THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE
No consultation, no deliberative poll, no citizens’ assembly, no public inquiry, no debate (be it in
the Dáil or wherever), no focus group, no referendum and no survey is worth its full potential, if the
decision-making process at its conclusion is inaccurate. Indeed, at worst, some supposedly
democratic discussions, like the deliberations of the All-party Oireachtas Committee during the
2002 abortion debate, have been a bit of a nonsense.1 Another meaningless – and provocative –
exercise was the 1972 border poll.
This is partly because many people in Ireland and indeed throughout the world believe that,
“Democracy works on the basis of a decision by the majority,” to quote the 1996 Whitaker report. 2
Sometimes, then, serious topics are first discussed on the basis of modern, high-tech, in-depth,
computer-based analyses, and then resolved by means of ancient, low-tech, binary votes.
Accordingly, in any public consultation or democratic debate:

complex decisions should not be reduced to dichotomies, or even series thereof; rather, in a
plural society and especially in a pluralist democracy, decisions should be taken and/or
ratified in preferential votes on (short) lists of about five options;

prior to the vote, all participants, including if and when appropriate the government, should
join in forming the options;


and all participants, again perhaps including the government, should state their preferences.
So this paper examines decision-making. It critiques majority voting which, after all, is the most
inaccurate measure of collective opinion ever invented. Based on a New Zealand example, it
outlines what should happen in any democratic process. It then analyses various forms of multioption voting before concluding that the best two are the Borda and Condorcet rules… about which
many politicians and practitioners are blissfully – and dangerously – unaware.
DECISION-MAKING
Decisions can be taken either verbally – the term often used is ‘in consensus’ – or, at the conclusion
of a debate, via a vote. In many instances, this is a (simple or weighted) majority vote, and few are
aware of the concept of ‘consensus voting’. But there are many ways of making decisions. At one
end of the spectrum are the exclusive methodologies, where voters are presented with a binary
question: either option A, ‘yes-or-no’, ‘in-or-out’, ‘remain-or-leave’, or maybe a choice of two
options, A or B? At the other end, the inclusive methodologies allow the voters greater choice and
the possibility of more participation.
Despite the Irish Government’s Green Paper on Abortion (undated), which suggested five
possible options (p 104) and described the 1983 and 1992 referendums as “bitter and polarised” (p
126), it nevertheless ignored the many calls for a more pluralist approach and chose, instead,
another ‘bitter and polarised’ binary vote. The referendum motion was then defeated by less than
1%. It was all, yes, a bit of a nonsense.
1
2
1996, Irish Constitution Review Group, Government of Ireland, p 398.
The theory is as follows. If everyone states their individual point of view, then it should be possible
to identify the collective will. In a word, voters should be positive, and the ballot should enable
them to be positive. If however lots of voters are stating only that which they do not want, it is
difficult to pursue any scientific calculations. Sadly, many people still believe that expressing a
negative opinion is still democratic. “Ulster says ‘NO’!” was one classic and dangerous example.
Another comes from Gibraltar, where 98.5% told the world what they did not want, so the
democratic exercise – to identify the will of the people – was in vain, (although most assumed that
they therefore wanted the status quo). And the UN-brokered peace agreement in Cyprus was
scuppered because ‘a majority of the majority’ said no.
Majority Voting – a Critique
A more obvious instance of the bluntness of this instrument comes from the UK’s 2011 debate on
the electoral system. Countless Britons wanted PR; they remain uncounted. The ballot was binary:
FPTP v AV. So PR was not included. The outcome therefore was bound to be inaccurate. The
question was another nonsense, and it seems that everyone knows it is a nonsense, except the
Electoral Commission, the Ombudsman and many in the media and academia.
Majority voting is inappropriate because it allows the leader – the latest is Hungary’s Victor Orbán
– to choose the question; and the question is then the answer, (well, perhaps).3 In Hungary as
elsewhere, it was the wrong question. It should have been something like, “What shall we do about
the migrants?” or better, “How can we help the migrants?” leading to a multi-option ballot so that
(nearly) all voters could be positive.
THE NEW ZEALAND EXPERIENCE
Let me quote the example from New Zealand. In 1992, they debated the electoral system. An
independent commission was established; it drew up a short list of five options; and in a rather
unusual form of two-round voting, the people then voted on these five options. In effect, (nearly)
every voter could be positive, and NZ now has PR.
MULTI-OPTION VOTING – AN ANALYSIS
Now let us analyse multi-option voting in rather more detail. Table I shows a hypothetical sample
of a voters’ profile, in which the first preferences are shown in tint.
Table I
A Voters’ Profile
OPTIONS
No of voters:
A
B
C
D
E
2
1st
2nd
3rd
5th
4th
2
1st
3rd
5th
2nd
4th
1
5th
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
1
4th
3rd
1st
2nd
5th
1
5th
2nd
1st
4th
3rd
2
5th
2nd
3rd
1st
4th
1
5th
2nd
4th
3rd
1st
2
5th
3rd
4th
2nd
1st
At a glance, it would seem that opinions on option A, the first preference of four but the 5th
preference of seven, are very polarised. Option E is also somewhat divisive. So maybe the option
which best represents the collective will is either B, C or D, and of these three, option B, the 1st 2nd
or 3rd preference of everybody, is perhaps the most accurate reflection of the popular will.
3
The turnout was below the required level of 50%. But the outcome, 98% support, was
enough… according to Mr Orbán.
If analyses are undertaken by different counting procedures the outcomes may also vary. They are
shown in Table II: five different counts produce five different answers, and all of them are called
democratic. More nonsense, I’m afraid.
Table II
Five Social Choices
VOTING
PROCEDURE
i
ii
iii
iv
v
Plurality voting
MBC – a points system
AV/STV – a knock-out
The Condorcet rule – a league
TRS
THE
OUTCOME
A
B
C
D
E
Only two voting procedures – the Borda (MBC) and Condorcet rules – take account of all
preferences cast by all voters; little wonder, then, that these two are the most democratic. And little
wonder that, in many profiles, the MBC winner is also the Condorcet winner, {just as, in many
sports competitions, the league champion (Condorcet) also has the best goal difference (a sort of
MBC)}.
CONCLUSION
In a nutshell, therefore, majority voting should never be used if and when the subject under
discussion is complex and/or controversial. Accordingly, in a participatory democratic exercise,
people of various opinions should all be allowed to participate: ergo, the voting procedure should be
multi-optional and preferential. And the best of these? Well, to quote the late Professor Sir
Michael Dummett, the MBC, is “the soundest method of identifying the [option which] is most
generally popular.”4
Peter Emerson
The de Borda Institute
www.deborda.org
Belfast
4.10.2016
4
1997, Dummett, M., Principles of Electoral Reform, Oxford University Press, p 71.