2025-02 India
Tuesday, January 28, 2025 The Pahlé India Foundation hosted a demonstration of decision-making, with all present using the de Borda software: www.debordavote.com Here's the report:
PAHLÉ INDIA FOUNDATION:
A PREFERENTIAL VOTE ROLE-PLAY ON REFORMING INDIA’S PARLIAMENTARY ELECTORAL SYSTEM
16th January, Delhi. www.debordavote.com
“the nonduality of right and wrong [is] the state of a buddha.”
Longchenpa, a Buddhist monk of the Nyingma tradition.
BACKGROUND
It seems the human being is naturally binary, with two eyes, two ears, and so on. Furthermore, the world appears to be binary, with land and sea, day and night, etc. But maybe we should seek the coming together of the opposites. After all, male and female cannot be (pro)creative unless they cooperate. In like manner, maybe democracy is for everybody, not just a majority.
INDIA
India, the world’s largest democracy has 977,965,560 registered voters. The president is elected using the relatively modern alternative vote AV or instant run-off voting IRV, while parliament uses plurality voting, first-past-the-post FPTP; the latter is invariably divisive, often inaccurate, and always primitive.
India is a multi-party state, but it has become increasingly polarised of late, and maybe this is in part due to the fact that political decisions are taken by the even more ancient majority vote. If a more pluralist polity were the norm, debates could perhaps be more nuanced, and decisions could more accurately reflect the collective will of Lok Sabha.
Furthermore, if the world wants peace in the Middle East, and inter alia an all-party power-sharing executive in the Knesset, one which includes some Arabs who, after all, constitute 20% of the population, 10% of its parliament yet 0% of its government, then maybe the world’s democracies should themselves use such a polity, and not just Switzerland plus a few conflict zones like Bosnia and Northern Ireland.
THE THEORY
There are two types of elections in India: in parliamentary contests, it’s FPTP, while in presidential contests, use is made of the single transferable vote STV. There are, in fact, over 300 electoral systems available (and literally all of them are regarded as democratic, by some if not all nations). Meanwhile, on decision-making, there are at least a dozen possible methodologies; they include:
+ plurality voting, (which is like FPTP, and the winner might enjoy the support, not of a majority, but only of the largest minority) dates from the year 105; [It is used in the Danish parliament];
+ two-round voting was first proposed in 1781: if nothing gets a majority in the first-round plurality vote, it is followed by a majority vote of the two leading options, so the winner will definitely have a majority; [it was used in Britain, once, in the 1948 Newfoundland referendum, but also elsewhere, as in NZ’s five-option referendum in 1992];
+ approval voting, used in 1268 in Venice, is non-preferential: the voter may ‘approve’ of those options which he/she likes and/or tolerates, and the option with the most ‘approvals’ is the winner;
+ first devised in 1821, the alternative vote (single transferable vote or ranked choice voting, AV, STV or RCV), is a preferential knock-out system; the option with the smallest number of votes is eliminated, and its votes are transferred to its 2nd or subsequent preferences, until such time as an option gains majority support… but the AV majority winner might not be the same as the TRS majority winner;
+ the Borda Count, BC, came in 1433: with n options, a 1st preference gets n points, a 2nd gets (n-1), etc, and the winner is the option with the most points;
+ the modified Borda count MBC was devised in 1770: if a voter casts only m preferences, then the 1stpreference gets just m points, the 2nd (m-1) etc.
and
+ the Condorcet rule of 1785 compares all the pairings – is option A more popular than B? more popular than C? than D? Is B more popular than C, and so on – and the option which wins the most pairings is the Condorcet winner.
For reasons odd, just as all electoral systems are regarded by most as ‘democratic’, so too most decision-making voting procedures are also so described. For reasons which are extraordinary, however, while electoral systems vary enormously, from the binary votes in North Korea to the preferential ballots in Ireland, and while decision-making also varies, nearly everyone nearly always uses the most primitive form of decision-making: binary voting. It starts at the top, in the UN Security Council; it applies to most democracies, to some theocracies and quite a few autocracies. For example, the Soviet Union was born of the Bolsheviks and the very word means ‘members of the majority’; Iran used a binary referendum in 1979, to thus become an Islamic Republic, (but while most Shi’a voted in favour, many Sunnis abstained); and ten years later, the Chinese Communist Party Standing Committee, it is said, used a majority vote to authorise military intervention into Tiān’ānmén Square.
THE DEBATE
On 16th January, the participants in a workshop at the Pahlé India Foundation debated, chose a number of options, and then took a multi-option, preferential vote on what they thought should be the electoral system for India’s parliament. The debate started with just one option, the status quo: FPTP. The participants proposed another three options, and the facilitator added a fifth. Thus a ballot of five options was formulated:
System As in:
A FPTP India
B PR-STV Ireland
C MBC The BC is used in Slovenia (but only for the ethnic minorities)
D TRS France
E FPTP + PR list Germany and New Zealand
THE VOTE on www.debordavote.com
17 people voted, all on their mobiles. 12 submitted full ballots, 5 submitted partial ballots.
1 submitted a ballot of just 1 preference;
1 ” 2 preferences;
2 ” 3 ”
1 ” 4 ” and
. 12 ” all 5 ”
Total = 17
Now a consensus coefficient CC is defined as an option’s MBC score .
the maximum possible MBC score
If all 17 voters had cast all 5 preferences, the
maximum score = 17 x 5 = 85 points then CCMAX = 1.00
average score = 17 x 3 = 51 CCAVE = 0.60
minimum score = 17 x 1 = 17 CCMIN = 0.20
Accordingly, in consensus voting, an option’s CC is a measure, not only of the level of support which that option has gained from the given electorate, but also the degree to which these voters have participated in this democratic process.
In a full ballot, with all voters casting all their preferences, if the outcome is a dead heat, with all the options gaining an average score of 0.60 or thereabouts, then there is no consensus, and no decision should be taken.
If on the other hand, the winning option gains
> 0.65, the outcome may be called the best possible compromise;
> 0.75, ” the consensus
> 0.85, ” the collective wisdom.
THE RESULTS
OPTION MBC SCORE CONSENSUS COEFFICIENT
C MBC 55 0.65
B PR-STV 48 0.56
E FPTP+PR 42 0.49
A FPTP 34 0.40
D TRS 27 0.32
CONCLUSION
The winning option was the MBC, and because its consensus coefficient was high and well ahead of the second most popular option, this conclusion was regarded as definite. As noted above, because some persons submitted not full but only partial ballots, the overall consensus coefficients were less than what they otherwise would have been.
In those ballots in which the winning options are, as it were, neck-and-neck, the facilitator may ask both sponsors of these two options to form a composite. If PR-STV had received a higher score, a CC consensus coefficient of, say, 0.63, then the facilitator(s) could have suggested a composite between these two options, such that the MBC was to be conducted in what is regarded as a PR-STV optimum, namely, six-seater constituencies. In this particular instance, however, the gap between the two winning options is considerable, so option C, the MBC, can be taken as the participants’ consensus.
In real life, the facilitator must state, prior to the vote, which CC levels shall be applicable; (and a little complication – if there are not five but more or fewer options on the ballot, the CCs do vary); full details are in The Punters’ Guide to Democracy.
UNITING THE OPPOSITES
Pluralism is possible. When voting
on a pairing A or B? there are just 2 ways of voting.
on three options A or B or C? there are 6 ways of casting: A-B-C, A-C-B, B-C-A, etc.;
on four options, A, B, C or D? 24 nuances and/or opinions may be expressed;
on five options, A, B, C, D or E? all concerned may relish in our human diversity.
In days long gone, casting preferences was difficult, because as mentioned above, the human being is naturally binary, with two arms with which to vote for whatever is regarded as either right or wrong. But that which many regard as opposites often have much in common:
- the Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland are both Christian;
- the Sunni and Shi’a are both Moslem;
- the Russian and the Ukrainian are both Slav, sharing the same religious denomination (Orthodoxy) and language group;
and in politics too,
- communism and capitalism were both creeds based on greed, on the exploitation of nature, on the short-term gratification of current generations. The argument, which nearly led to the annihilation of the human race, was a nonduality.
In like manner, democracy is for everybody, both male and female, rich and poor, Catholic and Protestant, Sunni and Shi’a, Muslim and Hindu, Arab and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi. Binary voting is inadequate, as the COP gatherings in Baku and elsewhere have long since decided. Sadly, the UN has not yet considered preferential decision-making, partly because many politicians like to win, and most won’t even consider a methodology which makes a compromise almost inevitable. But yet, if peace is to be achieved in the Middle East and elsewhere, and if the world is to find agreements on Climate Change and so on, maybe preferential decision-making, the above accurate and non-majoritarian voting procedure, the MBC, is key!
CONCLUSION
The above role play in electronic preferential voting was successful, not least as measured by the quality of questions with which it concluded.
“Will it work? Will people understand the complexities of multi-option voting?” But simple majority voting is sometimes even more complex, especially for the partner in or adult child of a mixed relationship. Are you Serb or Croat? they asked in the Balkans, where many were in or of mixed marriages.
“Will the debates not become too protracted?” But simple majority voting is sometimes even more protracted, as Obamacare comes in, goes out, comes in again, and now, as Trump returns to the White House…
“Will an all-party power-sharing coalition overcome the political rivalries which all too often distort our democracies?” The attractions of power and prestige will always tempt the egocentric, even in a one-party state let alone a coalition. The clash between Stalin and Trotsky was also binary.
CLOSING REMARKS
The Pahlé event was one the most successful preferential voting workshops ever undertaken by this Institute: the facts that nearly if not indeed everybody used the electronic vote, and understood the procedure and its potential. If but it were to be applied to the world’s political gatherings.
