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DEMOCRACY IS FOR

EVERYBODY, NOT

JUST FOR A (OR

THE) MAJORITY.

 

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Another journey to China, via Baku (COP29), Georgia, India, and return via Mongolia, Russia and (therefore) Ukraine.  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).

Thursday
May062021

2021-6 The Economist

DateThursday, May 6, 2021
Let's follow the science.

 

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Thursday
Apr292021

2021-5 Power-sharing in Westminster 

DateThursday, April 29, 2021

PRESS RELEASE IMMEDIATE 29.4.2021 BORIS? POWER-SHARING COULDN’T BE WORSE

Click to read more ...

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Wednesday
Feb032021

2021-4 Adam Smith Seminar, Munich

DateWednesday, February 3, 2021
The de Borda Institute gave the first of this year's Adam Smith Seminars.
A video recording is available here.

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Sunday
Jan102021

2021-3 The Lessons of Trump

DateSunday, January 10, 2021

THE LESSONS OF TRUMP The Achilles heel of western democracy is its dependence on the usually primitive, often divisive, sometimes inaccurate and always Orwellian binary vote. The two-party system “has perpetrated the most horrid enormities [and] is itself a frightful despotism.” George Washington,

Click to read more ...

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Thursday
Jan072021

2021-2 Decision-making, launches 

DateThursday, January 7, 2021
Democratic Decision-making, Consensus Voting for Civic Society and Parliaments.
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030528072  
was and/or will be launched, virtually:
i)     'in' Belfast: see 2020-12.  
ii)    'in' Brno University with Pavel Dufek on 13.11.2020.  
iii)   Vanessa Liston and Prof. Peter Stone hosted 'in' Trinity College Dublin on 30.11.2020.
iv)   'in' Kent University, with Anna Tulin Brett in the chair and Prof. Hugh Miall introducing, on 14.01.2021.

v)    'in' Munich. The first 2021 Adam Smith Seminar on 01.02.2021, with Profs Shanti Chakravarty (Bangor University) and Manfred Holler of MSSR.  See 2021-4.

vi)   'in' the American University of Paris with Professor Hall Gardener on 15.4.2021. https://youtu.be/f0OQv04z3T4

vii)   'in' Derry, 14.6.21, with CfC, Collaboration for Change; see 2021-7.

viii)   'in' Brussels, the European Parliament, on 22.6.2021, with Ciarán Cuffe MEP; see 2021-9.
AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Wednesday
Jan062021

2021-1 The (English) Times, a letter

DateWednesday, January 6, 2021

The world’s first multi-option referendum,

Click to read more ...

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Friday
Dec182020

2020-14 TV Documentary: de Borda abroad

DateFriday, December 18, 2020

Northern Visions has just produced this:

 

 

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Friday
Nov062020

2020-13 US elections

DateFriday, November 6, 2020

The USA is divided; but if a country uses binary voting, not only in its decision-making but also in its elections, it will divide.  Trump is only the denouement of a divisive politics.

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Sunday
Oct182020

2020-12 Launch: Democratic Decision-making

DateSunday, October 18, 2020
Video of the socially-distanced Zoom launch of Democratic Decision-making, 2020, (Springer, Heidelberg) on 7.10.2020.  The event was chaired by Professor John Barry, Queen's University, Belfast.  The book is a critique of majority voting which, in many instances, produces an outcome which does not accurately reflect the will of those voting, the people in a referendum, or the MPs in a parliament.  Instead of such a binary structure, democracy, it is argued, should be based on preferential points voting.
AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
Tuesday
Aug252020

2020-11 Democratic Decision-making

DateTuesday, August 25, 2020

Democratic Decision-making, 2020, (Springer, Heidelberg)

Democratic Decision-making is a if not the guidebook for all involved in decision-making, from those in a local community group, via others in regional/national parliaments, to our representatives in the UN Security Council.  The message is clear: if a contentious problem isn't binary, don't take a binary vote.  If there are more than two options 'on the table', have more than two on the ballot: enjoy pluralism, the diversity of our species, and use a preferential vote, ideally on a (short) list of about five options.  Thus can we identify the option with the highest average preference; and an average includes every voter, not just a majority of them.

The end of majority voting as a means of tackling contentious problems could mean the end of binary majority rule and resort to (post-Covid, post-climate-chaos, post-conflict) all-party power-sharing.

AuthorDeborda | Comments Off |
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