Welcome to the home page of the De Borda
Institute, a Northern Ireland-based organisation which aims
to promote the use of inclusive voting procedures on all contentious
questions of social choice.
For more information use the menu options
on the left or feel free to contact the organisation's headquarters.
Contact details are listed below.
Online Consensus!!
OurKingdom, the new economics foundation and the de Borda Institute recently gave interested parties from think tanks, research groups and campaigning organisations, and members of the general public, the opportunity to participate in an online trial of consensus decision making.
Aims of the Institute The De Borda Institute aims to promote the use of inclusive
voting procedures on all contentious questions of social choice.
This applies specifically to decision-making,
be it for the electorate in regional/national polls, for their
elected representatives in councils and parliaments, for members
of a local community group, for members of a company board,
for members of a co-operative, and so on. The appropriate
methodology is the Borda count or rather, its modernised form,
the "Borda preferendum".
Questions of social choice also concern elections
and electoral systems. Many of the latter are adversarial,
pitting either a majority or the largest minority against
the rest (as in first-past-the-post), or one quota against
the other (as in PR-STV). In consensus voting, the Quota Borda
System (QBS), the voter is able to vote for a number of persons
in his/her order of preference (as in PR-STV), and proportionality
is maintained; the difference lies in the fact that all preferences
cast are taken into account, and the success of any one candidate
may often depend on the opinions (preferences) of all the
constituents.
Inclusive Voting Procedures
There are three of them.
The Borda Preferendum: May be used
whenever a decision is to be taken or a policy is to be adopted.
The Quota Borda System: This is an
electoral system for the election of representatives, when,
as in proportional representation, a number of persons are
to be elected.
The Matrix Vote: This is also an electoral
system and is used when a fixed number of persons is to be
elected to the same fixed number of what are perhaps very
different posts, as when an Assembly elects an executive or
a parliament its cabinet.
You can find out more about these procedures
here.
OurKingdom, the new economics foundation and the de Borda Institute recently gave interested parties from think tanks, research groups and campaigning organisations, and members of the general public, the opportunity to participate in an online trial of consensus decision making.
The de Borda Institute and nef (the new economics foundation) have received a grant from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust to test the potential of consensus voting More...
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