The "parallel consent" requirement in the new Northern Ireland assembly is an improvement on simple majority voting, but will still perpetuate division, the director of a new electoral reform institute has said.
Mr Peter Emerson, director of the de Borda institute which was introduced in Dublin yesterday, called on those involved in the assembly to examine the voting system of that name, which he called "a methodology which allows neither a minority to veto nor a majority to control".
In the de Borda or preferendum system - probably best known as the method for choosing the Eurovision song winner - the voter casts his or her preference for all or some of several options on the ballot paper. The winning option under the system is the one with the highest total of points.
In the more sophisticated preferendum, the winner is sometimes a composite of the two most popular options.
In introducing Beyond the Tyranny of the Majority, Mr Emerson's book on voting methods in decision-making and electoral systems, the Green Party TD, Mr Trevor Sargent, said the "blind reliance on straight majority voting has given us bloody conflict in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Burundi and of course Northern Ireland".
Countries such as Sweden, Germany and Malta were moving towards the multi-option alternatives outlined in Mr Emerson's book. It was regrettable that the Irish Constitution Review Group had stated that "democracy works on the basis of a decision by the majority".