LW - Referendum Mechanics in a Marketplace of Ideas by Martin Sustrik

The Nonlinear Library

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Referendum Mechanics in a Marketplace of Ideas, published by Martin Sustrik on August 25, 2024 on LessWrong.
This is a cross post from https://250bpm.substack.com/p/referendum-mechanics-in-a-marketplace.
In a referendum, people vote either for or against the proposal and that's it. Right? Wrong!
One can definitely make referendums more complex by mixing in unrelated stuff, unnecessary restrictions, and complexities. But that's not the case with Swiss referendums. Quite the contrary, they seem to be designed for simplicity:
First: There is no quorum. Even if the turnout is low, the referendum is valid. If three people cast their votes in a national ballot and two of them vote yes, the proposal is accepted. It is then written into the constitution, so even the parliament cannot overrule it. No quorum means no strategic voting or, more precisely, no strategic withholding of votes to sabotage the referendum by making it invalid due to not meeting the quorum, as often happens elsewhere.
Second: The referendum process takes many years, often five or more, so it can't be used for short-term, tribal politics, like calling for premature elections. By the time the referendum reaches voters, five or six years after its initiation, other people are already in power, and the original reason for the referendum has long since become irrelevant. Hot-button issues of yesteryear are already blissfully forgotten.
Third: We know that defaults matter. If the referendum question is worded differently - when yes and no votes switch their meanings - it could lead to a different voting outcome. But in Switzerland, referendum questions are always worded the same way: It's a proposal to change the constitution. "Yes" always means a vote for change, while "No" always means to keep the status quo.
And if the history of past referendums teaches us anything, it is that the default option is always "No." Only a few referendums in their 150-year history have been successful. If people don't understand or don't care about the proposal, they vote to keep the status quo by default.
Given all the above, why am I suggesting that the referendums can get complex? Read on and discover the fascinating world of referendum politics!
Imagine that the initiators of the referendum demand lowering a tax by 4%. (And yes, in Switzerland, any changes to taxes must be approved in a referendum.)
The government doesn't want to change the tax. If they did, they would have already put it on the ballot. So, the government commissions a survey, which reveals that 60% of voters are going to vote for the proposal. What can they do to fight it?
Well, of course! They can launch a counterproposal. They can propose that the tax should be lowered by only 2%.
Now, voters can choose to either keep the tax at the current level, lower it by 2%, or lower it by 4%. If they can vote for only one of the two latter options, the counterproposal does more than just deliver more choice to the voter. It also splits the voter base.
If originally 40% of voters were about to vote for keeping the current tax rate and 60% for lowering it, the anti-tax people would be clear winners. However, introduction of the counterproposal dramatically changes the landscape. Now 40% vote for keeping the tax at its current level, just like before, but 25% now vote for lowering it by 2% and 35% for lowering it by 4%. Pro-taxers suddenly and miraculously win the referendum!
Eventually, it became obvious that the system was not working as intended and could be easily manipulated. So since 1987, voters can vote for both the original proposal and the counterproposal. (So called "double yes".) If they do so, they can also indicate which option they prefer in case both proposals pass. The splitting of the voter base, as described above, does not happen.
Okay, fair enoug...