There is, so far as I know, only one of Laurence Boyce, thank, er, um, …

So that would be a liberal, or no liberals considering it, depending on your view of Laurence.

No. Remember that we are seeking to drastically reduce electoral influence in the twilight years, thus women’s greater life expectancy becomes an insignificant factor in my view.

Computers are inherently un-transparent.

That is simply not true.

Mind you why should we balance out lifetime influence? Once one is dead, one should leave these things to the living. Better for lifetime influence to be a flat function of lifespan. I’ll leave the curve as an exercise for the reader.

[I am of course humouring rather than genuinely interested.]

On the IT: security is not the issue, transparency is. Computers are inherently un-transparent. The Dutch are moving away from computers for this reason.

Considering the vast information asymmetries in the voting market (politicians know quite a bit but have a habit of lying about it; pundits know a bit but think they know a lot; newspapers have agendas; journalists are lazy; most voters don’t know very much and can only believe that which they read and see on the telly), winning the War On Apathy is going to be a bit harder than just giving everyone a logon.

The real problems with lack of engagement stem from other issues IMHO: whether you think we whine about PR too much, it is pretty uncontroversial, surely, to say that FPTP is a barrier to engagement by making a lot of peoples’ votes utterly irrelevant. If everyone knew that their vote, however heavily weighted, was going to make a difference, you might see a lot more people voting.

Secondly, everyone reasonably thinks that politicians are a bunch of crooks and liars, and giving people variable votes won’t help that problem either.

Furthermore, once you’ve engaged people, you have to make sure that they have access to good-quality information about politics which they don’t right now: newspaper columnists are ill-informed idiots, from Richard Littlejohn to Polly Toynbee to Johann Hari; TV news concentrates on soundbites, doesn’t get deep enough into the issues, and allows talking heads to basically tell lies live on air and get away with it because there is no time to fact-check; party political blogs carry heavily-spun messages. These informational problems are probably really hard to solve, but they are ultimately far more important than how easy it is for people to physically vote on the day. In my opinion, anyway.

don’t we have an electoral commission which takes the politics out of seat boundaries and stuff?

To a degree, yes, you’re right. However, I think that vote-weighting on the scale (0-4) you’re talking about would be far, far more tempting for politicians to try and get their hands on, and so they are much more likely to. Besides, haven’t there been rows about how the current Electoral Commission draws up new boundaries to benefit Labour?

Indeed, I am only really a Lib Dem supporter because they are the only party who are consistently “for” electoral reform.

Come now, there are so many more reasons to be a Lib Dem!

Aside from the variable-sized vote that you are describing here, do you see any other advantages from electronic voting?

Yes, it would engage more people.

I don’t think that you are really taking in the fairly strong and reasonable fears other people have that big government databases, once constructed, can be abused.

The way I phrased it, was a bit of a wind up. I know that databases are a problem at this moment.

Why does it tail off, and at what rate?

It’s all up for grabs! But my graphs tail off at the point where people’s concerns start to become distinctly parochial.

Are not the old the most wise of us all?

They ought to be but, based upon my own observations, I have to say that it really doesn’t show.

How do you avoid the politicization of the vote weight?

Well don’t we have an electoral commission which takes the politics out of seat boundaries and stuff?

You have at least inspired me to attempt my own electoral reform piece for LDV.

Great! The more, the merrier!

the notion that we are labouring under some colossal electoral injustice is, I’m afraid, just another instance of Lib Dem whining…

I agree that the situation is probably not as desperate as all that. However, that’s not to say that huge strides could be made to improve the quality of our electoral and governing processes.

Also, I for one believe in something more like PR than what we’ve got not because it would improve Lib Dem fortunes, but because it is a laudable goal in itself. Indeed, I am only really a Lib Dem supporter because they are the only party who are consistently “for” electoral reform.

We might know what the rules are in advance, but the rules are so obviously unfair in fairly easily fixable ways that those who are not complaining should surely be viewed with far more distrust than those who are.

up until now, what I am about to propose would not have been technically possible

I disagree – considering that the succeeding comments have made it clear that you would only discriminate on age and sex, an electronic system is clearly not needed, since most people have at least three pieces of ID with their name, gender and age on them (passport, driving license, birth certificate). These could easily be checked at the polling station without recourse to an electronic system.

it is surely now time that we gave serious consideration to the possibilities opened up for us through the power of electronic voting

Aside from the variable-sized vote that you are describing here, do you see any other advantages from electronic voting? Because for this purpose, as I have said, electronic voting is not really necessary.

in the form of a large government database containing everyone’s personal information

I think I’ve made my views quite clear on this, and whenever pressed on the subject of scope creep or abuse, you inevitably resort to humour and insisting that “it’s bound to happen”. I don’t think that you are really taking in the fairly strong and reasonable fears other people have that big government databases, once constructed, can be abused. I don’t really want to go over all that again here because I don’t honestly believe you’ll change your mind, and I think that it is a bit of a shame that you simply don’t seem to have it in you to engage with this sort of argument.

Once votes have been cast, they are then scaled (key point) according to some simple (or perhaps even rather complex) weighting function…

you can see that the proposed scheme gives little weighting to votes from the very young and inexperienced. The weighting then ramps up with age, before tailing off again later in life

Why does it tail off, and at what rate? When do old people no longer receive any vote at all? Why? Are not the old the most wise of us all? Surely they should therefore receive far more votes than a 20-25-year old (as it seems from the graph).

Here lies the core of my argument against: that there are so many questions, and so many variables, that attempting to compute a “fair” vote weight as age (and gender) varies is impossible. You appear to think that the view of the average 40-year old is worth far, far more than the view of an average 60-year old. Why? What happens in those intervening 20 years that makes a 60-year old less able to decide what is best for the country for the next 5 years?

Beyond impossibility, introducing a system of vote-weighting requires someone to come up with the initial graph, and a body to review it over time. These bodies will inevitably be politicized by the government of the time to sway the graph in their own favour. This is not a good thing, since political justifications will get dressed up with science to try and explain the new thinking. How do you avoid the politicization of the vote weight?

I’m thinking that maybe if we were to give women a greater priority earlier in life, then we might not find ourselves fighting quite so many disastrous and un-winnable wars around the world

Sure, and if we simply disallowed the government from launching such wars on pain of jail time we could accomplish the same effect. Giving young women more of a vote does not actually solve the core problem of forcing the government of the day to do a decent cost-benefit analysis of any warmaking and make sure that we only get entangled in wars that really are worthwhile. It’s my belief that few are, but one could make the case for interactions in Sierra Lione and Kosovo, and peacekeeping duties in Africa. There was a genocide in the Sudan while the Iraq war was on that we could have stepped in to prevent. Ditto Rwanda. Hard-headed judgement on these matters should not be trumped by emotional appeals, whether from voting women clamouring not to go to war, nor voting men clamouring that we should go to war, nor any other permutation.

without such technical arrangements in place, the electoral system is a very blunt tool which can be hopelessly unresponsive to pressing problems

Well, unless you are going to also advocate a return to Athenian collective-decision-making democracy instead of our current representative democracy (which I honestly wouldn’t be averse to, you simply haven’t done so here), then it is not the job of the electoral system to be responsive to pressing problems. Its job is to provide high-quality representatives of the people that can work out solutions themselves. In that respect, our current institutions are clearly suboptimal on both counts. For me, it matters far more that we get bright, motivated and selfless people as our leaders than tinkering with the voting system to ensure that some arbitrary conditions hold sway over the voters.

You have at least inspired me to attempt my own electoral reform piece for LDV.

If there’s one thing that is, as far as I can see, totally missing from the current electoral reform talk, is that it’s all about The Palace of Westminster.

A higher priority to me than AV vs AV-Plus to replace ‘first past the post’ is giving people real control of their local communities.

For example: why is there only one way of paying for local services – Council Tax. Why not allow local authorities to choose whether they want Council Tax, Local Income Tax, Land Value Tax or some combination of any? Why not give them the right to demand zero carbon homes: today?

If we finally give power back to local people, we might manage to break away from “growth for the good of the economy”, and have development and investment, because it is really needed, not just dictated from Whitehall.

By the way, what is the justification?

If someone votes by post before polling day, their vote is weighted x 2
From 7am – 8am of polling day x 3
From 8am – 9am x 5

and so on, till those who vote in the last closing minutes of polling day have their votes are worth x30 or somesuch?

Why? Why people with a similar mindset to my own? And why atheist? How do you get that out of age and sex? It is true that at the age of 41, I am roughly under the peak of the curve. Probably off peak in fact. But I can’t help that. Do you think I am going to propose that the peak keeps track with me as I get older?

Having re-read this there appears to be a subtext of ‘people with a similar mindset to my own – politically aware, neither young nor retired, atheist – get the highest weighting of votes’. This is old fashioned elitism really. Apologies if that is not what you meant, but that is how uit reads.

And who would ratify this weighting? Parliament?? Really? This scheme would be just as bad as at present – worse as you are giving voting decisions over to the state!

Would my simple scheme really be so terrible? I think not. For me, the only serious question is: would it do the useful work I have in mind? I can’t say that for sure until we see some data. That’s why we need to move towards electronic voting straight away, in order to give the psephologists a chance to show us what all the various options could actually do for us.

But I think we might all be surprised.

If you’re serious about this, you are the April Fool here.