Saturday, January 14, 2012

Tables for Practical Democracy Entry in Participedia

These tables are reproduced here because Participedia does not display the tables for the Practical Democracy entry correctly:

Simplified Illustration
This table illustrates the Practical Democracy process for a community of 232,374 voters.  For simplicity, it omits interest group considerations and assumes each triad selects a candidate.  The process is shown through 9 levels.  Those who implement the process will determine the number of levels necessary for their specific application.

                       Selected
                       Randomly
                         From
              Full  Over Prev.  Total People
Level People Triads Flow Level Triads Chosen  Days 

  1  232,374 77,458   0    0   77,458 77,458    5 (1)
  2   77,458 25,819   1    2   25,820 25,820    5
  3   25,820  8,606   2    1    8,607  8,607   12
  4    8,607  2,869   0    0    2,869  2,869   12
  5    2,869    956   1    2      957    957   19
  6      957    319   0    0      319    319   19
  7      319    106   1    2      107    107   26
  8      107     35   2    1       36     36   26
  9       36     12   0    0       12     12   26 (2)

1) If the number of candidates does not divide equally into triads, any candidates remaining are overflow.  Level 1 is a special case.  When there is overflow at Level 1, the extra person(s) automatically become candidates at Level 2.  Thereafter, when there is overflow at any level, the number of people needed to create a full triad are selected at random from the people who were not selected at the previous level.

2) To avoid patronage, appointive offices, including cabinet positions, must be filled using candidates that reached the final levels but were not selected to fill elective offices.

Time Lapse Example
To give a very rough idea of the time lapse required for such an election, we will hypothesize triad lives of 5 days for the 1st and 2nd levels, 12 days for the 3rd and 4th levels, 19 days for the 5th and 6th levels, and 26 days thereafter.  Using the example above, the time lapse for an election would be:

    Level  Start     Report   Days
      1   01/05/11  01/10/11    5
      2   01/12/11  01/17/11    5
      3   01/19/11  01/31/11   12
      4   02/02/11  02/14/11   12
      5   02/16/11  03/07/11   19
      6   03/09/11  03/28/11   19
      7   03/30/11  04/25/11   26
      8   04/27/11  05/23/11   26
      9   05/25/11  06/20/11   26


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