Kenneth Arrow Quotes

Proportional representation, I think, is fundamentally counter-democratic.

In my view what you can't argue for is a system that is neither decisive nor proportional and can be indecisive and disproportionate at the same time.

I think you have to ask yourself does voting work on the level that you are trying to effectuate change; that is the conversation you must have.

The conception of political equality can mean only one thing—one person–one vote.

You don't need to fool all of the people all of the time. You only need to fool the majority of the people once every four years or so.

That a majority of people can vote against a government, and yet that government still remains in power does not raise confidence in our democracy.

If the Russian voters prefer Boris Yeltsin, then we are really a country of idiots.

In politics, you have a one-day sale. You have every customer allowed in the store for one or two minutes on that day, and you have to sell a majority or plurality of the market or you are out of business.

I have never seen a poll elect anyone

… the decay of the liberties of the Dutch republic proceeded from three causes: 1. The perfect unanimity requisite on all occasions. 2. Their obligation to consult their constituents. 3. Their voting by provinces. This last destroyed the equality of representation, and the liberties of Great Britain also are sinking from the same defect.

First-past-the-post builds a direct relationship between a community and their MP. Residents come together to decide who most people want as their national representative. No one has more than one vote and it has to be cast responsibly.

I can't influence how other parties choose to vote.

Voting is designed for old people.

I'm not looking for people to put that vote on me to be prom king of the UFC.

Look, the people will elect the government they think best.

Having a representative democracy requires the confidence of the voters in the system. And if voters lose confidence in the system they can make some very bad decisions.

AV does not bring you greater proportionality - and there is a tendency for parties to gang up on one of the major ones to run an 'anyone but' campaign.

The Electoral College was necessary when communications were poor, literacy was low, and voters lacked information about out-of-state figures, which is clearly no longer the case.

The American system is set up to have two parties competing for votes. But Americans have not had the same two parties to choose from since the beginning.

Our nation is not a fully representative democracy if we do not have a one-person, one-vote method of directly electing our president. It disproportionately tilts favor to smaller states with smaller populations.

In a democracy, voting is a huge and most important right of a common man.

When one party is really unpopular, like the Conservatives in 1997, AV can really skew the result disproportionately against them.

Normally I am clear beforehand about which single proposal in a binary choice I am going to vote for.

There's always that tension between policy and personality in politics, and as voters, we have that, too: we all vote on issues, but we also vote on whether we like the people who are put forward.

When we vote we participate in the construction of a context.