The Votes Are In
When making decisions as a group, the most important thing is to make sure that the needs of everyone involved are equally represented. One method that is geared at this goal is called Consensus Decision-Making. During last week’s forum, Jacquie explored the way that consensus-based decision making can work positively in a group setting.
How does consensus decision-making work? If there is a decision to be made, the group will try to come to an agreement about what course of action to take collectively. It differs from voting, as it is not that majority wins, but everyone gets the opportunity to voice their opinion, and no decision is made until the entire group is satisfied. The Occupy Wall Street movement used this method, trying to spark “horizontal decision-making” to put power into the hands of everyone, instead of just a select group of people. (http://what-democracy-looks-like.com/occupy-wall-street-and-consensus-decision-making-historicizing-the-preoccupation-with-process/).
Consensus decision-making generally works better in a community setting, where there would be enough time to hear the desires of everyone involved. Imagine using this method for the upcoming election? It would be absolutely impossible. Although traditional voting as seen in the Canadian electoral structure is more convenient and time efficient, the method has inherent flaws that undermine the validity and legitimacy of the outcome. For instance, a drawback identified during our forum event was that different minority groups do not get the chance to be heard equally (http://rabble.ca/columnists/2015/07/millions-canadians-denied-right-to-vote-2015-federal-election), (http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-disabled-voters-challenges-polls-1.3225715). When functioning on a larger scale, consensus decision-making will often have a leader to represent a smaller community, and then bring the decision to be discussed with a larger group (http://what-democracy-looks-like.com/occupy-wall-street-and-consensus-decision-making-historicizing-the-preoccupation-with-process/).
Although it is not practical for large groups, the cool part about consensus decision- making is it opens up silenced conversations. It does not just say “majority wins”, but questions why the minority didn’t agree with the decision. Consensus decision-making enables the group to identify flaws that might often go unnoticed when the diverse paradigms of the entire community are not equally represented.
At forum, we as a group tried out this consensus decision-making with a few hypothetical situations. Everyone had a chance to suggest ideas and solutions, and the group worked together until we reached a united conclusion. Although this forum opened up our eyes to new decision making tactics and allowed us to think critically about our current voting system, it is still important to educate yourself before the upcoming election! Here are some links to check out:
https://pollenize.org/canada
https://canada.isidewith.com/political-quiz
https://votecompass.cbc.ca
QPID’s next forum will take place on Wednesday October 7th from 5:30- 6:30 pm in the John Orr Room in the JDUC. Stay tuned for this week’s topic! We hope to see you all there.