A supermajority, (supra-majority, supramajority, qualified majority, or special majority) is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of more than one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority rules in a democracy can help to prevent a majority from eroding fundamental rights of a minority, but they can also hamper efforts to respond to problems and encourage corrupt compromises at times when action is taken. Changes to constitutions, especially those with entrenched clauses, commonly require supermajority support in a legislature. Parliamentary procedure requires that any action of a deliberative assembly that may alter the rights of a minority have a supermajority requirement, such as a two-thirds vote.
Related concepts regarding alternatives to the majority vote requirement include a majority of the entire membership and a majority of the fixed membership. A supermajority can also be specified based on the entire membership or fixed membership rather than on those present and voting.
The first known use of a supermajority rule was in the 100s BC in ancient Rome.
Pope Alexander III introduced the use of supermajority rule for papal elections at the Third Lateran Council in 1179.
In the Democratic Party of the United States, a rule requiring the determination of a presidential nominee required the votes of two-thirds of delegates to the Democratic National Convention was adopted at the party's first presidential nominating convention in 1832. The two-thirds rule gave southern Democrats a de facto veto over any presidential nominee after the Civil War, which lasted until the rule was abolished in 1936.
In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison were critical of supermajority requirements. In Federalist 22, Hamilton wrote that while preventing harmful legislation from being passed, such requirements also prevented beneficial legislation from being passed, and "its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.
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Consensus decision-making or consensus process (often abbreviated to consensus) are group decision-making processes in which participants develop and decide on proposals with the aim, or requirement, of acceptance by all. The focus on establishing agreement of at least the majority or the supermajority and avoiding unproductive opinion differentiates consensus from unanimity, which requires all participants to support a decision. The word consensus is Latin meaning "agreement, accord", derived from consentire meaning "feel together".
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sovereignty with the federal government. Due to this shared sovereignty, Americans are citizens both of the federal republic and of the state in which they reside.
Promulgation is the formal proclamation or the declaration that a new statutory or administrative law is enacted after its final approval. In some jurisdictions, this additional step is necessary before the law can take effect. After a new law is approved, it is announced to the public through the publication of government gazettes and/or on official government websites. National laws of extraordinary importance to the public may be announced by the head of state or head of government on a national broadcast.
Parliament dynamics might seem erratic at times. Predicting future voting patterns could support policy design based on the simulation of voting scenarios. The availability of open data on legislative activities and machine learning tools might enable such ...
Logic synthesis is a key component of digital design and modern EDA tools; it is thus an essential instrument for the design of leading-edge chips and to push the limits of their performance. In the last decades, the electronic circuits community has evolv ...
EPFL2020
We study the phenomenon of intransitivity in models of dice and voting. First, we follow a recent thread of research for n-sided dice with pairwise ordering induced by the probability, relative to 1/2, that a throw from one die is higher than the other. We ...