[ Borderline votes may be rare: Half of the voters want to fund an item, half want to give it nothing. Should it get half of the lowest vote above zero? That is its median, but it might be less than the minimum required for the project. If so, it is eliminated and its supporters re-allocate their votes. ]
Reps may negotiate. If A. voted at or below the median on 1 of B's. favorite items, and B. voted below the median on 1 of A's. favorites, they could agree "I'll raise yours if you'll raise mine." Of course a rep must be skilled at bluffing and negotiation to maximize her results.
Take a council with 15 reps from several parties. The Blue's have 3 reps and the Grays have 6. Neither party has a majority so neither can fund anything on its own. The Blue reps might offer to give $100 each to a department favored by the Grays. The Grays can match that with $100 each to make its median $100. The Gray reps might be willing to give Blue's favorite department only $50 each, $300 total in exchange for Blue's $300. But the median would be only $50 so the Blues might negotiate with other parties for a better deal. (If there is another party with 6 reps, all 3 parties have equal power since any 2 can form a majority. Thus power does not always equate with size.)
If there is a disciplined majority group, they can win whatever they vote for and other reps can get nothing. So, like agenda process and other plurality rules, MVP can result in skewed power - but at least a mere plurality cannot control MVP funds. When there is no ruling majority, all reps have some power, making the results fairly centrist and stable. Omnibus bills may build majority support with collections of minority items. But often many of the items are wasteful ÒporkÓ..
[ Math wizards reading this will have noted that the sum of the medians for all winners probably will not equal the original budget. To fix that fairly, each item's median is multiplied by the budget divided by the sum of the medians. The same formula can ensure each rep's ballot does not exceed the overall budget. Voters do not have to do the arithmetic.
Items 3 Ballots A 9 1 1 B 1 9 1 C 1 1 9 Medians 1 1 1 3 total Adjusted 3 3 3 9 total
Present proposals:
The meeting coordinator reads the mission statement before or after presentations.
Departmental sponsors suggest several spending levels and their benefits.
Introduce MVP:
"You each have the entire budget, [24,000] dollars.
Divide that among the [19] departments.
Each departments will be funded with the median amount voted for it.
Find decisive voters:
Write a low budget number for the item.
Say "Raise your hand if you gave money to [the winner].
Put your hand down when this number is more than your vote for [the winner]."
Raise the number.
Stop when the [8th] hand goes down.
Ask that voter, "What did you budget for this?"
Write that amount on the board.
Repeat for each item.
A vote above the median for an item is excessive, wasted.
Reps may move excess funds to raise other budgets.
If there is time for vote trading, perhaps all ballots should be posted. Vote trading lets reps help the things they care most about.
Collect and Verify the Ballots:
Enter the ballots on a computer program such as Political Sim.
Total each ballot.
Adjust each ballot's Votes to = Budget.
B / T * V = adjusted V
Find median allocation for each winner.
Total the medians.
Adjust Medians to = Budget.
B / T * M = adjusted M
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In this visible method, reps use "balloons" and "weights" to raise or lower each item's funding. Each rep may get symbolic balloon and weight chips totaling [100] square centimeters in area. A rep may take a single 100 cm2 chip (10 cm x 10 cm) to push hard on one budget. Another rep might push 20 budgets with 5 cm2 unit chips. Any combination that adds up to 100 cm2 is good. Voting less than 100 cm2 is allowed.
The votes may be cast on a magnetic board or on a computer screen. (
Political Sim 3.0 has visible voting for Standardized Scores but not yet for Hylland-Zeckhauser.) A bar chart shows the initial funding for each item. This is set by last year's budgets, MVP, or by a budget-planning subcommittee. Reps place their balloons above an item's bar to raise its funding and weights below to lower it. The current level at any time is half way between the highest balloon and the lowest weight. That is a simple linear measurement.
Reps may change chip sizes and shift their votes whenever they want to cause or counter a budget move. Voting ends when the budgets are stable. That is when no budget changes by a certain amount or percentage over [24] hours. This is an economic or political equilibrium. If budgets are not stable after [7] days, a simple majority may end the voting.
Each chip would show the rep's name or alias so final votes could be totaled. (The square chips may be personalized with pictures: a donut or a sparrow, a Titanic or a moon rocket.) On the last day of voting, each rep should check a listing her votes.
Hylland and Zeckhauser worked out a system in which each voter gets a share of points to vote. But only the square root of the vote counts. Reps don't have to calculate square roots to vote. The square chips show both the costs and the effects of votes. The cost is the area; the effect is the length. Someone can put 100 points on one item and push it 10, or put 1 point on 100 items and push them 1 each, 100 total; or put 4 points on 12 items and 25 points on 2 items, for a total push of 34.
A second trick: the area of chips each rep gets increases as the number of items does. Each rep might receive a number of 1 by 1 squares equal to the number of items times three. Experience will show the best ratio for each council. To keep the equipment costs low, each rep could be issued a number of 1 by 1 chips to arrange into squares of various sizes -- no large chips are needed.
Several small boards or screens might be better than a large one. Each would show items with a small range of costs. A chart could start at $1,000,000 rather than at zero. But the scale must be the same on every chart used in a vote. A chip 1 cm tall might represent $10 on chart where the budgets are measured in hundreds of dollars. The same size chip could represent $10,000 in another organization where budgets are in millions.
The quality of H-Z decisions is probably very high; but it is uncertain -- to the best of my knowledge, no one has used this voting rule. It cannot guarantee power for minority reps because a disciplined majority could negate each vote cast by the minority.
"Collusion" can defeat this and any other bidding system. The "conspirators" make small bids for each other's items rather than a big bid for one's own item. A bidder could give 100 points to a favorite item and push it up by 10. Or she could join with 11 others, bid 9 points for each partner's favorite and push each up (or down) by 3. The total effect of 11 times 3 is 33, much bigger than 10. This is not altogether bad. The item must seem reasonable to many people, and making friends or at least making agreements is rewarded.
Breaking a big item into many small items allows many small votes. The item's budget will be the total of its parts. The resulting balance point will be the same usually because negative votes are helped just as much as positive ones. But this may increase change when there is wide support for moving a budget.
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© 1997 Robert Loring Reprints permitted