Cascade Democracy

Two years ago I posted an idea that had been percolating in my head for a while.

With the recent expenses debacle, this idea is even more worthy of further examination.

The idea, in summary, is to make each level of government the electorate of the next level, with candidates drawn solely from that electorate. For example, the local council is made up of 100* people from the area, each of whom stood for election to represent the 100 households that included their own. This council elect one of those 100 people to represent them to their regional assembly, which is a collection of 100 local councils. The regional assembly elect one of their number for the national government, and so on.

The point of this system is that every candidate can have a personal interaction and understanding with every member of their electorate. What is more, every representative at the higher levels retains their role(s) as representative at the lower levels, so a member of the national parliament would simultaneously have to perform their duties at regional and local level. What is more, any of those three constituencies would have the right to recall the representative, having the effect of denying them the right to remain in any higher post.

For example, let's say that Joe Bloggs of 47 Acacia Avenue, Newtown, Southshire, England stands for election to represent N^os1-100 Acacia Avenue. He wins because he is well respected and his neighbours appreciate his honesty and intelligence.

After a few years serving on the Newtown Council there is an election for a representative to serve Newtown at the Southshire Assembly. He is nominated and gets elected because the 78 other Councillors in Newtown have grown to respect his integrity and clear debating style.

Things carry on for a few more years, and Joe serves on both the Assembly and Council. He regularly talks to his neighbours and the other Councillors, and always takes their views into account when he votes. He has even taken advantage of an online straw-poll system to let his constituents know what votes are coming up soon, and how he intends to vote and why. Whenever the poll goes against his advice, he scrupulously follows the mandate, despite his personal feelings. One or two of his fellows failed to do this, and they were rapidly recalled.

Then the long-serving MP for Southshire retires, having been told by the Assembly to support a windfarm subsidy and deciding that he could not. The 35 Assemblymen decide to send Joe to Parliament, considering him their best candidate. Joe now spends three days a week in London, One at the Assembly building in Southshireham, and one back in Newtown covering Council business. His remaining time is spent talking to constituents and spending time with his family.

Joe is a Councillor, Assemblyman and MP all at the same time. He cannot forget any of his constituencies, because they can recall him at any time. If he moves house away from Acacia Avenue, he will immediately lose his eligibility for the seat. If his conscience forces him to vote against the wishes of any one of his electorates, he can be recalled and replaced in under a week.

This is pure personality politics. It is not a person's party affiliation or policies that get them elected, it is their ability to carry out the wishes of the people they represent. There is no need for a party machine, because the electorate is never larger than a few hundred people, and every individual in the electorate can communicate directly with the candidate if they wish, and he has time to reply and the personal relationship with them to make the reply meaningful.

Now some might say that the Assemblyman for Newtown is only answerable to the 78 Councillors and 200-odd residents of Acacia Avenue, which leaves the other 150,000 voters of Newtown out in the cold. This is far from the truth. Each Councillor will advise their constituents how they plan to vote for the next Assemblyman, and offer them reasons. They are at liberty to mandate him to vote differently. In effect, although only 78 votes will be cast, every resident of Newtown will have had their say.

Because constituency sizes are always very similar, each of the 78 votes will, in effect, be a block vote. However there will be some variation when, say, a student area with an average of four adults per household elects one Councillor and a block of Council flats with an average of one adult per household does. This could be overcome by varying the wards by occupancy rates, but I feel this is unnecessary. Council tax is currently levied per household, and many local services are on a per household basis. Moreover, occupancy rates are seldom equally high or equally low across large groups of households, so the problem will be relatively infrequent.

The title of this blog post is Cascade Democracy because I feel this system allows greater democratic accountability by cascading voting onto each level. It will create a greater involvement and a greater sense of responsibility among voters, as well as changing the relationship of politicians to their constituents fundamentally for the good.

Addendum

As always, I really should search Google before I imply any idea I have is original. In this case, I even managed to coin the same term used elsewhere!

Cascade Democracy on the Web
• Exploring Democracy defines my concept as Cascade Democracy with Delegates.
• Michael Allan Discussing the mathematics of cascades.

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* As before, 100 is for illustration purposes. It might be seen as the upper limit, with smaller numbers used according to geographic convenience. I think the 100 household number should be fairly fixed, however, with deviations of no more than 10 houses allowed.

Electric Dreams

Recent activity in the electric car market has given rise to hopes that the eventual dream of a fossil-fuel-free transport system might one day be realised.

There are still, however, two major hurdles to overcome:
1. Range - 50 miles per charge is poor, and as batteries age this will only shrink
2. Refuelling - Even if refuelling stations can fully charge a battery safely in about 10 minutes, the technology required for fast-charging is more complex than slow charging, and is, in any event, dependant on the battery technology in use. Also, for most people it is not practical to charge their vehicles at home or work, leaving cables lying around.

Here is a concept that will not only resolve these two issues, but make the transition to electric cars entirely viable.

User-portable Battery Packs

The car industry needs to adopt a standard for electric cars so that they all contain sets of identically sized battery packs, light enough, or well enough designed, to be removable from the vehicle and taken indoors for charging.

Imagine, as an initial design concept, a car with say 50KWh of battery capacity, which is enough for around 200 miles. 10KWh of this in in a single reserve pack, slung under the car roughly where current designs put the fuel tank, protected by a steel plate or similar from road debris, and replaceable quickly and easily at a garage. The remaining 40KWh is in 8 5KWh battery packs mounted under the bonnet in an array capable of controlled installation and release.

A new li-ion car battery can achieve around 125Wh/Kg, so a 5KWh battery would weigh in at around 40Kg, giving a total battery weight in the car of 400Kg. For comparison, a 4-cylinder engine, plus gearbox, plus 50litre fuel tank can easily exceed 400Kg, and in the US the total weight of an average vehicle is in excess of 2000KG.

Now, it isn't practical to ask all car drivers to lift a 40Kg weight out of a car and onto some trolley or platform, although most fairly fit men could manage it. Instead, there needs to be a system where the battery can be slid out of the space on rollers, onto some sort of variable-height trolley platform, something like an ambulance gurney. With enough design thought, the battery could be shifted without any lifting onto a small two-wheeled hand-trolley.

Once you have the battery on a trolley, it can be delivered to a private recharging point in the home or office, taking multiple trips if required. Owners can lease extra batteries so thay can have some on charge and some in the vehicle at all times. But the massive advantage of this system is not at home, but at service stations.

Being able to swap out a flat battery for a fully charged one makes 'refuelling' possible anywhere. Service stations can install charging units that take the flat batteries into a locked-off sorting and storage area and deliver replacements in seconds. The flat ones get recharged until needed by another customer, and the range of the vehicle becomes, effectively, unlimited

The benefits continue: Leasing batteries and replacing them at self-serve service stations means that their age is no longer an issue. When they get old they can be taken out of circulation and recycled. Furthermore it offers future-proofing. As new battery technology becomes available, it can simply be rolled out to the service stations, slowly increasing the power storage capacity of the vehicle and its range. What other car technology could offer the possibility of improving performance over time? The service stations can also serve (more practically than private homes) as buffer systems for the electricity network, absorbing changes to a supply increasingly dominated by renewables.

The concept requires certain standards. Every battery pack needs to be the same size and shape, with the same connectors, handles etc. These cannot be changed after the system gains momentum, so they have to be very well designed. If different versions restrict configurations, such that every pack in a car (including the reserve, perhaps) has to be of the same version, then this will lead to unnecessary complications, so the in-car technology must be able to cope with batteries of different types, performances and capacities.

Overall I think the concept needs to be studied very carefully by the car companies, and adopted across the industry to help accelerate the switch from liquid fuels to electric. The continued importance of service stations for refuelling and the relatively cheap technology required for storing and slow-charging leased batteries will remove the opposition of the station owners (the oil companies) to the loss of revenue that the switch represents, and the removal of the twin challenges of range and refuelling will accelerate the take-up of electric cars

Postscript

A company called Better Place are proposing something similar, although in their case they appear to want to automate everything and work with multiple sizes and makes of battery, replacing the whole thing rather than standard units. They have a MOU with Renault Nissan, so already have the first element of support they will need. I think they need to consider making the standard criteria 'man-portable' to allow people to charge the batteries away from the street.