Tyranny of the Majority

[Forest Simmons]

On Tue, 8 May 2001 DEMOREP1 at aol.com wrote:

> >> 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 ???

If my memory serves me correctly, power has swung from Hutu to Tutsi and
back (or vice-versa) and in each case the new victor, whether minority or
majority, was vindictive.

In any case, my point is that a moderate (supported by large numbers from
both sides) is less likely to incite or tolerate revenge than a pure
representative of one side.

Whenever there is a bimodal (polar) distribution of voters on one divisive
issue and one of the factions has a clear majority, there will probably be
a majority first place winner from that faction which any common method
including IRV and all the Condorcet methods would pick.

Here's where I part company with the "majority rules" rhetoric:

If there is a candidate who has more approval than the "majority first
place vote winner" in this context, then I say that the Approval winner is
more likely to be a centrist, conciliatory candidate than the Condorcet
winner.

It's easy to prove: there are essentially only two factions. The first
place choice of the larger is the Condorcet winner. To have more approval
than the Condorcet winner, the Approval winner must have support from both
factions (otherwise she couldn't surpass the majority first place approval
count) but not 100% support in the larger faction (otherwise she would
share a tie as majority first place winner). 

Why wouldn't she have full support in the larger faction? Because the
extremists wouldn't support her.

In view of the fact that bullet voting (no pun intended) would benefit the
side with the clear majority, why did some of them vote for the Approval
winner? Because the moderates on that side saw the advantages of someone
with a conciliatory attitude. Q.E.D. 

Forest