Delegated Voting

Delegation helps voters to make their voice heard in a decision even if they cannot or do not want to explicitly vote on certain proposals. A delegation is an authorization of one user (the principal) to allow another user (the agent) to vote on his or her behalf. Each delegation is valid within a certain scope, e.g. with regards to a political area like climate policy. This means that the agent can vote on the principal's behalf in all decisions that are marked to be inside the given scope. The delegations of a voter can thus be seen as his or her personal cabinet. In this cabinet, one agent is responsible for making decisions regarding the subject area A, while another agent is responsible for making decisions in a second subject area, B.

The special properties of Adhocracy's delegation system include:

• Unanimity: When a voter has delegated voting on a certain proposal to two or more agents, his or her vote will only be counted if both agents make the same decision. If the agents disagree, no vote will be cast by their principal unless he or she does so manually. This can be used to intentionally limit the power of an agent in a specific domain by requiring a second delegate to concur.
• Transitivity: If a delegation is created in which the agent has delegated their voting powers themselves, the principals vote will be available to the agents agent. In other words: If A delegates to B and B delegates to C, then C can vote on A's behalf. This can be used to quickly reproduce the delegation decisions another voter has made: A voter can just delegate to the other voter, instead of reproducing all individual delegations.