Just the statistics of it really.
Mentioned about it earlier on. It enters into Game Theory.

There is also the problem that you can be governed by a 'second choice'.
So it would be possible, and this is just a scenario, that the Liberals would govern the country because they got the lions share of the second place vote.

It really comes down why you vote. Ideally you want to be governed by a party that can pay for what we want. This was Labours undoing. As Bill Clinton said, "It is the economy stupid"

I studied BC in 1975, can we have this debate in 40 years time.

Isn't consensus/other terms to mean the same, just the lowest common denominator?

So how would we vote on this simple scenario:

We must reduce carbon emissions, so we will install 150,000 large windturbines at a delivered energy cost to the consumer of 26p/kWh, are we all happy with that?

Sorry - slight diversion coming up - but I saw the title electoral reform and I thought I'd take the opportunity to ask something that has been nagging me the past few days:

My question is about the importance of my vote. Our democratic system seems to promise that each and every vote is as important as the next ... and that my one vote can make a difference. The premise is that perhaps there are exactly 9,849 votes for Labour, and 9,849 for the Liberal Democrats, and my one vote for either of them could sway the result. But my feeling is that it is actually the returning officer, who 'counts' the spoilt or inconclusive ballot papers, who really has the balance of power in this situation. There will be 100's of such papers, a lot of them not at all clear-cut, and it is via his subjective view on these multiple incidents (just like the hanging chards in the 2000 US election) that the result will actually be decided.

So (not wanting to sound Russell Brand'ish here!) in a sense my vote is actually - logically - irrelevant. Only in a situation where there wasn't a single inconclusive vote cast might it have any decisive sway ... and under our current medieval system of voting with primitive marks on bits of paper there is almost always going to have to be some subjective angle to it ...

Anyone else felt this sort of strange sense of frustration?

Posted By: SteamyTeaThere is also the problem that you can be governed by a 'second choice'.
So it would be possible, and this is just a scenario, that the Liberals would govern the country because they got the lions share of the second place vote.

That's not a problem though, is it? For that to happen there must be fundamental disagreements in the first choices (half communist and half fascist?) but everybody can stomach the liberals (or whoever).

Personally I think we need to be less esoteric. The failures are to do with principles and strategy rather than the voting system. Who knows what effect PR would have in the UK. Cannot say I came out very clear on that after reading round the above. The next general election will be FPTP whatever so within that constraint what caused the Lib Dem debacle and Labour failure? Does this say anything about the effect PR might have?

The SNP brought out their voting public by having a clever leader and deputy who were crystal clear about what they wanted. UKIP similarly despite some unsavoury supporters who shouted their mouths off. The Greens were clear (and Caroline Lucas is competant and clever) but on the "far side"! The Lib Dems only became clear a month or two before the election having failed to rebel to bring down the government on those "fairness" and "green" issues that they claimed to be so devoted to. They had committed political suicide long before the election campaign. Labour was almost silent politically for four years as they worked on what? As it turned out a silly list of statements - on a stone. The public looked on as Miliband garbled his messages and joined enthusiastically in that ghastly parliamentary Yahboo with Cameron every week. Both men started the run up to the election with a public holding them in contempt - but the Tories were the government, well supported by money and the press, the sky hadn't fallen in over the previous five years, the Lib Dems were over and Labour had failed to layout clear principles and intent.

Even so the Polls in the run up to the election showed Labour and Tory neck and neck in the opinion of the public - so no overwhelming support for right wing policies or rejection of the left. But polls draw on a different population to the population that actually votes. Of that population more considered that Milliband and Co had shown themselves potentially less competant than Cameron and the Tories. I shudder, but despite my left and green-leaning view of the world, I think they had a point. Would PR bring in more Sturgeons, Lucas's and Farages (competant party leaders whatever you think of their policies)? Would Tories, Labour and Lib Dems split into smaller new parties? What effect would this have? What if UKIP and the Tory right merged? A cliche about devils comes to mind.

My personal assessment is that the result was the second best result possible , for the country as as whole. The best one would have been "as before" so a reasonably strong lib-dem in coalition with the convervatives - the coalition being necessary to reign in the more extreme policies of either side.

My assessment of what is good for the country does not in any way match with what is good for the planet - but as it stood I valued continuity over yet another idealogical change. In fact, there are policies from probably every party that I think are sensible and policies that are just plain loopy. I'd prefer a pick'n'mix approach to politics, but I can imagine that is never going to happen. A referendum on every policy - what could possibly go wrong...

Thenk U

Posted By: jamesingramI'm no etymologist but I don't think I have the same problem with the word compromise, I don't see it as a negative
You could say compromise leads to consensus

You do acknowledge that there's a difference between kinds of outcome that can arise from competing demands:

a) a miserable option which means everyone gets less than they hoped and the result is a disfunctional hotch-potch

b) outcomes are found which miraculously serve almost everyone, in ways unforeseen by any 'party', until it emerges

What word would you use for each of these? If in your book both 'comprise' and 'consensus' equal b), what would you call a)?

Compromise covers both cases (a) and (b); the word doesn't say anything about the benefits of the chosen plan. That's why we have phrases like 'successful compromise' and 'unsuccessful compromise'.

But (a) and (b) are exceptional cases. In the vast majority of situations there is no miracle solution and some or all people have to sacrifice something to find a solution. As long as everybody recognizes that a solution needs to be found, that it will involve sacrifices, and they are content with the distribution of the sacrifices then it's probably a successful compromise and if you're very lucky everybody might agree to it when directly faced with it. Then its called consensus and it's usually quite difficult to reach consensus in large groups because there are disagreements about how the sacrifices are shared. So we have systems of delegated authority to resolve questions with fewer people who have been chosen for their suitability for the role, in order to avoid conflicts with every decision. The systems are called managements, committees, democracies, dictatorships or whatever according to how the authorities are selected.

This thread, like many on GBF and other forums everywhere, is an excellent example of how difficult it can be to reach consensus.

Posted By: djhan excellent example of how difficult it can be to reach consensus

We're not consiously applying any of the techniques that are being developed to make consensus practicable on a modern large-scale governance level (let alone at small-group level).

There are specific ways of doing it, which don't look like everyday common practice - for an early-days/primitive/pioneering but familiar example, see Christopher Day's Consensus Design
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Consensus-Design-Socially-Inclusive-Process/dp/0750656050/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1431527508&sr=1-1&keywords=consensus+design
and IMHO experimentation towards consensual governance is the most important thing that the Transition movement is doing, without which all previous 'revolutions' eventually fall into the same-old power-patterns.

nice one - an eye opener. Ignore the fact that all the 'consensual' schemes come out looking the same, and just how the 'hands-off' architect/facilitator likes em - as I say, early days!