Spendable votes

The problem

Democracies come in many forms, but all have at least one of these problems:

Your vote only really makes a difference when it's close — if you're in a constituency which always votes 70-80% for the Beige party, any vote will be wasted regardless of if you prefer Beige, Taupe, or Ecru.
Power is discrete: the winner retains full power until they are removed. Removal is either on a fixed schedule, or at the winner's preferred time, or a forced removal due to e.g. impeachment
Nuance is hard: any given voter cannot say "I like these two teams equally, and want them to share power, but absolutely never that other team"

The idea

At any given election, all voters are given some number of votes, and each is free to distribute their votes as desired amongst all the candidates.
Each standing politician has their votes totalled up, and added to a ledger.
All standing politicians are then entitled to participate in parliament/congress/etc.
When legislation etc. is voted on, each politician may spend the votes they received. This spending is recorded on the ledger, and reduces the available for subsequent votes.
When some threshold for unspent votes is met, new elections are called.

I've not developed this into a detailed proposal; every point on that list has multiple options for how it could be implemented, and the whole idea needs to be carefully analysed for Nash game failures.

How many votes? Are write-in candidates allowed? What about "none of the above"?
Is this "vote income" a one-off at the election, or is this treated as "for the duration of this parliament, you will get this each month/quarter/year"?
Really all standing politicians, or just all the ones who have unspent votes on the ledger?
How many votes are they allowed to spend on any given thing? All of them, or a percentage? What's the meta-rule for whipped votes?
Are politicians allowed to transact votes with each other, and if so under what conditions?
When is a new election called? If it is "when only one party still has votes to spend", can this be gamed? Is it when a fixed percentage of all votes have been spent?
Are all unspent votes from the previous elections wiped from the record with each subsequent election, or do they roll over?

Tags: Democracy, government, Politics, voting

Categories: Politics