Madam, - Amid all the noise about electronic voting, most people are talking about the voters, and few are discussing the elected representatives. Yet if the voters are to cast their preferences electronically in elections, could not the TDs do the same in decision-making?
An experiment on electronic voting was held in Belfast in 1991. At a public meeting organised by the New Ireland Group, members of 10 different political parties came to discuss the perennial question of Northern Ireland. They included Jim Tunney (Fianna Fáil), Mary Banotti (Fine Gael), Trevor Sargent (the Green Party) and Michael D. Higgins (Labour), as well as others from most of the Northern parties - Alliance, the Greens, the Official Unionists, SDLP, Sinn Féin, etc. Several options were proposed and analysed, some composited, others amended, and when the talking was done, the 100 participants voted. A computer then displayed both the voters' audit and the result: the option with the highest average preference.
This, surely, is the great advantage of electronic voting: that it can cope with multi-option preference voting and thus cater for a plural democracy. In this way, the Dáil could progress from the present win-or-lose majority vote to a win-win preference vote by which could be identified, if not the common consensus, then at least the collective best compromise. There must, of course, be a paper (or electronic) audit, and everyone must be aware of the counting procedures involved.
In decision-making, as in any rankings system, we identify the option with the highest average preference. In elections, because of the complications of PR-STV, the count should be done in stages, and all transfers should be done on the basis of a full (rather than a random) analysis.
But first things first. Let's start by modernising the Dáil (and the EU). - Yours, etc.,
PETER EMERSON, Director, The de Borda Institute, Ballysillan Road, Belfast 14.