2017-5 The BB(we'll)C

Yes yes, we'll debate majority voting, perhaps, sometime, well maybe.  See also 2016-7.

2017-4 FPTP = Fake Post-Truth Polling

Should FPTP, First-Past-The-Post, be re-named as Fake Post-Truth Polling?  After all, there is no post!  To win a two-candidate contest requires 50% + 1 of the valid vote.  With ten or more candidates, success could depend on just 10% + 1, and the world record is held by Papua New Guinea where a candidate was elected by less than 5%.  So maybe 95% thought this ‘winner' was the worst!  In a word, FPTP can be hopelessly inaccurate.  So the sensible folk in PNG have now changed their electoral system to a form of preferential voting.  Would that the UK system was also fair. (Published in local NI media.)

2017-3 NI dodgy elections + consequences...

We said the elections would be dodgy with this letter in the Irish News of 2nd Feb and sure enough, they failed to come up to international standards, so hence this press release reproduced on Slugger.

What's next?  Well, the easiest way to form an Executive is to use a matrix vote, as per this press release and this letter in The Irish Times and NI news outlets.  See also 2016-8

2017-2 Deliberative Democracy

If the sample is good enough, the list of options thorough enough, and the consensus coefficient of the outcome high enough, the result should perhaps be binding.

http://www.dialoguestudies.org/journals/journal-of-dialogue-studies-vol-4/

2017-1 Brexit wrecks it

In February last year, we said if the brexit vote is to be, "EU, yes or no?" ('remain' or 'leave'), the answer will probably be 'no'.  And this year, another press release, we try again... and another.  Hence this piece:   See 2016-12.

2016-16 Let the Dáil Elect the Government.

The full report of the Ballymun experiment, (see 2016-5 and 2016-3), is on page 56 of the Irish Journal of Social, Economic and Environmental Sustainability, IJSEES, 2017, Vol 1, № 1.  (See also 2016-5, 2012-7 and 2011-5/6.)

2016-15 Italy & USA, bad voting systems

As in brexit, the Italian referendum asks the wrong question. Hence this press release.  Meanwhile, openDemocracy has published this on majoritarianism and its consequence: Trump.

2016-14 Ireland, the 8th amendment

This is our submission to the Citizens' Assembly

2016-13 Canada

Canada is reviewing its electoral system, so hopefully they will use multi-option voting and include QBS.  And then maybe the US will follow suit?  See 2016-12.

Oh dear, Trudeau has changed his mind: Canada is not reviewing its electoral system.  A superb chance to influence the US and the latter's crazy system has been lost!

2016-12 Brexit and Trump

Under majority rule, a win for populism  -  Trump, Le Pen, whoever  -  means democracy has failed.  The need for a more consensual polity could not be greater!  Hence this press release, next this letter in The Guardian, 11th Nov, and then these analyses of the US election and Trump, what a silly, dangerous nonsense and if only there had been at least some PR.  (See also 2016-9.)

Brexit. The argument now is not 'remain' v 'leave', but another dichotomy - (of course) - 'soft' v 'hard'. These two adjectives also described the split in the All Russian Congress of Social Democrat, in London in 1903. They voted, binary - (again of course, just like us). The 'hard' wing won, by 19 to 17, with 3 abstentions. (So no side had 50%.) Nevertheless, Lenin called his side the majority, bolshinstvo, and its members the Bolsheviks. And the losers, the minority, menshinstvo, were the Mensheviks. Will history repeat itself? Will the brexiteers now split?