What would happen if a country weighted voting in inverse proportion to wealth?

Question

It's often remarked that voting with dollars — not literally, but through spending and the influence that comes with control of capital — is more ultimately influential than actual voting in a democracy.

What if a society were to set up its electoral system to counteract that, where the poorest people's votes counted for more? In fact, to simplify things, what if only if people in the poorest class were allowed to vote? Presumably, people would select policies that are to their own benefit, but also include the possibility of rising out of the voting class. Or, would they? Imagine a country roughly like America today but with this system in place. Would it be significantly different? Or, imagine this system put into place in the 1890s as a result of a vastly more influential populist movement — how would it play out?

Presume that directly buying votes is illegal and effectively enforced, as well as equivalent coercion. And since it's kind of boring if the equivalent of tax evasion makes the whole thing moot, let's take for granted some effective equation which considers income and capital and takes into account (uh, pun might be intended) all possible dodges.

Answer 1

Likely nothing would be different at all. Today, the poor substantially outweigh the rich, as such, the ultra-rich directly control less than 0.1% of the vote. The political power that the rich wield is due to the power they wield over the poor, mostly via control of education, the media, and popular culture. In America, at least, almost 15% of people live below the 'official' poverty line, which is about $22,000. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States)

The middle class is alarmingly small. Combined household income above 100K already puts a person in the 79th percentile. Almost 50% of American households bring in less than 50K per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States

Basically, the 'poor' already control the vote. The rich, however, control (or at least educate, entertain, and influence) the poor.

Answer 2

If your theoretical society is otherwise identical to ours, the results would be catastrophic.

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A few reasons to back my statement:

• Poor people are usually lesser educated, therefore more vulnerable with the means of populism and propaganda. It means most likely the worst candidate will win.
• Poor people are easier to buy. Anyone who would want to win an election would just had to hand out a few dollars to those who live in poverty.
• Poor people are usually lesser informed. Because the lack of sophisticated media and the long and countless work hours, poor people has a less extended horizon. They could elect terrible people not knowing about the stuff they are guilty in.
• Since only poor people can vote, but because of the reasons listed above most likely the rich are being voted for, the first set of politicians would use their power to deprive anyone else of publicity to keep their power.
• If poor people would be elected they would soon become rich and lose their contact with reality.
• Poor people are more vulnerable to threats... if the factory owner - who himself can't vote - mentions there will be a staff reduction if XY wins, how many workers of that factory will vote on XY?

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Edit:

Rereading my answer made me feel I has to state I'm neither a fascist, nor a sociodarwinist. I don't think there are no smart but poor people, but I think quality education cost a lot, and in many cases people in poverty can't even support their children to go through free education, so they will not have well-payed jobs, so most of the next generation remains poor and undereducated.

Answer 3

...people would select policies that are to their own benefit...

Nailed it.

If this system were applied to modern America, the low-income voters would likely be motivated to support policy that would provide for all their needs and allow them to live a comfortable life without actually being taken out of the "voting class." Think government-provided housing, food, clothing, transportation, luxuries, etc. for everyone who makes less than the "voting cut-off salary," whatever that may be. Anything to improve the lives of the "voting class" without actually restricting their ability to vote and continue to influence policy.

Best-case scenario, we'd end up with something akin to "Basic Income," where the government automatically gives all citizens enough money to live off of for simply existing, (hopefully) encouraging and enabling them to follow their passions and dreams rather than chase the almighty dollar. Worst-case scenario, we might see a situation in which the country isn't able to support the economic cost of providing for the "voting class" in the ways it expects and votes for, eventually bankrupting the government.

Answer 4

Well, mostly likely that those that became rich enough to not vote would leave for another country that didn't take away their opinion.

If only the poor could vote, then they would tend to vote for things that help them out. Any reasonably advanced country actually tries to do this anyway, help those down trodden. But if only the poorest could vote, likely the communist/socialist hell that some are claiming will happen if certain people get into power (here in the US) would happen. They would tax the rich down. This would help push them out of the country.

The other way could be that the rich all try running for public offices to have a more direct hand in what gets put into law, and they and their friends give themselves loop holes, kind of like today...

Money always talks. Disenfranchising one group to benefit another never really works, it just puts those who can't vote into the power of those who can. What you really need is a way to level out the influence of the money behind those votes.

This might be by forcing ALL political money to go through some kind of filter, that tracks all political funds. As well as actual tracking of individual wealth of every politician. How much they are worth at the beginning of the year/term and how much they are worth at the end, and they have to show WHERE the difference came from. But since so many are getting away with accepting bribes in one form or another, why should they vote in such a law?

Answer 5

This ultimately depends on:

• The importance of voting. The right to vote is not terribly important for an individual in a modern, highly-developed nation-state. How much would an individual be personally willing to give up in material well-being for Red to be in charge for another four years, as opposed to Blue?
• The rate at which voting power decreases with wealth. For a logarithmic relationship, a millionaire has 1/6th the vote of a pauper, and twice the vote of a trillionaire. A linear relationship would have considerably different effects.

That said, some effects might be:

• Switch to corporate ownership of assets Instead of people buying their own house, they would simply register a corporation to purchase the house. The corporation doesn't lose any voting privileges, so it's no loss to it.
• Move to consumption and income over saving. You say wealth is tied to reduced voting power, but not spending power. Instead of saving for retirement (where your nest egg reduces your voting privileges), you consume now.
• Capital flight People would put their wealth in vessels out of the purview of the wealth test. You say that the policy is well-enforced, but you didn't say it was well-defined -- which is, of course, how systems are gamed.

Answer 6

If votes count in exact inverse proportion to each voter's wealth, the power will end up with a small elite who can afford good enough accountants to make their legal worth on election day come out as $0.01.

The vote of a typical working loser who needs to hold enough cash to pay rent and buy groceries won't be worth diddly, and they might as well not bother.

Bonus points if the typical working losers think they're in power anyway, because the exact math of weighing votes at each polling place is not made public (each voter's exact wealth is protected by privacy after all, right?)

Answer 7

Via La revolution ... welcome to the oligarchy!

So only the poor can vote and the become very powerful, by creating a permanent ruling class.
They pass a law that only people who can currently vote and their decedents can vote, a grandfather clause. Then they can give themselves power, wealth, and benefits, think the party elite in Soviet Russia.

Edit: It would have to be a constitutional amendment in the US to prevent the supreme court from striking it down. It would still be possible with a majority of the population.

This holds true for restricting voting to any minority(subgroup) of the county's population.

By restricting voting rights to any minority group you change a democracy to an oligarchy.

Answer 8

I think the way to look at what will happen is to consider the incentives on an individual voter. Call him Fred. Like most people Fred votes according to his individual interest. He votes for a party that will give him more money. Many others vote likewise and that party wins. So Fred gets his money, rises above the threshold, and ceases to be a voter. He's definitely gained on the deal; getting richer at the cost of the loss of a mostly symbolic privilege only used occasionally and which made an infinitesimal difference to his circumstances or, indeed, to the result of the election.

Therefore let us assume most people act in the same way as Fred did. Soon there aren't that many people still left in the voting class. Assuming as per the question that the system is administered without significant corruption, they cannot be bribed because any substantial bribe would self-defeatingly lift them out of the category of voters. (A factor that would help to keep the system honest would be that any increase in the wealth of a poor person is difficult to hide. Furthermore there are by now not very many electors left, so they can all be kept under scrutiny.)

So the question becomes, what sort of people voluntarily stay in the voter class? Two groups, those who cannot rise out of it - sad cases unlikely to exercise their right to vote - and those who choose not to. The second group splits into two sub-groups: persons for whom civic duty outweighs the desire for material wealth and persons for whom civic duty outweighs the desire for material wealth and whose politics I don't like, i.e. mad fanatics.

If it persisted, this system might result in some sort of "Rule of the Saints". Three of the many historical examples of rule by an austere and committed minority are (in increasing order of their rule's severity) Edinburgh under the Covenanters, Khomeini's Iran, and the Khmer Rouge. But it tends not to persist.

There is an alternative scenario. Going back to Fred, he votes for the party that promises him more money. As in the earlier version, that party gets in, but this time the party bosses are smarter and Fred is … not so smart. They arrange things so that Fred and people like him always think they are going to soon be given enough money to rise out of the voting class but somehow, for excellent reasons, it never seems to actually happen. Fred and his neighbours get benefits and promises just big enough to keep their hopes up, and to dissuade them, perhaps, from seeking to gain wealth by other than political means. They remain in a state of poverty and dependency comforted by the flattery of politicians when election time comes round. I shall refrain from citing real life examples of this system.

Answer 9

This would give the voters a great deal of incentive to understate their wealth. Perhaps they vote in something where government assistance does not count. This is actually how poverty is usually measured in the USA now, so it's not so far fetched. So the new rich would be the poor, who only receive government benefits. Their government benefits might be mansions, but they're government mansions so they don't count in wealth.

Of course, with the poor running things that way, the middle class would become poorer and poorer, eventually joining the voting class. But no one could leave the voting class. So it would swell and swell. Eventually they wouldn't have enough workers. They'd have to draft workers from the voting class. They'd come up with some snappy slogan, like "From each according to ability, to each according to need!"

That didn't seem to work out so well in the Soviet Union.

Answer 10

I've always dreamed of exactly the opposite system: your vote is proportional to your contribution to the government (i.e. the tax you paid minus the benefits you received since the last election).

Granted that this is contrary to current opinion, but it has merits:

1. It is fair. In the true meaning of the word.
2. Many of the successful democracies of the past implicitly adopted this system.
3. We know it works because this is how we've been running companies for centuries (i.e. shares) and they clearly out competes the government.

Answer 11

This would put politicians in an interesting position.

On the one hand, they would have to cater to the poor. But on the other hand, when they get elected, they need to make sure that their voters stay poor so they can vote them again, while also keeping them happy so they want to vote them again.

The result would be that politicians would avoid the question of social inequality as much as they can. They would instead try to mobilize the voters with other topics which are highly emotional but have little impact on social standing. Party lines would likely follow ideologies and philosophies and less income classes. I could imagine that fundamentalist Christian parties could do quite well in this system because of the Christian idea of idealizing poverty.

An interesting strategy to stay in power might be to create policies which make the voters of the governing party worse off economically so their voting power increases.

Answer 12

The government would collapse.

Why? It would collapse either by becoming a tyranny or by losing all power. Law compliance must be largely voluntary for a government to work. If those who have the most to lose were least represented, they would have the least incentive to be in compliance.

Attempting compliance through large-scale enforcement efforts would result in a tyranny.

Allowing those with the most wealth to side-step the law would lead to the government getting charged absurd amounts of money even for the basic services because those running those services would be viewing the government as external predatory forces (which must be resisted). They would thus charge as much as possible because price is the cost of getting service (not to be confused with the cost of providing service). At the same time those with the most money would be doing everything possible to resist using that money to support functioning of the government (ie, looking for ways out of paying taxes).

The central theme of Aristotle's "Politics" is that the government must not disenfranchise any of the socio-economic classes from power. And that the power must be proportional to the amount of influence. Aristotle had a lot of examples to draw on because he lived in the times of Greek city-states. And each city-state functioned autonomously (more or less). So he was able to observe a lot of patterns on which to draw his conclusions.