Tyrrany of a tiny minority
Democracy settles differences between competing visions of public life, so after every election there are inevitably happy winners and unhappy losers.
Under our traditional “50%-plus-1” majority rule, a whopping “50%-minus-1” losing minority could feel jilted after an election, which is an awful lot of unhappiness within a community. Rarely are ballots evenly split, so the unhappy losing camp is usually far less than half the number of voters.
Here in the US, mythic birthplace and bastion of ‘majority rule,’ we sometimes intentionally allow a minority to win on election day. This was possible in LASD a couple years ago when we voted on Measure E, the school parcel tax increase. If just one third of voters had voted against Measure E it would have failed, since a two thirds supermajority is required for such tax measures. (Luckily, Measure E passed, but only just barely.)
Allowing a one-third minority to overrule majority sentiment is like political leverage; each No vote cancels out two Yes votes.
Parcel tax measures require a two-thirds majority Yes vote, and so can be particularly difficult to pass, because even semi-organized opposition can be hard to overcome even if it isn’t richly funded. But “one-third/two-thirds” is the farthest we stray from majority rule. We would never dream of allowing a 10% minority camp to win over a 90% majority. That
