite projects, the next $100... funds a low priority.  But that same $100... could fund the top priority for a large minority — making the minority much happier.

In economic terms, distributing a small amount of spending power increases the utility value purchased, and it distributes opportunities and incentives as well.  In political terms, a more equitable distribution promotes legitimacy, compliance, and co-operation.  The organization serves and appeals to more people.

 

Voting rules for fair, efficient funding can increase trust and respect for co-operative and public funding.  That may encourage people to shift some spending from private items to shared goods.  It may reduce spending at the extremes of individual and central control.

On the other hand, a tax rebate may be one of the items on the ballot.  It would let reps vote to reduce taxes and services as easily as voting to fund a project.  Voters can clearly see each rep's contribution to this private good and to the public goods.

A majority that becomes a minority can still fund some priorities — so their budgets rise and fall smoothly.  Most voters help at least one project to win despite less than majority support, showing the majority are members of political minorities.

A rep may discover interests shared with rivals who contribute to her favorite projects.  That may lead to better understanding and further cooperation — made easier by the assurance that fair shares let no one dominate others.

 Several hands giving dollars to 3 projects.
Each proposal needs support
from a substantial group.

 

A critic asked “Why would anyone want such a non-government?”  One might respond  "Is federalism a non-government?"  It might seem so to dictators, but most people say federalism gives very effective governance.  Like federalism, FSV helps sub-groups fund their own projects.  The sub-groups under federalism are pre-determined geographic areas; under FSV they may be any big group, including ad hoc geographic areas.

Say a state legislature has 100 reps and a FSV quota of 20 — meaning a project needs contributions from 20 reps to qualify as a public good.  Twenty is a larger number of reps than unanimous support from 2 nine-person city councils.  Twenty state reps may represent a larger population and geographic area than 20 city council reps.  Thus, like federalism, FSV is a tool for responsible and responsive government.

As now, some reps may spend public funds on political pork.  But with Proportional Representation and Fair-Share Voting, reps can waste only their supporters' share of money; a fact that may discourage pork projects.

A project that breaks policies is subject to majority veto.  Vetoes ideally occur before the funding vote.  But the first group to try FSV puts all proposals on the ballot then debates a veto only if a controversial item wins.  This avoids many debates.  If opponents win, the ballots are tallied again without the item.

Fair-Share Voting is unlikely to give minorities too much power.  All policies are enacted by majority rules.  This means all agencies spend their money supporting majority policies.  Finally, most FSV funds will be spent by the majority.

Limited as it is, the right to spend some revenue is a major expansion in the concept of democracy, similar to earlier expansions in the right to vote and the right to representation.

In the private sector, Fair-Share Voting helps buyers organize big purchases — so it may increase the market power of buyers relative to producers.  But it does not replace market mechanisms for competitive pricing, efficiency, innovation and investment.

The Accurate Democracy Primer has a quick intro to Fair-Share Voting and dot-lists of the benefits from FSV.

Examples of Fair-Share Voting

This is the last voting method in the series using the pairwise Condorcet rule and the Single Transferable Vote.  You may learn more about them in the pages that detail each voting situation.  The next page down Project uses looks at potential and actual uses of Fair-Share Voting in the U.S. Congress, a cooperatively- owned media outlet and a community- owned furniture company.  The voting tools page offers free software to show the dynamics of Fair-Share Voting.

The next chapter shows other ways to give reps fair shares of power for setting agency budgets, making each rep responsible for her share of money and thus accountable to voters. Budget setting

In the development of Fair-Share Voting, I was the chain of a necklace.  Its gems were discovered by visionary minds who have graced my life.

español Chinese

Translations: Babel Fish, Google, Chinese new, Chinese trad., Español


 

 

Yes Sim Candidate 1YesSim Candidate 2 Yes

 

Answer: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt saw, in the
Great Depression, the effects of heedless self-interest.


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Searching for more?  There are only a few fair spending rules. 
By definition, they must use win-win voting rules to produce win-win decisions. 

Search Terms Adjectives
Nouns Fair Share Participatory Proportional
Allocations Fair-share allocations Participatory allocations Proportional allocations
Appropriations Fair-share appropriations Participatory appropriations Proportional appropriations
Budgeting Fair-share budgeting Participatory budgeting Proportional budgeting
Spending Fair-share spending Participatory spending Proportional spending

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