Notice the paradoxical results of majority voting: A > B > C > A. Although politicians, attorneys, and journalists are wont to enshrine voting results as expressions of "the will of the people," it should be clear that the outcomes in such instances cannot represent a "will" in any coherent sense of the word. Such anomalies, by the way, are not limited to instances in which the groups of voters are evenly divided. Imagine, for instance, that group X had included 14 million voters, while Y included 11 million, and Z included only 5 million voters, as diagrammed at right. Then majority voting would produce the same anomalous results, as the student can easily verify.
X
14 million
voters
      A
      B
      C
Y
11 million
voters
      C
      A
      B
Z
5 million
voters
      B
      C
      A
As we saw in Section 2, "collective purpose" is only a myth, since the concepts of purpose and will pertain ultimately only to individual human beings (pp. 2.4:3-14). Since majority voting is not an expression of anyone's will, we should not be surprised when it leads to real-life anomalies like the one just examined. As the example also illustrates, the final outcome of a democratic voting procedure will often depend strongly on the order and structure by which alternatives are put to the vote—that is, the agenda. To a large extent, the agenda must be determined by officials already in power, so that incumbents effectively obtain a great degree of control over the outcomes of elections.      Next page
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