Do the voting systems of the world’s democracies elect the candidates the electorate really wants? Voting theorists Michel Balinski and Rida Laraki say that often they don’t, and that this raises serious questions about legitimacy to rule.
Voting Power and Procedures is presenting a series of lectures this week at the London School of Economics by Professors Balinski and Laraki, who will introduce their new voting system, Majority Judgement.
From the Voting Power and Procedures press release:
“From political and corporate elections to wine and figure skating competitions (and Strictly Come Dancing), the speakers claim their system succeeds where others fail.
Lecture 1: Majority Judgement vs. the Traditional View at the Wolfson Theatre, LSE, 6:30-8pm, Wednesday 18 March.
Professor Balinski introduces the new voting model.Lecture 2: Principal Properties of Majority Judgement at the Thai Theatre, LSE,6:00-7:30pm, Thursday 19 March.
Professor Laraki analyses the major features of the new system and why it is best.Lecture 3: Majority Judgement Compared with Other Voting Systems at the Thai Theatre, LSE, 6:00-7:30pm, Friday 20 March.
Professor Balinski’s comparisons of Majority Judgement lead to his conclusion that it is superior to all other current electoral systems.
For further details on the lectures, see the VPP webpage.
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6 Comments
I’ve just spent my lunchtime reading up on Majority Judgement (primarily at the Balinski-Laraki paper here: http://ceco.polytechnique.fr/fichiers/ceco/publications/pdf/2007-12-18-1691.pdf) and I’m mightily impressed.
This is a really interesting proposal.
Any chance of a one side summary? 🙂
Cutting through the academise, I find this website, which makes it all a lot clearer:
http://rangevoting.org/BalinskiL.html
A few observations:
1) It seems like a relatively fair system in theory, but how sustainable will an electoral system be if the winning candidates are classified as “mildly good” and only win because their opponents were considered “insufficient”? Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? Indeed, it appears to be possible for a candidate to win even if their median score is ‘reject’.
The challenge of electoral systems is not just to come up with the mathematically best result, but one which demonstrably gives the winning candidates a mandate. No-one who wins an election with the label “mildly good” will be seen to have a mandate.
2) The authors state that in reality the public does not ‘rank’ candidates. Maybe so. But does stopping them from doing so really help? If you don’t know much about a candidate you will presumably give them a ‘meh’ score (this is SUCH a French system, if I may say so!). In essence all that does is hand power over to the people with strong feelings either way. Forced to make a decision between the Labour and Tory candidates you may well be able to decide which one is better. This system by contrast positively encourages you to sit on the fence.
3) It may well be an improvement on single member constituency systems such as FPTP, AV, SV and the two-stage French system, but it isn’t clear how it might work with multi-member constituencies. Indeed, it doesn’t appear to be proportional at all. That means that it carries with it all the problems with single member constituencies and the way they are all arbitrarily gerrymandered to a certain extent.
4) Not to be entirely negative, it DOES look like an interesting alternative to MBC in terms of consensus decision making. It would be interesting to see the De Borda Institute’s take (which I doubt will be favourable somehow).
Sorry for geeking out there a little, but you DID raise the subject.
Hywel – the link James posted is a good quick summary. Rather thank ranking candidates, voters give them a verbal grade from the columns available. Hence, a hypothetical Oxford East Green party voter could give the Lib Dem candidate “Very Good” and the Labour MP “to Reject” but still choose “Excellent” for the Green candidate. The winner is the one with the *median* (not average) highest degree (with ties easily resolved, as described in the article).
James – thanks as ever for your thoughts. On mandates, I see it as a positively good thing that the system can return weak mandates. This is a system that provides a clear result, yet also has capacity for voters to show their contempt for all candidates. When a candidate gets an unusually strong mandate, the system actually provides a way to express it.
I guess the issue comes down to whether you like or hate consensual voting systems – something which is a philosophical question. I say “yes”, despite it being non-proportional.
I like consensual voting systems and would like to see them used more extensively in decision making – I just don’t think you can use them to elect representatives.
The De Borda Institute – big exponents of consensual voting and MBC in particular – acknowledge that.
The puff the MJ people have been saying to the media about it being a good system for Strictly and Pop Idol are absolutely correct – but I don’t expect Alexandra Burke to write any laws on my behalf any time soon.
What’s the rationale for explicitly labelling the categories? Every voter is going to use their own internal metric anyway. Wouldn’t, say, one to six stars work just as well?