A few weeks ago my sorority voted on the slate for next year. The slate consists of all of the exec positions such as President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, etc. A committee puts on interviews beforehand for each position and then combines the people they think are best suited for each job to create the overall executive "slate". Everyone then comes together to vote (voting is required by everyone) on the committee's chosen slate instead of voting on each position individually. The downside is that if the slate doesn't pass, everyone has to stay while all of the candidates for each position make a speech and we vote on the positions individually (this is very time consuming).
Our process is pretty different from other chapters, but another major difference from many elections is that instead of requiring a simple majority for the slate to pass, we require a vote of 2/3 of our chapter. Buchanan argues that different issues require different voting thresholds. Since the new slate is a very important part of the chapter-they represent our group and make important decisions-we require a 2/3 vote. Looking at the graph below, it is easy to see how why we have this requirement:
There are two types of costs: Decision making and External. Decision making costs in this case are the costs of the large group coming together and making the decision on a vote. They are increasing at an increasing rate as the required amount of voters needed to pass nears unanimity. External costs are those that are imposed on people as a result of the actions of others. An example is if everyone is required to sit through hours of speeches and several rounds of voting if 1/3 of people vote the slate down. In this case, external costs are high. When the costs are added together and minimized, Na* (the optimal number of voters needed to pass the slate) is larger than simple majority, which is why we have the requirement of 2/3 of voters to pass the slate.
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When reading this post I was reminded of a vote held place this year in my house of 11 girls. The big debate was over cable - we were paying an obscene amount for our cable and wifi package (almost $300/month!!!) and held a vote to determine whether we should cut cable and just have wifi, or keep the bill how it was. Although this group was much smaller than Kelly's example, I think our graph would have been very similar. While our decision-making costs were probably a bit lower than Kelly's, the external costs were similarly very large. If the majority decided to cut the cable, no one in our house would be able to watch the Hoos games. But if majority decided to keep it, everyone would have to contribute roughly $25/ month to keep our package. Because we have so many UVA sports fans in our house, as well as many who are strapped for cash, this decision was very important. The optimum number of voters was definitely above the simple majority of 6 votes, but we hadn't reached this section of the class yet - so I didn't object to deciding by simple majority. However, the interesting twist to this story is that we did not force people to vote, like Kelly's sorority did- so only 6 people actually voted. 4 voted to get rid of cable, and 2 voted to keep it. We got rid of the cable. Although this was a very contentious issue, almost half the house didn't even participate. Not only were we below the simple majority threshold, but we were far below the amount of optimal voters necessary to make such a crucial decision. 4 people in our house of 11 made a major decision for the entire house - we needed some better incentives in place to get the rest of the house to vote.
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