deborda.org

The de Borda Institute, after Jean-Charles de Borda, 1733-99

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About us

I'm on my way to China again. And here's the blog: https://deborda.substack.com/p/debordaabroad2

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The de Borda Institute

aims to promote the use of inclusive, multi-optional and preferential voting procedures, both in parliaments/congresses and in referendums, on all contentious questions of social choice.

This applies specifically to decision-making, be it for the electorate in regional/national polls, for their elected representatives in councils and parliaments, for members of a local community group, a company board, a co-operative, and so on. But we also cover elections.

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The Institute is named after Jean-Charles de Borda, and hence the well-known voting procedure, the Borda Count BC; but Jean-Charles actually invented what is now called the Modified Borda Count, MBC - the difference is subtle:

In a vote on n options, the voter may cast m preferences; and, of course, m < n.

In a BC, points are awarded to (1st, 2nd ... last) preferences cast according to the rule (n, n-1 ... 1) {or (n-1, n-2 ... 0)} whereas,

in an MBC, points are awarded to (1st, 2nd ... last) preferences cast according to the rule (m, m-1 ... 1).

The difference can be huge, especially when the topic is controversial: the BC benefits those who cast only a 1st preference; the MBC encourages the consensual, those who submit not only a 1st preference but also their 2nd (and subsequent) compromise option(s). And if (nearly) every voter states their compromise option(s), an MBC can identify the collective compromise.

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DECISION-MAKER
Inclusive voting app

https://debordavote.com

THE APP TO BEAT ALL APPS, APPSOLUTELY!

(The latest in a long-line of electronic voting for decision-making; our first was in 1991.)

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FINANCES

The Institute was estabished in 1997 with a cash grant of £3,000 from the Joseph Rowntree Charitabe Trust, and has received the occasional sum from Northern Ireland's Community Relations Council and others. Today it relies on voluntary donations and the voluntary work of its board, while most running expenses are paid by the director.

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A BLOG

"De Borda abroad." From Belfast to Beijing and beyond... and back. Starting in Vienna with the Sept 2017 TEDx talk, I give lectures in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Istanbul, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Tehran, Beijing, Tianjin, Xuzhou, Hong Kong and Taiwan... but not in Pyongyang. Then back via Mongolia (where I had been an election observer in June 2017) and Moscow (where I'd worked in the '80s).

I have my little fold-up Brompton with me - surely the best way of exploring any new city! So I prefer to go by train, boat or bus, and then cycle wherever in each new venue; and all with just one plastic water bottle... or that was the intention!

The story is here.

In Sept 2019, I set off again, to promote the book of the journey. After the ninth book launch in Taipei University, I went to stay with friends in a little village in Gansu for the Chinese New Year. The rat. Then came the virus, lockdown... and I was stuck.

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The Hospital for Incurable Protestants

The Mémoire of a Collapsed Catholic

This is the story of a pacifist in a conflict zone, in Northern Ireland and the Balkans. Only in e-format, but only £5.15. Available from Amazon.

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The director alongside the statue of Jean-Charles de Borda, capitaine et savant, in l’École Navale in Brest, 24.9.2010. Photo by Gwenaelle Bichelot.

Annual Reports

Decision-Maker APP

Won by One

MBC

QBS

The Matrix Vote

Practical Examples

WELCOME

Welcome to the home page of the de Borda Institute, a Northern Ireland-based international organisation (an NGO) which aims to promote the use of inclusive voting procedures on all contentious questions of social choice. For more information use the menu options above or feel free to contact the organisation's headquarters. If you want to check the meaning of any of the terms used, then by all means have a look at this glossary.

As shown in these attachments, there are many voting procedures for use in decision-making and even more electoral systems. This is because, in decision-making, there is usually only one outcome - a singe decision or a shopping ist, a prioritisation; but with some electoral systems, and definitely in any proportional ones, there can be several winners. Sometimes, for any one voters' profile - that is, the set of all their preferences - the outcome of any count may well depend on the voting procedure used. In this very simple example of a few voters voting on just four options, and in these two hypothetical examples on five, (word document) or (Power-point) in which a few cast their preferences on five options, the profiles are analysed according to different methodologies, and the winner could be any one of all the options. Yet all of these methodologies are called democratic! Extraordinary!

Sunday

Nov032024

2024-24 US elections

Sunday, November 3, 2024

In the East, many speak of “the unity of everything,” of all life, all energy, and all matter. While in the West, in the US, the people divide into two; it is not only illogical, it is downright dangerous. And not very democratic!

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Thursday

Oct172024

2024-23 The Middle East

Thursday, October 17, 2024

Israel, Tel Aviv often tells us, is the only democracy in the Middle East. Its population, parliament and cabinet are respectively, 20%, 10% and 0% Arab. Is this democracy?

It’s majority rule in which, apparently, 50% + 1 will do. Netanyahu had a majority of just one in 2015. The UK’s Tories passed this 50% threshold with some Unionists in 2017, as did Labour in 1978; the Austrians did it with the Freedom Party in 1999, as too the Dutch with a namesake in 2010. But in Israel, the current, extreme right-wing majority coalition is (not the but) a cause of war!

Not only in Israel but right across Europe, the extreme right is successful, electorally. But in reality? Consider this: voters have preferences, so in Belfast for example, many DUP voters doubtless prefer the UUP to SF, and many SF supporters the SDLP to the DUP. But extremist parties don’t like preferential systems; in the main, it is the centre ground – Alliance, GP, SDLP and UUP, etc. – who cross the party divides.

But votes can be accurate only if they include party preferences. In the Dutch 2023 general election - single-preference PR - on a ballot paper with over 1,000 candidates, voters could choose just one candidate: this one ‘good’, all the others, all equally, seemingly, ‘not good’. So most or all of these votes were inaccurate. The count therefore, the collation of all this inaccurate data, was almost definitely inaccurate as well, yet it implied that Geert Wilders was the most popular. Similarly, the recent EU elections - in which every country has a form of PR - also suggested the extreme right was very popular, especially in those countries, like France and Germany, with a single-preference system.

(Switzerland, and) former conflict zones often have, not only PR elections, but also all-party, power-sharing. To suggest a party of 30, 40… 49% should not have a role in government because of majority rule, runs the risk that, when its ‘popularity’ does pass 50%, this extremist party will take over, completely! In 1933, Hitler’s Enabling Act was a (weighted) majority vote.

Surely, democracy in Dublin, London, Tel Aviv and elsewhere, should include (a) a preferential PR electoral system - the current Israeli system is also single-preference PR; (b) multi-option decision-making (as befits a multi-party chamber); and (c) a form of all-party governance. To take the Dutch example again, in 2023, the PVV won 25% of the seats in parliament, so it would have an influence of 25% in an all-party cabinet; under majority rule, however, in the current four-party majority coalition, it has a 42% influence!

So we should change our politics, if only for the sake of peace in the Middle East. And let’s be honest: majority rule could not work in the absolute ideal, a one-state Israel/Palestine solution; secondly, it would not work well in a two-state solution, forever provoking the more belligerent to out-number their more moderate rivals. Granted, it might be difficult to work with SF in Dublin, the PVV in The Hague, the AfD in Berlin, and so on, in France, Austria, Portugal etc., but it would be more difficult in the Middle East, and maybe this is the price of peace.

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Friday

Sep272024

2024-22 An Honorary Degree... from Georgia!

Friday, September 27, 2024

In 1989, when the USSR was still a one-party state, many environmentalists and any ‘Soviet’ Greens were in the Ecological Union, which met in Moscow; thus I befriended the soon-to-be founder of the Georgian Greens, Zurab Zhvania. In 1990, he invited me to give a press conference (in Russian) in Tbilisi on power-sharing; the local coverage was good, but when Georgia became independent one year later, the people elected Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a majoritarian. So, majority rule. Hence the ethnic wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, followed by a civil war. Eduard Shevardnadze then took over, with Zurab now an MP in support, until 2004, when the so-called Rose Revolution saw Mikheil Saakashvili become President, Zurab the PM, and Nino Burjanadze the Speaker. One year later, Zurab was dead, supposedly from a gas leak, but many think he was murdered on the orders of Saakashvili who, in 2008, when Vladimir Putin was in Beijing for the Olympics, started the war against Russia. Putin was not the only guilty party of that war.

I was an OSCE election observer in Georgia’s elections in 2004 and 2012, a Russian/English interpreter in the EUMM 2008-9, a visiting lecturer in 2017 and 2019, and I've just been awarded an honorary doctorate by Tbilisi’s new International University of Peace.

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Tuesday

Aug132024