Abstract
Majority rule used in the legislative process has a bias toward the status quo. This implies that proposals are less likely to pass when the number of voters casting either “yes” or “no” votes sums to an even number rather than an odd number. The implication is weakly supported by examining state votes of 552 motions made at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. A difference is found in the expected direction but is not statistically significant at traditional levels.
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Notes
They also develop simulations for absolute majority rule.
There are also no abstentions from indifference. Thus, x = 0 so N = k.
As noted above, Dougherty and Edward (2009) also consider alternative probability distributions on favoring, opposing, indifference, and absence but only summarize their general results. Given that the probability of absence is always non-zero in their simulations, outcomes under MRQ can differ from MR*.
States set their own quorum requirements. For example, New York lost its state vote due to lack of quorum (two) of its own delegates, when John Lansing and Robert Yates left after July 10, leaving only Alexander Hamilton as its lone delegate. However, lack of a delegate quorum was not treated as the state rejecting the proposal so it was inconsistent with MRQ as defined by Dougherty and Edward (2009) and discussed above. Rather, remaining delegates for that state would be treated as absent under MR although they took part in debate and could serve on committees.
No proposals were ever denied for lack of quorum among the states. Although discussions took place immediately, no formal proposals were made and voting was withheld until enough states arrived. After the first vote, the number of states present never fell below seven.
Both “yea” and “nay” occurrences would decline when k is even among the delegates in a given state because the states have a third outcome of “divided”, but there is no reason for either of the two occurrences to decline more than the other.
The dataset also includes inferences on over 5,000 delegate votes, roughly 25 % of the total potential number of delegate votes. For additional details, see Dougherty et al. (2012).
In addition, the two delegates from New Hampshire did not arrive until after two of the three delegates from New York had left and New York could no longer cast a vote.
Out of 5,826 recorded state votes, 116 were recorded as “divided”, roughly 2 %.
This is slightly complicated by the two-stage process of Convention voting, but the general principal still applies. Indeed, while 160 proposals received zero “nay” state votes, only 13 proposals received zero “yea” state votes (which still leaves open the possibility of being supported by a minority of delegates in any given state).
Recall from Table 2 there are only two observations for group size 6, and three for group size 7. Neither proposal in group size 6 passed and only one proposal from group size 7 passed. These percentages are not presented in the figure because the number of observations on which they are based are so small as to be potentially misleading.
Statistical significance of the individual coefficients is not particular meaningful in this context. Without a constant term or any other control variables, the marginal effects determine if that category has a mean value significantly different from the mean of the normal distribution, or 0.5.
I thank Keith Dougherty for both the suggestion to use this variable and sending the data.
Zero values for discussion length were replaced by the arbitrarily small value of 0.001 prior to taking logs. Using the unlogged form for both variables does not appreciably affect significance levels for any of the estimated coefficients.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Keith Dougherty and Nicholas Miller for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Heckelman, J.C. A note on majority rule and neutrality with an application to state votes at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Public Choice 167, 245–255 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-016-0339-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-016-0339-2