This is Part III of a three-part series. [Part I] [Part II]

Around two thirds of the population of the world’s democracies surveyed don’t believe their democracy functions well . 62% think their nation is on the wrong track. Due to lack of accountability between elections, politicians globally violate campaign pledges, on average, 30% to 40% of the time, and mostly break campaign pledges of highest importance to voters. In addition, as documented in [Part I of this series, Failure to Represent,] all existing representative democracies, even those with proportional representation, stick voters with lesser evil dilemmas. 

When participatory democracies gain control of territory, as documented in [Part II of this series, Control Failure,] information constraints rapidly hollow out that popular power. In all participatory governance, participation rates remain universally low.

Those who favor expanding democracy as part of healing this broken world need to outline a vision of some means to democratize government institutions – which, after all, were always supposed to have been democratic.

This article suggests fixing representative democracy by extending the principles of its best form – the parliamentary system. Because the executive should execute laws passed by the legislature (intended to represent the will of the people), the legislature should control the executive branch. In parliamentary democracies, legislatures choose the primary executive – appointing and removing them by simple majorities. The legislature can hold the executive branch accountable, even between elections. Voters need this same relationship to their legislators – the ability to withdraw their vote from their current representative and cast it for another one at will.

How can voters gain such control? Steal the idea of voting proxies from that most undemocratic of institutions, the corporation. A voting shareholder in a corporation, unwilling to attend shareholder meetings, may delegate their voting proxy to someone who takes part. That attendee, in addition to casting their own votes, can also cast the votes of those whose proxies they hold. Importantly, anyone who delegates their proxy has the right to revoke it and delegate it to someone else. In corporations, proxies have nothing to do with democracy, because shareholders own multiple, highly unequal, numbers of shares. But a one voter, one vote, one proxy system of election would transform legislatures into delegatory representative bodies – Delegatory Democracies. 

Each delegate would act as proxy-holder for voters, casting the same number of votes within the legislature as they received during the election. If a lawmaker acted contrary to the will of constituents, voters could simply visit permanent voting stations, or request new vote-by-mail proxy forms from election offices, then transfer their proxies to different legislators at any time. That ability provides the accountability between elections existing representative democracies lack. However, unlike participatory democracies, voters only need intervene between elections when a politician does something wrong.

If legislative elections consist of voters delegating proxies, what prevents legislatures ballooning into hundreds of thousands or millions of members holding a few proxies each? The answer: delegatory legislatures, like conventional ones, should consist of fixed numbers of lawmakers. A 400-member legislature, for example, would only seat the 400 candidates holding the most proxies. Candidates placing below that ranking could redelegate their proxies to seated members through negotiation. Voters who disapproved of the result could, in turn, redelegate

Thus, legislative elections would consist of several steps. Initially, voters would delegate proxies by mail or in voting booths. Such delegation would look nearly identical to casting a conventional ballot. Then negotiations would place proxies of candidates who did not win seats with candidates who did. After that, voters dissatisfied with the results would revoke and redelegate their proxies in a second round of voting; a final round of negotiations would follow. Note that the first voting round would be far more important than the second; during that round, the overwhelming majority of voters would see their candidate seated, or their proxies transferred to a close ally of their defeated candidate who supported the same policies. 

Beyond these rounds, voters would retain the ability to recall their proxies and delegate their votes to another member at any time. New voters, as they became eligible, could delegate their proxies to any existing legislator – without having to wait for the next election. 

Voters would cast ballots listing only local candidates, and cast them within local communities. Ballots, however, would not chain the electorate to districts; voters could write-in candidates from anywhere in the nation if no local candidate represented their views.

Even though delegates would hold highly unequal numbers of voting proxies, such elections would result in a fair distribution of power. If 60% of voters supported gun regulation, delegates supporting gun regulation would hold 60% of proxies. Delegatory Democracy compares to conventional proportional representation where parties win seats in rough proportion to the votes they receive, but offers accountability that conventional proportional representation lacks. Obviously, this system could be used not only for national elections, but also for state and local legislatures and councils. 

Lesser Evil Paradox

Beyond providing accountability, Delegatory Democracy would reduce the lesser evil problem to near zero. Existing representative democracies stick voters with the choice between lesser evil voting and wasting votes on hopeless candidates, risking their last choice winning. In all existing representative democracies candidates or parties who represent voters on issue A may not represent them on issue B, while those who represent voters on B may not represent them on A. In nations with proportional representation, which might otherwise minimize lesser evil voting, this is aggravated by minimum percentages of votes to win seats (thresholds), since votes for a party that cannot clear the threshold are wasted. 

In a 400-person legislature, any candidate winning 0.25% of the vote would be seated. However, some candidates would receive far more than that. Since the top 400 vote getters would become legislators, every candidate winning more than 0.25% of the vote would ensure victory for one or more hopeful(s) obtaining less than that percentage.

Combining the tiny vote percentage required to win seats with voter ability to write-in candidates from anywhere ensures opinions held by quite small minorities representation by a seated member. As previously mentioned, the proxies of the overwhelming majority would be held either by the delegates they voted for or by close allies with the same policy positions. Some very tiny fringe views would remain unrepresented, mathematically very close to zero – much smaller than in existing proportional representation systems (even those with low thresholds for winning seats). Of course, losing candidates with views that differed from all the seated members could still try to use their one-time ability to transfer proxies to a winning candidate as negotiating leverage for policy concessions. 

At the same time, short ballots listing candidates within a single district keep the voting system simple and clear. Voters have an overwhelming bias against writing in candidates, and write-in ballots normally represent a tiny fraction of votes cast. So long as there is a candidate in-district who represents the views of a voter adequately it is unlikely they will write-in someone from outside their locality.

Implications for Union, Activist, Political, and Other Voluntary Organizations

Delegatory Democracy could improve democratically-run voluntary organizations too. People often grow disillusioned with voluntary organizations for reasons similar to the reasons they grow disillusioned with governments. In the name of practicality, groups can drift from their original mission and grow timid or even corrupt. Member participation and influence can dwindle: less than 10% of Sierra Club members typically vote in board member elections; the turnout in the 2023 election for UAW President was less than 15%.

 A large labor union, or a good-sized socialist organization such as Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – any convention run group – would benefit from proxies. Election of delegates to conventions would look very much like elections now; but the process of assigning proxies would result in a convention whose participants were chosen by proportional representation. Importantly, the various permanent boards, committees and officers elected during the convention should be chosen through reassignment of proxies by convention attendees. That would allow shifting of proxies by those who elected the original attendees between conventions, providing feedback and control by membership. Note that while the election of delegates could be done online or by mail, Delegatory Democracy doesn’t require this. If a group such as the DSA preferred that voters in elections consist only of active members during attendance at meetings, Delegatory Democracy is perfectly consistent with that. It is important, though, that convention-based voluntary organizations ensure that poorer locals or chapters are not excluded. Convention-based groups should either pay for delegates’ travel expenses, disperse the physical location of the convention over multiple sites linked electronically, or allow electronic attendance. National conventions should also do instant proxy-weighted electronic vote counts, so the proxy system does not require time-consuming roll-calls. 

A Warming About Proxies in Voluntary Organizations

Because proxies make member day-to-day influence more practical, they bring an important and difficult question to the forefront. Who should have voting rights? Geographical political bodies and labor unions both answer that question in well-known ways. In a political body governing a geographic region, at minimum every citizen within that region over a certain age resident for a minimum period of time, and probably non-citizens as well, should have the right to vote. Similarly, anyone hired into a bargaining unit, or participating in a union drive under certain conditions specified by the union, should (as now) be eligible to join the union as a voting member. Membership in both these cases connects to social roles, and anyone occupying those roles has a moral right to an equal say in such organizations. 

But who should constitute the voting membership of a voluntary group where membership does not tie so closely to well defined social roles?

One practice that goes back at least to the 1960s, and is still found in organizations with roots in that era, is clearly wrong. No one should get a vote in a voluntary organization five minutes after they show up in a meeting for the first time. 

Some general, but far from comprehensive principles: Anyone joining a truly voluntary organization as a voting member should: 

   1) share the principles, goals, and ambitions of that organization on a general level, with plenty of room for disagreement on non-core principles and upon details.

   2) have a stake in that organization and have contributed to it in some way.

   3) have been part of that organization long enough to understand it in a practical sense.

If these seem unsatisfactorily general, it is because they are. Specifics are best decided on a case-by-case basis. Especially, striking a balance in the first principle is difficult. Steering between the sectarianism of “democratic centralism” or the equivalent “value-based” narrowness of some Green groups, and the silly putty vulnerability of Occupy requires a difficult balance. 

My personal experience of groups too slack in voting requirements include the following:

   1) An organization (admittedly one that was already dying) was taken over by hostile forces, and systematically looted and dismantled.

   2) the frustrating of an organization’s ability to accomplish anything by participants who were there for the fun of debate rather than to advance the group’s goals.

   3) an organization destroyed by a faction of people who joined it shortly after formation in order to change the organizational goal, who opposed the intent with which it was founded. 

Any democratically-run membership organization faces these risks. But the very advantages of proxies, that they are a path to continuing membership control, becomes a disadvantage if membership requirements do not protect against both hostile takeovers and chaos agents. Proxies make more urgent a need faced by all democratic organizations. Again, please note the distinction between organizations whose membership corresponds to a clear social role such as governments and unions, and the type of voluntary organizations where the correspondence is less clear. In the former, voting should be as easy and widespread as possible; in the latter it should be limited to active members as the organization defines active. In some cases, the organization may legitimately limit voting to in-person and electronic attendees at meetings. 

Conclusion

Delegatory Democracy would use proxies to combine representation with accountability, while minimizing the need to vote for lesser evils. Representatives would hold voting power within legislatures in proportion to their support among voters; voters could redelegate proxies from one representative to another at any time. This provides a low-barrier recall in exact proportion to net changes in voter support for a representative. Delegatory Democracy could make democracy responsive and effective within both governments and voluntary/political organizations. It is an important part of any comprehensive program to make better things possible.

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But What About…?

Might this result in some small states electing *no* delegates?

 To prevent this, in each state where no candidate received the minimum number of votes required to take office the legislature would seat the candidate winning the most proxies within that state – in addition to the those nationwide who met the threshold. However, like any other delegate, they would vote only the proxies they held within the body, preventing overweighting of lawmakers from small states.

Couldn’t a handful of extremely popular representatives (or even one) dominate the legislature?

 As a safeguard, the system could put a ceiling on the percentage of proxies any one member could hold. Just like candidates who did not meet the minimum threshold, any member with too many proxies would redelegate the extras. As with failed candidates, they would not become puppet masters, because once proxies were redelegated, any further withdrawal and redelegation of proxies would be done by the voters.

A limit, however, may be unwise. When popular opinion changes, a policy favored by the majority of citizens may find support among a tiny minority of lawmakers. A ceiling on proxies held might prevent a legislature from reflecting such shifts. If members holding an extraordinary number of proxies tried to seize power, the public’s ability to shift their proxies would provide the best possible check. If the public chose not to use that ability, no institutional structure ever prevented a people from voluntarily giving up its rights to a dictator. Attempts to protect people from themselves by creating governments better than those governed usually end up nightmarishly worse. 

Would low-barrier recall result in the type of abusive process gaming we often see in California and Washington State in the United States?

No, because changes in voting power reflect net changes in popularity; voters individually shift their recalled votes to the legislator of their choice, protecting against such abuse. Timing a campaign during a low turnout window does nothing to increase recall success; nor can a campaign recall an official with fewer votes than initially elected them. 

Will the returnable vote threaten the secret ballot?

Fortunately, well known technologies like  Centralized Homomorphic Databases with E2E-V/ would allow the combination of a secret ballot with revokable proxies.

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Portions of this article were previously published by the author in New Politics, and are reused with permission.

This proposal is rooted in a long tradition notably including Charles Dodson’s (Lewis Carroll, author of Alice In Wonderland) 1884 work, Principles of Parliamentary Representation, and Bryan Ford’s 2002 Delegative Democracy proposal, commonly referred to as Liquid Democracy.

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Receipts:

Worldwide slightly under two thirds of the population are dissatisfied with their democracyRichard Wike, Janell Fetterolf and Jonathan Schulman. 2026-Jun-30. “Dissatisfaction with democracy remains widespread in many nations.”  Pew Research Center.

62% think their nation is on the wrong track and the economy is bad.Teodros Gebrekal. 2025-Feb. “What Worries the World? February 2025”. Ipsos.

Politicians fulfill pledges, on average, 60% to 70% of the time.R Thomson. R. T. Royed, E. Naurin, J. Artes, R. Costello, L. Ennser-Jedenastik, M. Ferguson, P. Kostadinova, C. Moury, and F. Petry. 2017-Jun-06. “The Fulfillment of Parties’ Election Pledges: A Comparative Study on the Impact of Power Sharing.” American Journal of Political Science (61:3: pp527–542),  https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12313

Politicians break promises of highest importance to votersJonathan Mellon, Christopher Prosser and Adam Feldman. 2021-Jul-15. “Which Promises Actually Matter? Election Pledge Centrality and Promissory Representation.” Public Studies(71:03) This mainly focuses on the 2017 UK election, but also surveys other three studies and finds similar results across 18 other elections.Another, later study found confirmation in results for a Canadian election. Yannick Dufresne, Alexandre Fortier-Chouinard, Camille Tremblay-Antoine and Adrien Cloutier. 2023-Sep-05. “Weighting Pledge Fulfilment: A Measure Based on Pledge Salience.” Presented at European Consortium For Political Research General Conference  Charles University 4-8 September 2023.  Prague.

Less than 10% of Sierra Club members typically vote in board elections.ED Bradley. 2016-Mar-01. “A Democratic Sierra Club Demands Grassroots Participation.” Sierra Club

Less than 15% turnout 2023 UAW electionAround 139.5 thousand votes tallied out of our 950,000 eligible to vote, well less than 15%Unofficial Results: Region Totals: United Auto WorkersCustom Table Result: 2023 UAW Officers Run-OffMay 22, 2023.

Gar Lipow. 2024-Winter.  “Participatory Democracy Minus Endless Meetings.” New Politics( XIX:4 whole number 76).

Charles Dodgson, Charles. 1884. The Principles of Parliamentary Representation.

Liquid Democracy/AKA Delegative DemocracyBryan Ford. 2002-May-15.  Delegative Democracy . (Note: this is the first formal paper on this, but was discussed online and the term “Liquid Democracy” coined in 2000.

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