Tyranny of the Majority

[Forest Simmons]

On Thu, 10 May 2001 DEMOREP1 at aol.com wrote:

> Mr. Simmons wrote-
> 
> 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). 
> ---
> D-    I again have to mention the difference between legislative body 
> elections (resulting in the making of laws) and executive/ judicial office 
> elections (resulting in the enforcement of such laws).
> 
> 51  AB
> 48  B
>  1   C
> 
> 100
> 
> If a choice is *near* to having a first choice majority, then he/she will 
> obviously try to get his/her supporters NOT to make second choice votes.
> 
> To counter the above, I again suggest that executive/ judicial office 
> candidates be required to get YES majorities.

What you call a YES majority is what I call "more than 50 percent
approval."  So we may be closer to agreement than we thought.

Forest

> 
> If there is major political/ geographical split about some sort of 
> super-issue, then the obvious solution is political separation (i.e. 
> secession).
> 
>