Sir, - Impeachment, they cry, yes or no? But, as in so many other debates, it should not be a two-option question. After all, they could impeach, censure, fine, demand an apology, or whatever.
Why do politicians invariably reduce the complexities of questions to a stark choice of only two options? To cater for five or six options would allow all concerned to find a compromise. As it is, they are going to spend months and months of everybody's time, and eventually come up with what will probably be a very similar compromise.
Why, then, do they believe in the majority vote? The answer is equally stark: because majority voting allows those in power to control the agenda. The Republicans want to impeach; therefore that and that alone is the agenda.
But why too do certain academics believe that "democracy works on the basis of a decision by the majority" (Report of the Constitution Group, p. 398)? Does democracy not require the majority to accommodate the rest of society? Cannot all sides consider a number of options, thereby to seek such an accommodation? Must human relationships always be so adversarial, or will we one day learn to use multi-option voting processes, first proposed over 500 new years ago by the good cardinal, Nicholas of Cusa?
We are learning slowly. The Australians were the first, in 1920; in that particular debate, more than any other, the answer could be neither "yes" nor "no" and a compromise was essential; the subject, after all, was prohibition. Sweden and Finland followed and New Zealand recently used a multi-option vote on electoral reform. It is only a matter of time, then, before others come to realise that multi-option voting allows for a more pluralist democracy, and then, too, they may use the Borda points system, a more inclusive procedure.
Anything else, the old two-party system (and the for-or-against two-option vote) was, would be and still is "a frightful abomination", to quote George Washington himself, speaking in his farewell address in 1796. And doubtless he would be appalled by the partisan nature of present-day US politics. - Yours, etc., P. J. Emerson,
The de Borda Institute, Ballysillan Road, Belfast 14.