It’s a funny old world.
Politicians sometimes regard the political process as consensual, as when they all go off to Lisbon or Bali, there to talk and talk and talk until, at last, (normally at about 5 o’clock in the morning), they reach an agreement. On other occasions, in stark contrast, the process is not consensual at all: instead, it’s a straight majority vote, the winner takes all and the loser gets nought.
So sometimes, the political process is one of give-and-take, a win-win procedure. On other occasions, it is the very opposite: no give-and-take at all and instead, a majority vote, straight win-or-lose.
Unfortunately, very few politicians are aware of the fact that other forms of voting can be used in decision -making. To put it simply, in both our domestic lives and our politics, we do not have to put everything into a yes-or-no, for-or-against format. In other words, the question does not have to be closed: “Shall we go to Bangor for our holidays, dear, yes or no?” “Resolution 1441 (on Iraq), yes-or-no? (In other words, Are you with me or against me?)” “Windmills on the Isle of Lewis, yes or no?” “Are you Hutu or Tutsi?”
Instead, we could use open questions. “Where shall we go for our holidays?” “What shall we do about Iraq?” “How can we generate power on Lewis and how much should we create?” “Hallo, who are you? And what sort of rule shall we have here in Rwanda?”
Now in theory, no matter what procedure people use, just the one basic democratic principle should apply: democracy is for everybody (not just a majority), and policies should be based on either a unanimous opinion, or a common consensus, or at the very least, the best possible compromise. The democratic process should therefore involve an accommodation, a confluence of ideas, the summation of our collective wisdom. This can either be effected by talking and talking, or by talking and then voting, but only if the vote is a multi-option preference vote in which every voter casts high or middle or low preferences ‘for’ (and where no-one votes ‘against’). Thus we can find that option which has the highest average preference. Simple. Preferences mean points, and the option with the most points is the winner.
This voting procedure, the Modified Borda Count (mbc), asks everyone to rank their preferences. It can be used to identify either that option which is the most popular, or the electorate’s collective ranking. In other words, the mbc can be used in parliaments to establish its priorities, to choose an agenda, or even to allocate a budget.
Sadly, in many parliaments, they still rely on the 2,500-year-old majority vote. We think the application of a more modern methodology may actually be more democratic, not to also say more practical and more inclusive… and hence our experiment on consensus voting.
