Vote Sizing Institute Real change from within.

The whole notion of vote sizing is so radically new that it naturally evokes many misunderstandings; so rather than try to explain all of it at once, perhaps the easiest approach to take is by first discovering what vote sizing is not.

As we're gong to explain in the following vision page - vote sizing is a fast-tracked vehicle to take us from here - a world pummeled by corruption, to there - a world of fairness and sustainability. We believe that only vote sizing has what it takes (the simplicity, humanity and adaptability) to achieve all of our goals -learning to live together. If you're already on board and all charged up, skip ahead to the reaction and interaction pages for instant activities that you can do to bring the vote sizing vision to life. However, if you're still a little bit overwhelmed, unclear or unsure about what the vote sizing message is, and why, then we're now going try to show you more specifically what we're about by contrasting vote sizing with other ideas that may seem very similar to ours, but are actually quite different. Here are a few points which we think explain what vote sizing is not, and why not:

Vote sizing is not about redistributing wealth.

Well, actually, vote sizing is an incredibly powerful way to redistribute wealth; as there's nothing to stop poorer people from simply voting in any old opportunist who'd get the government to directly confiscate or indirectly over-tax the rich and then hand the booty over to them (or perhaps just turn a behind eye and let them do the dirty work for themselves). But, fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) there is something stopping vote sizing from taking place in this simple way - and that is: Vote sizing is not a one-time, go-for-the-gold affair but instead works continually within cycles.

Life is complicated. The beauty behind vote sizing is that it forces people to accept this fact in a manageable way. The above scenario would only work if it were carried out only once - otherwise, if voters choose to elect a government that doesn't do anything but shuffle money around; come next election, we'll all be left in the exact same place we started... and it doesn't take much imagination to guess what kind of leader the ex-rich, recently impoverished would vote in, does it? The people who used to be rich at the last election, and are now poor, would simply jolt the scales back in their favor by electing themselves into power and redistributing the wealth back their way. And round and round we go...

Of course, all this back-and-forth of concentrated wealth and power wouldn't do anyone any good. In fact, this kind of viscous winner-take-all tug-of-war would easily make mincemeat of our social order in fairly short thrift. Since vote sizing gives poor people the real power needed to drag everybody down to the lowest common denominator if and when they choose to - the goal becomes to have their votes count for more than just a way for poorer people to get their hands on some wealth.

Sounds difficult, perhaps, but I think we're up to the challenge. Besides, this idea that poorer people crave wealth before all else is asserted predominantly by the wealthy; few have bothered to really find out what poorer people actually want. It's remained a mystery for a long, long time. So we hope - and believe - that poorer and middle class people would prove those wealthy naysayers wrong and use vote sizing in more productive ways than to just grab recklessly at someone else's stuff...knowing that to do so would destroy everyone's hopes and dreams.

Vote sizing is not anti-poverty.

The call to redistribute wealth also spills over into the anti-poverty movement. And for very similar reasons to embracing the idea that those who want more wealth than others ought to have it (so long as they don't harm others in the process) - it also seeks to embrace, rather than eradicate, poverty. Now, of course, extreme poverty is not a good thing for anybody (except maybe monks and other kinds of total renouncers); so unless you actually choose it, we're not for saying that vote sizing wants you to just have a vote instead of wealth.

However, the raw truth of closed systems (i.e. us on our planet) is that there is no way that our current world population can support raising everybody's lifestyles up to match those of us near the middle or top. Supplying everyone with 20,000 ft² houses, two SUVs plus a sports car, ski vacations, hamburgers and large screen TVs is stupid, needless and unsustainable. As we said in the point above, this demand is an artificial one anyways, as this hedonistic lifestyle needs to be continually shoved down our throats through the media and advertisements - and especially our children. How many commercials or print ads have you seen recently remind us that, hey, we're perfectly okay just the way we are?? If we had a government that stood by and protected us, we just might make extremely different lifestyle choices from what we're told now... and so with vote sizing power on their side, the anti-poverty movement might become a pro-poverty movement; making it easier for people to be poor, instead of rich.

Vote sizing doesn't seek to bond everybody to the same economic level, but instead to break the bond between misery and poverty.

Vote sizing accepts the reality of limited resources, unequal wealth and poverty - and by doing so in a very intimate way, turns it into an empowering thing for all of us in terms of a fair choice between them. As things are now, poorer people have no voice - as no money = no power. It's not the lack of one or the other, but this combination, that allows for the spread of misery, degradation and violence. Vote sizing accepts that some people will want to bounce between mansions, relax in yachts, and choose between $100,000+ cars... rarely encountering their children; while other people live in condos with their families, enjoy backyard barbeques with neighbors, and take the bus, carpool or ride scooters to work; and still others prefer studio apartments, frequenting local hangouts, and bicycle or walk to work. The difference with vote sizing is that no longer will poverty equate to misery and even the poorest among us will have government accomplish our goals.

Vote sizing is not socialism, communism or Marxism.

The above two points lean towards socialism, in that they see the government's primary role as ensuring that all people hover around the same amounts of wealth/income. Even though this represents a fine ideal (see utopian, below) - the inherent unnaturalness of socialism and its siblings Marxism, Maoism, communism, etc. all too often need to be imposed on the people through incredibly rigid political and economic organizations. In order to achieve their goals, the first thing Marxists / communists / idealists almost always do away with is the holding of open and honest elections. From there it's a downwards spiral into monarchies and personally cults as the overall attitude is condescending, abusive, and diminishes everybody involved... and a sharp turn away from everything vote sizing stands for: Empowering the people and giving them power over their own lives.

Sure, vote sizing does provide a real (not symbolic) mechanism for people to reform government to suit their needs - and we also have our ideas about what's wrong with the economy and the government and how vote sizing will help us fix those problems - but vote sizing does not by itself adhere to any one organizational model, or even reform. If the poorer and middle class people want capitalist, corporatist governments, that's exactly what they'll get (without being tricked into it, as they are now). Vote sizing can just as easily reform government towards communist / socialist goals as libertarian ones - but one thing that it will not do is move away from deciding these things through elections.

Vote sizing is able to embrace progressive ideals without destroying our democratic system, which we interpret as a return to democratic ideals. Tapping into the elasticity, strength and adaptability of our social fabric is the essence of democracy.

Vote sizing is not utopian.

So we've just explained in the point above how vote sizing is well-grounded in already well-established democratic institutions; so the question is not who will do it, or how will they do it - but: When will we have the collective will power to do it? That leads us to another question: even if we wanted to... could we do it? Are we at a stage of our development to take it to the next level?

Yes! Vote sizing is not some utopian dream peddled by hazy idealists with no solid concept of reality. Two hundred years ago the idea that women could vote may have seemed like a pipe dream for free-thinking philosophers and other idealists ‘out of touch' with the reality of life as it was. Before that it was the unpropertied; before that specific castes (non-assimilated-citizens and non-believers); and before that... everybody! Yet, here were are - with all the different kinds of people running their governments in so many places!

This evolution doesn't just apply to social reconstructs either - there are also historical precedents for the kind of technological change that vote sizing represents. Not that far back in time, most people would have thought that the idea of disseminating information in print to the masses was absurd. Yet the printing press made that - and accompanying advances in education, expression and dissent - possible.

We have come this far, arriving here on the shoulders of our ancestors who've fought long and hard to advance equitably. So why stop evolving now? Now is the time to engage our newfound technological advancements and use them to propel society forward. Yes, vote sizing is radical; but radical times and radical problems need radical solutions. And as far as the unobtrusive way that vote sizing implements itself; being radical doesn't mean that it's not a practical, feasible means to solving our problems - because it is!

Viva la vote sizing revolución!

Vote sizing is not vote counting.

There are a lot of people nowadays continuing a rich tradition from the past: finding ways to improve our election process by reforming the way we count votes. But vote sizers believe that focusing on - and even changing - how votes are counted will not be sufficient to rid our system of the corruption that plagues it.

We're not saying that we're disagreeing with proponents of vote counting reforms (as a very large part of the way tyrants take over is through pitting voters against each other in undemocratic ways); we just don't agree enough. For unlike vote sizing, at the end of the day vote counters' prescription strategies are simply not strong enough to cure the underlying disease of rampant corruption, alienation, and consumerism - and our problem remains intact: When one voter, lobbyist, corporation or special interest group has billions to offer elected officials to enact certain policies; and the next voter has pennies... the end result of these equality-seeking systems is terrible inequality.

Band-Aid Electoral Reforms The types of vote counting reform that we've heard proposed but will not be effective at fixing the system include: Single member plurality (winner-take-all): A system (used in the US, Britain and New Zealand) that allots one vote per citizen, and the candidate with the most wins - which tends to produce governing parties elected by a minority of voters, especially in multi-party elections. Full representation: Instead of losers-lose-all, voters in a minority get a proportional amount of elected representatives. Instant run-off: Voters rank their preferences - so in the event no single candidate wins a majority of first choice rankings (which often happens) the second choices are used to bring a candidate above 50 per cent so there is one clear winner. Cumulative voting: Each citizen is given as many votes as there are candidates - so they can choose to cast all their votes for their strong favorite, spread them around the candidates according to their political leaning. Approval voting: Voters can mark every candidate they approve of, and the candidate with the most votes wins. Compulsory voting: Citizens (in countries including Australia, Switzerland, Greece, Bolivia, Belgium, Iran, Italy, Singapore, and Argentina) who don't cast a ballot can be fined or imprisoned.

An additional problem with vote counting reforms is that many times those reforms are either recognized by the general public as not powerful enough to invoke serious change or - worse yet - too complicated for them to try to figure out! And without the support of the voting public, these reform movements fail to gather the needed momentum.

Vote sizing is not responsibility based.

Vote sizing solves the problem of impotence inherent in vote counting... but it's so powerful that we'll need to be careful how we use it. By adjusting the actual size of each voter's vote, we have unlocked an incredible power to do good, and do bad.

Fortunately, no one's been able to implement vote sizing in a bad way... yet. But there are proponents, albeit not as determined as we are, to put into play vote sizing techniques that run contrary to the kind we endorse on this site. Like many of the above-mentioned reforms, most of them have very good intentions. It goes as far back as Plato's Republic, and probably farther still in undocumented sources. The backbone to all their designs is a desire to empower those people who deserve it; so we'll call it responsibility-based vote sizing. Of course, this idea should rapidly raise the question: Who can determine which people deserve this larger vote and which people don't? Here's a list of some of the more popular responsibility-based vote sizing proposals being floated:

Responsibility-Based Vote Sizing Proposals Not all ways of sizing votes are effective at eliminating corruption. Some ineffective means of sizing votes are: Contribution-based vote sizing gives the largest vote to the person who pays the most taxes. In other words, wealthier people get larger votes. On the plus side, this sounds like it might provide a boost to the economy; but the on the minus side it runs a serious risk which out-weighs any benefit - which is that it only further entrenches (and how!) the holding of wealth and power in the same hands; and allows for more (not less) unhealthy corruption than we already suffer. Aptitude-based vote sizing gives the largest vote to the person who scores highest on some kind of aptitude test. On the surface, this sounds like a noble way to encourage people to educate themselves while simultaneously voting into office leaders who meet the highest standards. However, delving a little deeper, it becomes quite problematic in that it relies on a few unanswerable questions: Who writes these aptitude tests? Who grades them? Do we look for aptitude, intelligence, emotional stability, memorizing skills or something else? Should we give merit to 'book smarts' over 'street smarts'? And the list goes on... Occupation-based vote sizing gives the larger votes to people in specific professions (for example those who put their lives on the line, who save lives, who do the most for society, etc.). But like aptitude-based vote sizing, this method begs all sorts of problematic questions: Which occupations get the largest votes? Should we favor ones that require education over skill; or perhaps overall effect (as plumbers and garbage removers save more lives than doctors)? And which occupations are more valuable to society - CEOs, farmers, generals or anti-war activists? Again, the list of too-tough, unanswerable questions go on too far to make this idea viable...

The common question running through all these responsibility based vote sizing ideas is: How are they any different in spirit from the corruption that we're trying to reduce?? The answer is that they're not - they're simply massive exaggerations of the problem in hopes of drowning out whatever's left of our resistance. Giving more privileged people, or more successful people, or more powerful people, or more indoctrinated people, larger votes will only make a very bad situation much, much worse.

The flipside to responsibility-based vote sizing is need-based. We here at the DEP are need-based vote sizers, and we determine this need by a person's lack of income, and nothing else. It's simple, it's effective, it addresses problems that vote counting doesn't; and it treats humans according to their potential, not their status.

Vote sizing is non-violent activism.

Vote sizing is not afraid of violence, and the DEP can win under duress... but it doesn't need it one bit to succeed. By being rooted in simplicity, politics and resonating in people's daily lives; vote sizing can, if need be, actually feed off of ineffective, potentially violent resistance. At its core, vote sizing can run circles around brutality and topple it non-violently rather than beat the brutes at their own game. How? Because it's radically pro-active; it breaks the gridlock that usually forms in activist movements. We don't need to throw stones to threaten the elite, draw them out of hiding, and expose them. This is exactly how we can rapidly win rather than violently resist for a prolonged period.

Now that we've slammed so many other popular ideals, we should again repeat that paradoxically as vote sizers, it's not up to us to decide - our focus is on giving you a voice and letting you decide what's right for yourself. The main difference between us and those movements listed above is that instead of trying to choke off corruption, vote sizing aims to cut it out at it's core, which is the democratic process - and more specifically, the vote.

Even though many movements like vote sizing have the same good intentions; it will only be by embracing our right to err, and learn together, and only through the democratic process will we have a chance at realizing a better world.

Now that we've spent this section clarifying allies and competitors; it's time to delve into our vision, corruption - the root of all serious problems that plague us. To do that, read on to the next section.