The Epistemic Edge of Majority Voting Over Lottery Voting.

Allard-Tremblay, Yann

I aim to explain why majority voting can be assumed to have an epistemic edge over lottery voting. This would provide support for majority voting as the appropriate decision mechanism for deliberative epistemic accounts of democracy. To argue my point, I first recall the usual arguments for majority voting: maximal decisiveness, fairness as anonymity, and minimal decisiveness. I then show how these arguments are over inclusive as they also support lottery voting. I then present a framework to measure accuracy so as to compare the two decision mechanisms. I go over four arguments for lottery voting and three arguments for majority voting that support their respective accuracy. Lottery voting is then shown to have, compared to majority voting, a decreased probability of discrimination. That is, I argue that with lottery voting it is less probable under conditions of normal politics that if the procedure selects X, X is reasonable. I then provide two case scenarios for each voting mechanism that illustrate my point.

EPISTEMICS; PLURALITY voting; LOTTERY winners; DEMOCRACY; DISCRIMINATION (Sociology); PRACTICAL politics; ACCURACY

Res Publica (13564765), 2012, Vol 18, Issue 3, p207

1356-4765

Academic Journal

10.1007/s11158-011-9176-9