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Developing a research agenda to support a decade-long process of electoral reform requires, first, determining how ambitious reform goals should be for a single decade. This paper proposes a moderately ambitious goal of a “state of the art” voting infrastructure, in comparison to even more ambitious possibilities, and describes some of its key features - including “war-gaming” exercises to test for vulnerabilities and a Model Code to resolve disputes over the counting of presidential ballots.

The California recall election of 2003 provides an excellent setting for investigating voter rationality and certain forms of sophisticated voting. In a pre-election telephone survey, 1,500 registered voters were asked to make pairwise comparisons between the major candidates, and their responses were combined to infer preferences. Individuals’ preference orderings over the major candidates rarely exhibited intransitivity. The patterns of tactical voting observed in the replacement part of the recall election were consistent with the declining rate hypothesis. Voters also engaged in ‘hedge voting’ on the recall question itself. The results suggest that voters’ decisions are ‘rationalistic’: while voters are consistent in forming utility-based preference rankings and choosing on that basis, their voting strategies do not incorporate probability assessments in a realistic, consistent fashion, if at all.

Madison, Condorcet and the ratification of the constitution in 1787–1788 [I]t may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society, consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction … Hence it is that democracies have been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security … and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect … [I]f the proportion of fit characters be not less in the large than in the small republic, the former will present a greater option, and consequently a greater probability of a fit choice. (Madison in Rakove 1999) This argument in Federalist 10 , written in November 1787 by James Madison, may still be relevant today. However, modern theories of democracy have not constructed formal models of voting able to develop Madison's distinction between pure democracy and the republic (or what we call representative democracy). My intention in this chapter is to present a model that can be used to interpret certain aspects of American political history in order to gauge the validity of Madison's argument. The theoretical problem that Madison addressed in Federalist 10 was the generally accepted belief that democracy was unstable.

As we have seen, Riker (1982, 122, 128) acknowledges that debate and discussion lead to similarities of judgment, that “a wide variety of rather mild agreement about the issue dimension guarantees a Condorcet winner,” that uncontrived cyclical outcomes are “quite rare,” so that “intransitivities only occasionally render decision by majoritarian methods meaningless.” His remaining objection then is that outcomes may be manipulated by strategic voting, agenda control, and contrived introduction of new alternatives and dimensions. “Manipulated outcomes are meaningless because they are manipulated, and unmanipulated outcomes are meaningless because they cannot be distinguished from manipulated ones” (Riker 1982, 237). To introduce his concern, consider the following exercise. Suppose that a majority of 60 percent favors A over B , and a minority of 40 percent favors B over A . The minority faction could contrive a cycle if it has some idea of the distribution of preferences over original alternatives A, B , and new issue C . Issue C splits the majority. See Table 7.1. With C on the scene, A beats B by 60 percent, B beats C by 70 percent, and C beats A by 70 percent. Then, the minority can propose C against A , which C wins, then C against B , which B wins, thus, the minority view favoring B over A prevails (but only if the majority is somehow incapacitated from continuing the cycle by proposing A against B which of course A would win, ad infinitum ).

Decision by majorities is as much an expedient as lighting by gas. William Gladstone There are two general rules. First, the more grave and important the questions discussed, the nearer should the opinion that is to prevail approach to unanimity. Second, the more the matter in hand calls for speed, the smaller the prescribed difference in the number of votes may be allowed to become: when an immediate decision has to be reached, a majority of one should suffice. Jean-Jacques Rousseau This and the next four chapters explore the properties of various voting rules. These rules can be thought of as governing the polity itself, as when decisions are made in a town meeting or by referendum, or an assembly, or a committee of representatives of the citizenry. Following Black (1958), we shall often refer to “committee decisions” as being the outcomes of the voting process. It should be kept in mind, however, that the word “committee” is employed in this wider sense, and can imply a committee of the entire polity voting, as in a referendum. When a committee of representatives is implied, the results can be strictly related only to the preferences of the representatives themselves. The relationship between citizen and representative preferences is taken up later. The unanimity rule Since all can benefit from the provision of a public good, the obvious voting rule for providing it would seem to be unanimous consent. Wicksell (1896) was the first to link the potential for all to benefit from collective action to the unanimity rule.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, virtually every major institution of the English polity was fundamentally altered: the electoral system by the expansion of the electorate, the adoption of secret voting, and the introduction of equally sized single-member districts; the House of Commons by a complete rewriting of the rules of public and private legislation; the House of Lords by the Parliament Act (1911); the Monarchy by a continuing atrophy of power; the Civil Service by the eradication of sinecures and patronage entailed in the transition to competitive examination; the press by the lessening and ultimate removal of the advertising, stamp, and paper duties, coupled with technological innovation. This study has focused on the development of two of the most important English political institutions: the Cabinet and the political parties. Our approach has not been to sift through the precedents and conventions of Cabinet government; this has been done extensively elsewhere (e.g., Jennings 1951; Mackintosh 1962). Rather, we have focused on two specific and quantifiable behaviors that reflected party development – viz., voting in Parliament and voting in the constituencies. The history of party government is told through the history of party voting. In broad outline, the story runs as follows. England in the opening decades of the nineteenth century had in many respects an American-style system. MPs were individually powerful in Parliament, introducing and steering through the House legislation both private and public. They were also individually powerful in their constituencies, largely controlling electoral organization and finance, and acting as a conduit for patronage and private bills.