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I'm on my way to China again.  And here's the blog: https://deborda.substack.com/p/debordaabroad2

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The de Borda Institute

aims to promote the use of inclusive, multi-optional and preferential voting procedures, both in parliaments/congresses and in referendums, 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, a company board, a co-operative, and so on.  But we also cover elections.

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The Institute is named after Jean-Charles de Borda, and hence the well-known voting procedure, the Borda Count BC; but Jean-Charles actually invented what is now called the Modified Borda Count, MBC - the difference is subtle:

In a vote on n options, the voter may cast m preferences; and, of course, m < n.

In a BC, points are awarded to (1st, 2nd ... last) preferences cast according to the rule (n, n-1 ... 1) {or (n-1, n-2 ... 0)} whereas,

in an MBC, points are awarded to (1st, 2nd ... last) preferences cast according to the rule (m, m-1 ... 1).

The difference can be huge, especially when the topic is controversial: the BC benefits those who cast only a 1st preference; the MBC encourages the consensual, those who submit not only a 1st preference but also their 2nd (and subsequent) compromise option(s).  And if (nearly) every voter states their compromise option(s), an MBC can identify the collective compromise.

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DECISION-MAKER
Inclusive voting app 

https://debordavote.com

THE APP TO BEAT ALL APPS, APPSOLUTELY!

(The latest in a long-line of electronic voting for decision-making; our first was in 1991.)

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FINANCES

The Institute was estabished in 1997 with a cash grant of £3,000 from the Joseph Rowntree Charitabe Trust, and has received the occasional sum from Northern Ireland's Community Relations Council and others.  Today it relies on voluntary donations and the voluntary work of its board, while most running expenses are paid by the director. 

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A BLOG 

"De Borda abroad." From Belfast to Beijing and beyond... and back. Starting in Vienna with the Sept 2017 TEDx talk, I give lectures in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Istanbul, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Tehran, Beijing, Tianjin, Xuzhou, Hong Kong and Taiwan... but not in Pyongyang. Then back via Mongolia (where I had been an election observer in June 2017) and Moscow (where I'd worked in the '80s).

I have my little fold-up Brompton with me - surely the best way of exploring any new city! So I prefer to go by train, boat or bus, and then cycle wherever in each new venue; and all with just one plastic water bottle... or that was the intention!

The story is here.

In Sept 2019, I set off again, to promote the book of the journey.  After the ninth book launch in Taipei University, I went to stay with friends in a little village in Gansu for the Chinese New Year.  The rat.  Then came the virus, lockdown... and I was stuck.

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The Hospital for Incurable Protestants

The Mémoire of a Collapsed Catholic

 This is the story of a pacifist in a conflict zone, in Northern Ireland and the Balkans.  Only in e-format, but only £5.15.  Available from Amazon.

 

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The director alongside the statue of Jean-Charles de Borda, capitaine et savant, in l’École Navale in Brest, 24.9.2010. Photo by Gwenaelle Bichelot. 

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WELCOME

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 above 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.

As shown in these attachments, there are many voting procedures for use in decision-making and even more electoral systems.  This is because, in decision-making, there is usually only one outcome - a singe decision or a shopping ist, a prioritisation; but with some electoral systems, and definitely in any proportional ones, there can be several winners.  Sometimes, for any one voters' profile - that is, the set of all their preferences - the outcome of any count may well depend on the voting procedure used.  In this very simple example of a few voters voting on just four options, and in these two hypothetical examples on five, (word document) or (Power-point) in which a few cast their preferences on five options, the profiles are analysed according to different methodologies, and the winner could be any one of all the options.  Yet all of these methodologies are called democratic!  Extraordinary!

deborda.gif

Vienna TEDx Talk - October 2017

Here's the YouTube,  the PowerPoint, and the text of the speech (more or less).

Wednesday
Oct022019

2019-27 A 4th book from Springer 

DateWednesday, October 2, 2019

https://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783030202187

Majority Voting as a Catalyst of Populism is based on my journey from Belfast to Beijing and beyond, 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; and even in communist countries like Russia - after all, the very word 'bolshevik' means 'member of the majority'.

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Thursday
Sep192019

2019-26 Letter in The Guardian, 19 Sept.

DateThursday, September 19, 2019
Maybe we are nearly all partly right — Labour, Lib-Dem, Green et al, including some honest Tories. Maybe the mistake is the notion that a non-binary problem can be solved by a binary vote. However, as Pliny the Younger pointed out in 105 AD, in a multi-option debate, if there is no majority for any one thing, there is a majority against every single thing.
So, on complex issues, votes in parliament, referendums, party conferences, etc., should be multi-optional and, ideally, preferential.

 

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Wednesday
Sep042019

2019-25 Rights (and Wrongs) of Majority Rule

DateWednesday, September 4, 2019

http://www.scirp.org/Journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=94818  has just been published in the Beijing Law Review.

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Monday
Aug192019

2019-24 A letter in the Irish Times

DateMonday, August 19, 2019

Sir, – The Irish and British electoral systems are very different: PR-STV (a British invention) is one of the best. First-past-the-post (FPTP) is its extreme opposite. But we both have the same decision-making system: binary voting, one of the worst.

Click to read more ...

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Friday
Jul052019

2019-23 Participatory Budgeting

DateFriday, July 5, 2019

https://pbnetwork.org.uk/what-is-democracy-anyway-why-voting-systems-matter-in-participatory-budgeting/

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Tuesday
Jul022019

2019-22 The Economist; & now The Ecologist

DateTuesday, 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

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Sunday
Jun162019

2019-21 The Economist: Open Future Festival

DateSunday, 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/

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Thursday
May092019

2019-20 Local elections still dodgy

DateThursday, May 9, 2019

The Irish News of 8th May. Our elections still fail to come up to international standards. Many...

Click to read more ...

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Tuesday
May072019

2019-15 Everything on the table? An MBC?

DateTuesday, 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...

Click to read more ...

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Tuesday
Apr232019

2019-14 Imagine, an old Brexit solution.

DateTuesday, 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.....

Click to read more ...

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
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