Negotiated Consensus: A more representative way to vote.

Despite thousands of years of practical voting system experience, ranging from ancient Greek ostraca to paper ballots to electronic ranked choice voting, no universally accepted scheme has emerged capable of balancing transparency, cognitive load, and “fairness”. Indeed, given the situational and fluid dimensions of “fairness” as a foundational criterion in a democracy, the hope for a universal methodology is a mirage. Here we narrow our focus to single and multi-member democratic races where the electorate’s preferences are split, but voters are willing to accept a consensus candidate willing to modify their positions to incorporate minority party policies. We call this method “Negotiated Consensus”, leveraging a related suggestion made by Charles Dodgson in 1885.