We have preferences in our elections – PR-STV – and quite right too. But not in our decision-making – both in the Assembly and in referendums, it’s only ‘yes-or-no,’ ‘for-or-against’ – and quite wrong too.
You can’t vote on everything. For example, it would be stupid to vote on Yīn or Yáng. The two are not a duality. In like manner, you should not have a majority vote on the implication, “Are you Russian or Ukrainian?” After all, they are both Slav; they are both Christian (if that matters); and they both share the same linguistic family. Many of them are – or rather, were – almost the same. {And in 2014, Russian separatists were using the word Scotland, Шотландия (Shotlandiya); I was there.}
On a different level, you should not also have a binary vote on just one option, in a debate of more than two options. Brexit. The UK could have been in the EU, EEA, CU or WTO; yet we had only one vote, ‘in the EU’ and, as we all know, 48% wanted to remain. If we’d had three other majority votes on the other three options, they would probably have lost by even bigger margins.
Basically, if we want to find our collective will, we should ask everyone to be positive, to say what they want! The Brexit vote told us what 52% did not want! So, if majority voting is to be used, it should be on two positive proposals, a pairing: for example, “Shall we drive on the left-hand side of the road or on the right?” “Shall we have red or white wine for dinner?” If however, there are more than two options on the table (or menu), a binary vote is inadequate.
The first person to realise this was Pliny the Younger in 105: hence plurality voting (which is like first-past-the-post), so the winning option might not have a majority at all, only the largest minority. The first government to use this – Europe was in the Dark Ages – was the Chinese Jīn Dynasty in the year 1197; (Britain had a go in 1948, in a referendum for Newfoundland; Ireland has yet to even try).
Europe now returned to the debate on pluralism. In 1268, Venice started with approval voting – no preferences, you just tick one or more of those options (or candidates) of which (whom) you ‘approve,’ and whatever (whoever) gets the most is the winner.
Then, in 1433, from the Vatican, Cardinal Nicholas Cusanus devised a points system, soon to be called a Borda Count BC, and this was developed in 1770 by Jean-Charles de Borda into today’s Modified BC or MBC. Others followed, like the single transferable vote STV and the two-round system TRS. Of them all, only the MBC is guaranteed to be non-majoritarian. At best, and normally from about five or six options – perfect for a multi-party assembly or parliament – it can identify the option with the highest average preference; and an average, of course, involves every MP or TD, not just a majority of them. Uniquely, it is egalitarian: accurate, and very democratic; the ideal voting procedure for a power-sharing administration, and it could also be perfect for the UN’s annual COP conferences.
THE DE BORDA RULE
A majority vote may be fair, if its dichotomy is a duality;
when more than two options are on the table, an MBC should be used.
Dr. Peter Emerson
The de Borda Institute
