Consensus Voting and Party Funding: A Web-Based Experiment

• Published in: European political science Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 83 - 101
• Main Author: Emerson, Peter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Palgrave Macmillan UK 01.03.2010; Palgrave Macmillan
• Subjects: Charitable trusts; Comparative Politics; Consensus; Decision Making; Democracy; Experiments; Internet; Majority voting system; Party financing; Political Science; Political Science and International Relations; Political Science and International Studies; Political systems; Political Theory; Politics; Trust; United Kingdom; Voting; Voting behaviour; consensus; consensor; Borda; Modified Borda Count
• ISSN: 1680-4333; 1682-0983
• DOI: 10.1057/eps.2009.40

With the help of a grant from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the de Borda Institute and the New Economics Foundation did some research into decision making. The binary majority vote is often inadequate and inaccurate, and it was thought that perhaps a multi-option procedure of preferential voting would be more suitable for a modern, pluralist society. As part of that project, an experiment was conducted on the web, based on a Modified Borda Count. The subject of discussion was the UK controversy about how to fund the political process. After a critique of dichotomous decision making and an introduction to consensus voting, this article describes the experiment, analyses the vote and makes recommendations for any future exercise.