[EM] Tyranny of the Majority

Tue May 8 11:13:29 PDT 2001

On Fri, 4 May 2001, Rob LeGrand wrote:

> Forest wrote:
> > When the only information available is simple preference, then majority
> > rule would be the only democratic choice. But that's not the context of
> > the posting to which Demorep replied below.
> > 
> > Suppose that you know strength of preferences:
> > 
> > 51 A > B >> C
> > 49 B > C >> A
> > 
> > The majority choice is A.
> > 
> > The Approval choice is B with 100% approval.
> 
> . . .
> 
> > But arguably the Approval choice is more democratic than the Majority
> > choice, especially if a democracy is supposed to be for the benefit of ALL
> > the people, not just the magical 51%.
> >
> > That's why I changed my tune recently and started advocating the Approval
> > winner unabashedly (for elections based on these kinds of ballots).
> 
> Just my opinion, but it seems to me that when the voted Condorcet winner is not
> picked, you introduce more instability and potential strategy problems than you
> should.  

> In the above example, if a voting system would choose B, the A voters
> would be punished by their approval cutoff choice.

And yet they would be punished very mildly in comparison to the
punishment of the large BC faction if the A voters decided to "bullet"
vote.

So if you want to minimize punishment, this example shows that sometimes
zero info yields a better result than partial info. 

Note that the same would hold if B>C were changed to C>B in the second
faction. In that case it would take almost perfect information to convince
the A voters to bullet, so Approval would work even better in the interest
of the common good because of the extra incentive for approving the
consensus candidate.

The more I hear, the more I'm convinced that the magical 51% should be
decisive only when it is not contradicted by better information.

Forest

> I think combining Condorcet
> and Approval could certainly have merit, but surely it would be best to use
> Approval to choose from the voted Smith set.  Nice and simple.
> 

In the above example Universal Approval

> =====
> Rob LeGrand
> honky98 at aggies.org
> http://www.aggies.org/honky98/
> 
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices
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> 
> 

FFrom election-methods-list-request at eskimo.com  Tue May  8 17:25:06 2001
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From: DEMOREP1 at aol.com
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Subject: Re: Tyranny of the Majority
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>> From: Forest Simmons <fsimmons at pcc.edu>
>> Subject: Re: Tyranny of the Majority

>> One example I had in mind was Rwanda.  Majority rule or
>> minority rule, same result: genocide. Solution: compromise
>> candidate with approval from both extremes.
---
D- Give me a break.  I must digress a bit again from *pure* election methods.

Did the folks being killed in Rwanda (or any other place for the last zillion 
years of political history (or pre-history) have *equal* weapons to defend 
themselves against the de facto minority with weapons who were doing the 
killing ???

Almost ALL of political history has been de facto minority rule monarchs/ 
oligarchs using their military/ police forces to oppress folks in other 
countries (i.e. wars, invasions) or their own countries (domestic 
oppressions, civil wars),

*Real* majority rule democracies have been few and far between (if any have 
really existed) for day to day type laws --- how many cops are on the streets 
to protect folks against criminals violating the life, liberty or property 
rights of others--- how many jails for convicted criminals --- etc.

Instead the so-called *modern* state is involved in all sorts of social- 
economic- political machinations for some sort of state purposes (with the 
resulting consequences).

rom election-methods-list-request at eskimo.com  Tue May  8 17:25:06 2001
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From: DEMOREP1 at aol.com
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Mr. Simmons wrote-

Don't you think it's a bit strange to be complaining about
how I'm attacking democracy???  Perhaps you're equating
majority rule and democracy?  They're not the same thing, you
know.

---
D- From my friendly Webster's Dictionary-

de-moc-ra-cy
3. majority rule

ma-jor-i-ty
1. the greater part or larger number; more than half of a total.

(Each word has some other definitions).

The good old Oxford Dictionary of the English Language lists the earliest 
mention of words and phrases

I suppose that in this so-called New Age of Politics (of Ignorance and 
Redefinitions) that different folks have different dictionaries.