Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Consensus vs Majority Voting

[cscheuer (cscheuer]

> A majority vote says I don't care what "you" think, "we" don't have to pay
> attention to you. When a group reaches this point the disagreeing
> membersare disenfranchised and will live on the margins of the group with
> their discontent or leave. 

I think that is an oversimplification of the voting experience, which may
be more true of our quite limited national voting experience, but is not
neccessarily true in a smaller community. Having a rich democratic
experience, where you are afforded more opportunities to vote on personally
important issues (as well as ones less important) means that you "win" some
and "lose" some and in the process I believe  you come to understand the
nature of compromise and hopefully the proces becomes smoother over time. I
would think that rarely does the same group "lose" every vote. If this is
the case, there may be some more fundamental differences among members that
a consensus process wouldn't resolve either. It may be perferable to reach
consensus, but if in the process of striving for that, members become burnt
out and stop attending or participating as actively aren't they
"disenfranchised"? In a consensus system if participants become disengaged
its the system that they are disengaging from, while in a voting system it
is particular results. In a voting system the pendulum of results should
swing over time so that everyone experiences both sides and may be unhappy
about some results but happy about others (like with most experiences) and
in the process they experience a community evolving.  In the consensus
system if members disengage because of the process, how do you bring them
back in?

Chris Scheuer
Master of Science in Architecture

Research Assistant 
Center for Sustainable Systems
School of Natural Resources and Environment
University of Michigan
www.css.snre [at] umich.edu
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