[EM] Meta-criteria 4 of 9: Value: legitimacy (and consensus)

[Jameson Quinn]

Legitimacy considers the purpose of voting as choosing a leader - any leader
- and minimizing posterior fighting about that choice. While this may be the
lowest of expectations compared to utility and expressiveness, it should not
be discounted. In the extreme, illegitimate leadership can lead to civil
war; a truly cataclysmic result for all concerned. While I don't have any
strong evidence, I certainly suspect that some of the "democracy dividend",
the economic benefits for democracy over more autocratic systems comes
simply from legitimacy, from avoiding some fraction of the acuter forms of
social conflict.

In order to promote legitimacy, a voting system should be verifiable. For
instance, a summable voting system is almost always superior to a
non-summable one in this regard. Simple ballots and fewer ways to "spoil" a
ballot are also desirable. Strategy can be a problem here, too; the easier
it is to imagine another election with the same electorate having gone
differently, the less inherent legitimacy the result has.

Note that the best possible form of legitimacy is consensus. Consensus is
approached by a drawn-out process with good expressiveness and multiple
opportunities for compromise. Thus, those who value consensus might favor
expressive multi-round systems.
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