There are very few 2,000year-old devices still in current use. One is the garden spade, a most useful tool. Another is the majority vote, but this is rarely adequate for domestic decision-making, let alone for running society at large. Take the question of abortion. The Green Paper has identified seven options. If this multi-option debate is to be turned into a two-option vote, it may be that neither option represents "the popular will". Indeed, in many instances a two-option question cannot help to identify the general consensus, because it tends to polarise society into opposing categories, Are you for or against divorce? or Are you left-wing or right-wing?
Majority voting, then, sometimes doesn't work, either politically nor logically.
In the referendum on devolution for Wales, for example, 51 per cent supported devolution, 49 per cent the status quo. So devolution won. If, however, independence had been included, and if but 3 per cent had voted for independence, the status quo could have won instead.
In fact, those results tell us very little. How many - 3 per cent or all 51 per cent - actually wanted independence? Maybe no one wanted devolution. There again, it might have been the best compromise. We just don't know. And the only certainty is this: Tony Blair wanted devolution . . . yet he wasn't voting!
In a word, majority voting is a means by which those who control the question control the agenda. Governments win votes in parliament, because they (usually) have a majority. They often win referendums, too, if they control the question. One recent failure was Robert Mugabe's referendum in Zimbabwe, thank God . . . or rather, thank the people.
Another was Fianna Fail's attempts in 1959 and 1968 to scrap our electoral system of proportional representation based on the single transferable vote.
In the Republic, the use of such two-option voting may not matter very much. Elsewhere, the consequences have been horrific. In 1973 in Northern Ireland, the question was the Border, yes or no. In Croatia in 1991 it was independence, yes or no. In both polls, either you abstained or, as in war, you were forced to take sides.
In Bosnia - at EU insistence - there was likewise no compromise. And, to quote Sarajevo's Oslobodjenje newspaper ". . . all the wars in the former Yugoslavia started with a referendum".
In Kashmir, Kosovo, Montenegro, Northern Ireland, Quebec, Sudan and various parts of Indonesia, there are similar demands, yet such votes cannot promote reconciliation.
An exception, perhaps, was the Belfast Agreement. If, however, there had been three options - the agreement, a more nationalist policy, or a more unionist position - we might have avoided both the bizarre situation in which DUP Paisley voted with Ruairi O Bradaigh's Republican Sinn Fein, and all that nonsense about "the majority of the majority" which is usually just another minority, of course; after all, 51 per cent of 51 per cent is only 26 per cent.
The agreement's long-term defect, however, is that it prescribes another referendum: United Kingdom (if it's still there) or United Ireland. No compromise. We know that the demography is changing; that the vote will be repeated every seven years or so; and that two similar referendums plus the prospect of another have tempted some Quebeckersinto violence. Yet still we persist with this "never-end-um".
Would it not be better if, on all contentious questions, the voters or their representatives could express their preferences? After all, pluralism is possible. And a system of preference points voting would enable the Dail or the electorate always to find the best compromise, i.e. the first preference of perhaps just a few, but the second/third choice of many and the third/fourth choice of lots more.
SUCH is the basis of conflict resolution, and this points system of preference voting (the "Borda preferendum") is also a win-win methodology.
Accordingly, on abortion and electoral reform etc, an independent body should draw up a list of options for a non-binding multi-option ballot; next, the people could vote by preference points; and the most popular choice (the one with the highest points total) could then be ratified, so as to comply with the Constitution.
A similar dialogue (or "polylogue") could take place in Northern Ireland. Indeed, given the matters at issue in the current impasse (decommissioning, yes or no? RUC or NIPC? Belfast Assembly or direct rule?) a multi-option approach is essential . . . and no one should have a veto.
Multi-option voting could also be a feature of an all-party, power-sharing Dail Eireann. Furthermore, until the Dail itself rejects majoritarianism, the unionists may not be tempted to join at all.
Finland conducted a three-option prohibition vote in 1931. Sweden held two multi-option polls, on pensions and nuclear power, in 1957 and 1980 respectively. New Zealand used a non-binding multi-option vote plus a binding two-option vote in 1992 on electoral reform. And Norway uses multi-option voting in parliament.
Pluralism, then, is not new. In fact, it was first tried in Rome 1,900 years ago, while the points system dates from 1435.
Just as in yesteryear the divine right of kings was never questioned, so today majority voting is unthinkingly accepted, at the parish pump level of organisations, to the Oireachtas and the United Nations. Even the Constitutional Review Group claims: "Democracy works on the basis of a decision by the majority". Politically speaking, it seems, we still prefer the spade.
The Borda preferendum, however, is a decision-making methodology which is not majoritarian and need not be adversarial. It is ideally suited to this computer age, both for electronically counted national "preferendums", and most readily for a cybernetic Dail.
Peter Emerson is director of the de Borda Institute of Belfast, a body dedicated to promoting inclusive voting procedures