[EM] Majority Rule

[Anthony Simmons]

>> From: Bart Ingles <bartman at netgate.net>
>> Subject: Re: [EM] Majority Rule

>> Anthony Simmons wrote:
>> > >> Says who?  Maybe as far as two-candidate elections are concerned.  The
>> > >> phrase 'majority rule' itself seems historically recent.
>> >
>> > And perhaps a bit out of place in a context such as STV,
>> > which would be, according to the "definition", undemocratic.

>> Of course, it would depend on where you look within the
>> process. Multi-seat STV would do away with any pretense of
>> majority rule within a district.  But when looking at the
>> makeup of a legislature, it would be more likely that a
>> party with a majority of voters would control a majority
>> of seats overall under PR.

I hadn't even considered that.  On the other hand, if there's
no majority in the electorate, there shouldn't be any in the
legislature either.  And yet this is generally presented as
one of the democratic advantages of STV -- that it doesn't
produce an artificial majority.  In this case, it seems like
majority rule -- in the form of artificial majority -- is
antidemocratic.

>> But then you have to deal with the decision-making process
>> within the legislature -- which requires another level of
>> multi-candidate decision-making.  The current plurality-
>> elected U.S. legislatures tend to be made up almost
>> exclusively of two parties, so legislative votes usually
>> do return a majority decision.  PR would tend to undermine
>> this.  Not that it's a real concern, but all of this just
>> further illustrates the emptiness of the term 'majority
>> rule'.

I think people have just come to associate majorities with
democracy, through the simple case of two alternatives, where
majority rule makes a kind of sense, but only as a special
case.