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One such was Le Marquis de Condorcet. McLean and Urken, p 113.
In majority voting, however, the role of one person may often be crucial! No wonder the stretcher cases are sometimes dragged into the lobbies. Emerson (2002).
A BC/MBC can be adversely affected if the consensors have not drawn up a list of options which accurately reflects the debate. In mathematical jargon, any additional but unnecessary option, E say, (unnecessary because literally everyone prefers another option, C, which is already on the list), is called an “irrelevant alternative” but, if such an irrelevant alternative were included, it might lead to a different result. More of this in Chapters 4 and 5. To be sure the outcome is accurate, therefore, the consensors can also do a Condorcet count, which is not so vulnerable. The latter suffers from the paradox (see p 106). So if the outcome is the same in both counts, everyone will know that it truly represents their collective will. If on the other hand the two outcomes are different, then maybe the debate should be resumed, the list of options changed, and another vote held. The conclusion-that for the sake of accuracy, it is better to use a BC/(MBC) as well as a Condorcet count-has been advocated by many: Dodgson, Black and Copeland, for example. Emerson (1998). Furthermore, Nanson proposed a methodology to combine the two-pp 111–2.
Protestants and Catholics are both Christian. Serbs and Croats are both Slav. And, as stated by A P Semenov-tian-Shanski during the Russian civil war, both communism and capitalism are creeds based on greed. Svobodnaya Priroda (Free Nature), Priroda, 1919, nos 4–6, cols 199–216, and quoted in Models of Nature, Douglas Weiner, Indiana University, 1988, p 35.
It should be said that every voting procedure is manipulable. But the more sophisticated the procedure, the more difficult it is to manipulate. “The BC is a unique method... to minimise the likelihood that a small group can successfully manipulate the outcome.” Saari, 1995, p 14. See also Chapter 4.
Reilly, 2002, p 358.
In majority voting, a unanimous viewpoint is necessarily the same as a majority opinion (or, for that matter, as any minority opinion). As Jean-Jacques Rousseau himself pointed out, however, a majority opinion is not necessarily the same as a consensus opinion-The Oxford History of the French Revolution, William Doyle, OUP, 1990, p 53. Indeed, we could say that a best possible compromise is invariably not the same as a majority opinion, for in most instances of a majority vote, the ballot paper does not even include a compromise!
The term, however, was undefined. Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela, Abacus, 1994, p 714.
The 1998 Belfast Agreement made provision for a consociational majority vote so that, if a certain number of both unionist and nationalist MLAs, (Members of the Legislative Assembly), supported a particular policy, then that policy would be passed. The trouble is fourfold: such a procedure requires every MLA to be designated either ‘unionist’ or ‘nationalist’ (or ‘other’); thus, secondly, it perpetuates the very sectarianism a peace process is meant to obviate; furthermore, it renders the ‘other’ MLAs less powerful than the’ sectarian’ ones; and finally, it gives to both sides the power of veto. A similar system is used rather more successfully in Belgium; and a three-sided version was used, with disastrous consequences, in the early 1990s in Bosnia. Emerson (2000).
Emerson, 2002.
The current population of Nauru is about 10,000. The use of their variation of BC is discussed in Reilly (2001) and Emerson (2002).
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(2007). Collective Decision-making The Modified Borda Count, MBC. In: Emerson, P. (eds) Designing an All-Inclusive Democracy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-33164-3_2
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