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For the people to have their say on Brexit, how best can the multi-option conundrum be resolved?

In this article, Peter Emerson discusses the merit of First-Past-the-Post and majority-rules voting, specifically when compared to a Modified Borda Count (MBC) system. Emerson discusses how in previous ballot elections (Kosovan independence in 1991, Northern Irish border in 1973, and Iranian government structure in 1979) the votes appeared to be nearly unanimous, mostly due to their binary nature. Over 90% in each election voted for either a yes or no on the issue at hand, but this number is very misleading. Emerson argues that the reason these majorities appear so high is people were faced with either voting for an initiative or against it and were given no alternative options to the one proposition. In each of these three cases, the seemingly unanimous decision became a problem later on and was overturned, mostly because it was never supported by 90% of the population, but rather the binary nature of the vote forced people who did not support that particular solution, but feared no solution at all so much that they voted for something they didn’t believe in.

Emerson goes on to discuss how this flaw in majority voting applies to Brexit. Brexit is evidently a very complicated and nuanced situation, but voters were only given the choice to either stay in the E.U or leave it, no alternatives to partially leaving or something similar, only whether to stay or go. This caused many people who were unsatisfied with the E.U to vote to leave completely, when in reality they may have favored a middle ground of partially separating Britain from the E.U.

This topic connects to the voting systems discussed in class. In class, we looked at how a Borda system would work and the possible advantages and disadvantages of such a system. This article goes through a hypothetical voting scenario and compares a majority voting system to a Borda Count system. In this example, k = 4 and each preference got k – n points where n is the order that choice is in. This example also shows how a majority system can yield one ranking of options (A-D-C-B) while the Borda Count system yields the exact opposite ranking (B-C-D-A). It is interesting to note how much of a difference the voting system makes on the final outcome of an election.

 

https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/peter-emerson/for-people-to-have-their-say-on-brexit-how-best-can-multi-option-conundrum-be-resol

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