If you’ve ever thought to yourself that there’s something broken about our democratic system or that it doesn’t represent you or what’s important to you, you’re not alone. Many people share this and similar views on what passes for democracy and our majority voting system. This goes some to way explaining why so many of us don’t even bother to vote.
And our instincts are right because majority voting simply does not work. It’s primitive, often divisive and sometimes inaccurate. However, you might be interested to know that there are other fairer and more inclusive ways to make decisions in a democracy.
In our June showcase, we had the privilege of hearing from Peter Emerson. Peter is founder of the de Borda Institute, a locally-based NGO which “aims to promote the use of inclusive voting procedures on all contentious questions of social choice”. It is named after Jean-Charles de Borda, who invented a more scientific form of decision-making: the modified Borda count. Peter now promotes this inclusive form of decision-making as well as the quota Borda system for elections, and the matrix vote for power-sharing governance.
