Saturday
27Feb2010
Welcome to the home page of the de Borda Institute, a Northern Ireland-based international organisation (an NGO) 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. If you want to check the meaning of any of the terms used, then by all means have a look at this glossary.
And download these documents for an overview of some of the many decision-making and electoral systems
What's New?
Saturday
20Feb2010
Designing an All-Inclusive Democracy
Saturday, February 20, 2010 Designing an All-Inclusive Democracy, ed. Peter Emerson, Springer, 2007.
Don Saari has written a review for Social Choice and Welfare: it is on
http://springerlink.metapress.com/content/0530263282623016/fulltext.pdf
Friday
19Feb2010
Party Politics in the Western Balkans
Friday, February 19, 2010 The above book, jointly edited by Věra Stojarová and Peter Emerson, is published by Routledge.
Friday
19Feb2010
Decision-making on the web
Friday, February 19, 2010 Our latest work, the result of an experiment on decision-making conducted entirely - both debate and vote - on the web, is published by EPS. More details on
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/eps/journal/v9/n1/abs/eps200940a.html
Sunday
06Sep2009
The GOAT is a GNU. An experiment in electing an all-party coalition.
Sunday, September 6, 2009 On 7.10.2009, the de Borda Institute hosted an open public meeting in Dublin, to see if the Dail could elect a power-sharing cabinet, with TDs choosing not only those who would serve in government, but also the particular department in which each successful Minister would serve. The original invitation is here.
Participants were split into various groups, one each to represent FF, FG, Labour, Independents, GP and SF. And each group was given a fixed number of ballot papers, in proportion to current party strengths in the Dail: 20, 14, 5, 2, 2 and 1 respectively, a total of 44 ballots. The matrix vote is based on QBS and the MBC. So it was to everyone's advantage to submit a full ballot - i.e., to cast all their preferences - and to do so on a cross-party basis. Thus, in the simulation, groups planned strategies amongst themselves, and then negotiated deals with others.
The outcome was as follows: FF 6, FG 5, Lab 2, Ind 0, GP 1, SF 1 - a proportional, all-party, power-sharing coalition cabinet, a GNU. In other words, the matrix vote is indeed a robust voting procedure, and it all works without any resort to party labels. A full report along with the results are here.
