Once the community has voted to build the house, how do they decide its style? Of the most popular options used in modern governments, the most effective is Rank-Choice voting. In this system, voters rank each option in order of preference, and an iterative process whittles down the list to a single answer with the most widespread support. In America’s problematic, winner-take-all system (first past the post), an extreme candidate can win with the highest vote total, even though most voters don’t agree with the result – it’s the primary reason third-party candidates are not viable, as they “spoil” the outcome by “splitting the ticket.” Instead, Rank-Choice’s elimination rounds reallocate the votes for each choice eliminated, and the process repeats as many times over as necessary until one surpasses fifty-percent. Wherever practiced, Rank-Choice moderates extreme divisions in the electorate by highlighting acceptable compromises, and ends the tyranny of the isolated, radical plurality. Candidates are neither rewarded for pandering to the extremes with fringe ideas nor punished for their centrist participation, but instead, incentivized to reach out to the entire electorate with sensible solutions.

In the Novel Universe Cult, both Rank-Choice and Approval voting are acceptable standalone methods for selecting among a group of candidates. As Rank-Choice can be convoluted, time-consuming, and, in certain cases, suffer technical issues with the math’s fairness, Approval voting is preferred. Instead of ranking the list of candidates, with Approval voting, the voter simply marks each option they approve of, leaving no mark for those unapproved of. The winner is the one with the most marks – simple, efficient, elegant.

Fitted to our more granular neural-democracy, we’ve developed an alternate version based on Approval voting, employing two of the three dimensions of emotion: valence and intensity. This form of voting is intended primarily for issues that might have a significant, long-lasting impact, like the existence of any “permanent” structure. As such, a key feature is the possibility the vote will not end with the selection of a candidate. However, when used as designed, the most acceptable option will emerge after some number of prescribed iterations. When the stakes are too high to second guess, QT Preference voting is how the Cult makes those high-impact choices.

For valence, voters mark a thumbs-up or thumbs-down (yum, yuck) for each candidate, leaving those without a preference with no mark (meh). For intensity, voters may highlight one “like” and one “loath” candidate, reflecting the idea that many voters often have a single preferred or despised candidate. The more useful ballot is the one where a voter has made fewer marks, while also using the “like” / “loath” options. In this way, their preferences have been more clearly expressed.

Once the issue’s participation is met and the Frame Effect’s timer begins to run, the vote enters the evaluation stage, where each thumbs up or down on a ballot is multiplied by the voter’s input bias, with a “like” or “loath” mark doubling the voter’s bias for the single candidate. The votes are summed for each option across all ballots, with thumbs-down votes subtracted from thumbs-up (potentially resulting in negative scores). The candidate with the highest score moves forward first, and will be selected if it passes a simple evaluation: does the candidate have a positive overall score, and has fewer than a third of the total electorate cast a “loath” vote for the candidate? To be clear, if the total electorate is 100 people, with 75 weighing in, the number of “loath” votes to reject the candidate is not 25 or more, but 33. If the top scoring candidate doesn’t meet this evaluation, the next highest score is evaluated. This repeats until one passes or no more positive scores are left to evaluate, in which case, the vote has failed to pick a viable candidate.

If a candidate passes the evaluation when the Frame’s timer runs out, the candidate is selected. Should none pass the evaluation, none have met the electorate’s high standards. In such cases, River Sages and those associated with creating the initial proposal are encouraged to poll voters, dig into the data, and reconfigure the candidates’ details to create ones that might pass. At this point, the proposal’s creators can either resubmit the proposal as a new issue, or have the Sages create an ISD to reopen the Frame’s countdown with the altered candidate(s) listed.

QT Preference is not designed as a standalone method but as an integral part of our neural-democracy. While being more efficient than Rank-Choice, it also more clearly reflects the electorate’s intent under our unique form of democracy. Unlike Approval voting, it has the added benefit of establishing a ceiling for the electorate’s “loathing” of any particular candidate – if more than a third of all the people feel that passionate about a specific option, the sponsors are forced to find another one, or drop the issue. Of course, once the Frame’s timer has run out and no candidate has passed the evaluation, it is still possible that at some point in the future enough voters might alter their ballots, allowing for a candidate to pass the evaluation. As the Frame had already closed, the candidate would be immediately implemented; however, in this case, unique to QT Preference voting, time must be given to notify the electorate of this outcome, allowing voters to change their vote in light of the new information. The amount of time is generally days or a few weeks, but no more than half the original Low Frame’s length, and must be spelled out in the proposal before becoming an issue.

Although individual voters’ views cannot be publicly assessed, and therefore, directly targeted for lobbying at any point in any voting process, the electorate’s general positions can be assessed, and therefore, influenced. The daily standing of each candidate, including its proportion of “like” and “loath” votes, is publicly updated, but only during the evaluation stage. Because it’s possible to estimate voters’ general positions, it’s possible to move these positions one way or another by addressing their perceived concerns. This can be accomplished through the hard work of tweaking the candidate’s details, while in “dialogue” with the electorate. Dialogue metaphorically means “listening,” through polling, focus groups, messaging, and the like, while “speaking” means updating, with Sage approval, details of particular candidates based on what was “said.” By evaluating how those implementations seemingly influence the voting numbers, this “indirect lobbying” process allows those interested in a specific candidate the opportunity to adjust its details, possibly increasing its chance to be selected when the Frame closes by recruiting the “likes” and reducing the “loathes.” This, of course, can only be done by making said candidate more palatable for those who loath the candidate, while maintaining or improving the candidate’s characteristics in the eyes of more voters – the fundamental aim of any effective democracy.

Read our philosophy to better understand our Creed.