Friday
Jul052019
2019-23 Participatory Budgeting
Friday, July 5, 2019 https://pbnetwork.org.uk/what-is-democracy-anyway-why-voting-systems-matter-in-participatory-budgeting/
Vienna TEDx Talk - October 2017
Here's the YouTube, the PowerPoint, and the text of the speech (more or less).
Friday, July 5, 2019 Tuesday
Jul022019
2019-22 The Economist; & now The Ecologist
Tuesday, July 2, 2019 Change our decision-making systems, and you change the world. It's in The Ecologist
https://theecologist.org/2019/jul/02/preferential-voting-and-political-consensus
Sunday
Jun162019
2019-21 The Economist: Open Future Festival
Sunday, June 16, 2019 5.10.2019 in Manchester, and the de Borda Institute is on the panel.
https://events.economist.com/events-conferences/emea/open-future-festival-manchester/
Sunday
May192019
Coming shortly........
Sunday, May 19, 2019 The next book - Majority Voting as a Catalyst of Populism - is due to be published by Springer later this year. It is based on my overland journey from Belfast to Beijing and back, Sept. 2017 to Sept '18, and it talks of how majority voting and binary majority rule have been part of the problem, pretty well everywhere: in conflict zones like Belfast and the Balkans; in 'stable democracies' like the UK, as in Brexit; in communist countries like Russia - the very word 'bolshevik' means 'member of the majority'; and even in China where Máo Zédōng was also a majoritarian: “we must win over the majority, oppose and smash the minority…”
Thursday
May092019
2019-20 Local elections still dodgy
Thursday, May 9, 2019 The Irish News of 8th May. Our elections still fail to come up to international standards. Many...
Tuesday
May072019
2019-15 Everything on the table? An MBC?
Tuesday, May 7, 2019 Brexit: To devise a binary choice to satisfy (almost) everyone is probably impossible; drafting a multi-option referendum would be only difficult. Democratic decision-making should cater for (almost) all; therefore, in parliament or a referendum, the ballot should be multi-optional...
Tuesday
Apr232019
2019-14 Imagine, an old Brexit solution.
Tuesday, April 23, 2019 JEAN-CHARLES DE BORDA, “Capitaine et Savant,” 4.5.1733 – 19.2.1799, versus the world’s first ‘DEMOCRATIC DICTATOR’. Today, 4th May, 2019, is his birthday. Imagine, if the 2011 referendum on the UK’s electoral system had been a multi-option ‘preferendum’ on five options.....
Saturday
Apr062019
2019-13 A Brexit Solution - a 'preferendum'
Saturday, April 6, 2019 At some future date, the UK should hold a multi-option ‘second’ referendum on perhaps the following five options: a) in the EU and the € zone; b) in the EU with the £; c) in a Common Market 2.0; d) in a Customs Union; e) under the WTO.
Thursday
Apr042019
2019-12 Indicative Votes - Preferential
Thursday, April 4, 2019 INDICATIVE VOTES, ROUND TWO – MONDAY 1ST APRIL The aim of this paper is to hazard a guess at how the indicative votes cast in the House of Commons on Monday 1st April might have produced a different outcome if the voting methodology had been different. As it was, the MPs used...
Thursday
Mar282019
2019-11 The Commons & 'no' to compromise
Thursday, March 28, 2019 HOUSE OF COMMONS THROWS OUT PERFECT COMPROMISE It got over 250 1st preferences, definitely. It got over 100 2nd preferences, maybe. and a few 3rd/4th preferences, perhaps… but it got thrown out. Binary voting is like a thermometer with only two readings, ‘hot’ and ‘cold’. The warmth of the House towards this or that option cannot be measured by such a blunt instrument.
