CIP-60: One Human = One Vote

I’m proposing that we switch to a voting system that grants every Human Citizen exactly one vote. This is how every city in existence functions.

I coded a Snapshot Strategy implementing One Human = One Vote. It passes the automated QA tests that Snapshot Labs has in place and is ready to be merged once this proposal passes.

To vote, a Citizen must:

  1. Be in the Proof of Humanity registry
  2. Hold at least 1 CityDAO Citizen NFT

This grants them exactly 1 vote, regardless of how many Citizen NFTs they hold.

This change is proposed because, in recent Snapshots, there have been many people who hold multiple Citizen NFTs having a large impact on voting outcomes.

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The DAO is in the process of deciding whether to use Quadratic Voting (CIP-48), which is future-compatible with weighted preference voting and enables one-person multiple-fair-votes, the outcome I believe you are looking for without the pitfalls of one-person one-vote.

I am strong no for One-Human One-Vote as it suffers from the pitfalls of traditional IRL One-Person One-Vote systems and takes a step backwards from QV.

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Hi Will! Long time! I like how CIP 15 is still alive through other CIPs debated today.
I have only one concern: the QV is not the simplest voting system at macro scales and unless you can guarantee (not only assume) more involvement and knowledge from its voters it does not really make an IRL difference, does it? Even in traditional voting systems we see that direct rewards (or punishments) are what drive most of non-knowledgeable or not involved voters to vote and their vote is not capturing the essence of their true beliefs but the same power game, as we have IRL today. Maybe some sort of combo (e.g.: POH + Harberger Tax) could be a better fit for scaling this up long term. People understand taxes easier than quadratic roots :slight_smile:

Quadratic Voting (CIP-48), which is future-compatible with weighted preference voting and enables one-person multiple- fair -votes

Granting more votes to wealthier Humans (those with more Citizen NFTs) is definitely not “fair”.

This proposal is future proof with weighted preference voting as well, but for that to be fair it’s crucial that every human gets an identically sized “bucket of votes”.

I’m going to respond to both @sotto and @RosebuDAO in a single post as to not contest the thread unnecessarily.

@RosebuDAO - I am willing to consider this if the DAO is prepared to buy-back Citizen tokens at market price. Seeing as the primary reason to accumulate multiple tokens is additional votes[1], retroactively rescinding without compensation is both unfair and unjust, and a form of majoritarian coercion. The fairer approach here is changing the tokennomics such that the accumulation of additional tokens has diminishing marginal gains, which is what we’re doing with QV.[2]

@sotto - it’s going to take some time for everyone to familiarize themselves with QV, which is why we decided to roll it out in stages (see CIP-48). Ultimately though, I believe that it’s worth our efforts. We have the opportunity to experiment with, learn about, and improve the user experience of QV and establish best practices that can be learned and applied by others IRL (like the Andrew Yang team who I’m working with at Lobby3.io). In terms of issues like voter apathy, there are creative solutions such as use it or lose it where voters who don’t vote in a proposal have their voting power diminished in subsequent proposals. This would act as a both a forcing function by attaching a cost to inaction, and a fitness function by culling those who care little from the DAO, leaving only those who are highly engaged.[3]

Footnotes:

  1. The accumulation of multiple Citizen tokens itself isn’t inherently bad or unfair, and there is no moral reason tokens should be equally available to all. In practice, it is the easiest manner to express weighted preference, which we’re attempting to enable with QV.
  2. Over a longer timeframe, we should consider other reasons why tokens would have value outside of voting, such as proportional warrants on fractions of airdropped Parcels.
  3. For anyone interested in learning more about this, I have written an example code you can find here - GitHub - 721labs/incentivized-democracy: A toy example using Quadratic Voting to incentivize voter participation
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@will

I am willing to consider this if the DAO is prepared to buy-back Citizen tokens at market price. […] rescinding without compensation is […] unfair

You’re essentially arguing that CityDAO should change it’s core mission (which is to become a model futuristic City) just to appease people trying to profit from, or dominate the governance of, CityDAO. I completely disagree. People who bought up many Citizen NFTs somewhere along the way forgot what the word “Citizen” even means. It’s a single human constituent of a governed land. It doesn’t make any sense for someone to say “I am 5 citizens of the United States of America”. We should not alter CityDAO’s core mission just because speculative/dominating buyers/voters don’t understand what the word “Citizen” means.

Speculative Citizen NFT holders wouldn’t be at a complete loss: they can still sell them for profit in some years after the price skyrockets.

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@RosebuDAO - you have some interesting points but you seem determined to make everything black and white, either 100% good or bad, and I think there is a lot of nuance in between.

You are right that on paper “every city in existence functions with 1 citizen 1 vote.” But where has that gotten us? When you look at cities today are they shining examples of governance that we want to emulate? Do we want CityDAO to be the same as every city in existence, or should we be willing to experiment with new things to be a future city?

I’d also argue that the “1 citizen 1 vote” that we see in cities is really only true on paper - its not how it actually works. Look at any big city and there are wealthy individuals and people of influence around the mayors inner circle etc which clearly have more say than other citizens. All citizens are clearly not equal, and the same can be said of the US system with campaign contributions and wealth rendering the “vote” essentially meaningless. I think its a mistake to assume that 1 citizen 1 vote is the answer to democracies problems. Please read the chapter on QV in Radical Markets, the authors leave open the possibility of eventually being able to buy and sell voice credits. It sounds crazy (literally buying votes!) - but the other benefits of quadratic voting may diminish the bad parts about that strategy. Either way I think its worth considering. Maybe we can get Glen Weyl on the podcast.

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Thank you @will ! Interesting approach and very curious how this will unfold. Do you think its applicability at large scale will result in the same acceptance as in a relatively smaller sized DAO group?

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Just because this is how cities work doesn’t mean it is the best. There is a lot of misinformation with regards to Quadratic Voting. If votes are issued in line with one person it is simply a better way to rank choices. It offers more flexibility. don’t hold on to the past one-person-one-vote with better alternatives.

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Totally agree with your sentiments.

@will @sotto I’m curious as well.