In the human being's day to day life, a time reaches when individual decisions have to be made about a particular aspect. The decisions are important for they will help one in coming up with the best choice on how a particular matter is to become solved. In the business world, wrong decisions made have been known to bring about the collapse of once giant corporations. Another important aspect that requires decision making is in court cases by the jury. After a case has reached the final stage of its trail, it is the duty of the judge, to sum up, the case and present it to the jury. The jury can, therefore, go into a private room whereby they will consider their verdict. In coming up with their decision, it can become based on a standard or super majority rule.
In unanimity rule, the decision-making process must attain a unanimous approval by the voting members. In this type of law, all the members who are voting must cast the same number of vote. Another important aspect of this kind of rule is that there is no room for doubt or disagreement after the decision has been made. It is commonly seen in the case of elections such as presidential whereby the winner becomes decided to base on who had unanimous votes. However, court cases are the primary place where an ordinary rule is applied by the jury when coming up with a verdict on whether the accused is going to become acquitted or convicted. The simple majority rule is based on whether a certain fraction of the votes is more than or equal to fifty percent and less than one hundred percent. In this type of rule, the decision is at times based on the majority of the people who might be present at the date of casting votes. However, it has to be 50%+1 for the decision to be made.
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The decision rule is vital in all judicial decisions made by the jury. Initially, unanimity was the first rule that was used by the jury when they wanted to acquit or convict an accused individual. However, according to Feddersen and Pesendorfer, (1998), a decision that is made using the unanimity rule reduces the probability of an innocent person being convicted and the probability of a guilty individual being acquitted increases. It has always been argued that "two heads are much better than one" as such, the more the jury, the higher the chance of coming up with a better decision (Mukhopadhaya, 2003). The Condorcet Jury Theorem is behind this notion whereby it hypothesizes that the jury in place has the relevant information both private and public on the innocence and guilt of an individual (Mukhopadhaya 2003).
During the voting process, no member of the jury has knowledge whether the accused is guilty or innocent, as such; the voting is based on aggregating both the private and public information making them reach a better decision. The current voting system by juries is referred to as sincere voting whereby the jury members cast their votes without taking into account how the other will vote. On the other hand, the voting rules have been said to offset this type of voting as in the case of unanimity rule; the vote is regarded as being pivotal when a convict decision is made by all jurors. However, unlike the simple majority rule, unanimity rule has a much higher probability of convicting an innocent defendant (Feddersen and Pesendorfer, 1996)
In simple majority rules, it involves shorter deliberation by the jurors. This is because the juries tend to classify the defendant's information as being credible or not credible. The decisions made using this type of voting are also clear and quick. There are no aftermath negotiations that are made after a decision has been arrived at for it gains the respect of all parties involved. The simple majority rule according to May’s theorem is regarded as the fairest and best means to obtain a decision. The theorem states that any decision arrived at by a group of people have to become decisive in that, only one winner has to emerge. It should also ensure that the anonymity of the voters have ben protected and all the options are equally treated (Goodin and List, 2006). When compared to the unanimity rule decisions by juries, it involves greater participation from the juries whereby they tend to unite and compare the different information before them. As such, the simple majority decisions at times tend to have a higher probability of not guilty verdicts. It is because they do not focus on the law and evidence before them and in case it does not match up even though the defendant is guilty, they will most likely get a not guilty verdict. However, for the unanimity rule decisions, they tend to focus on the task demand or the social desirability which makes them have a higher probability of convicting innocent people.
There is no universal decision rule, and in the USA, the unanimity rule is mostly used and has been in existence since the feudal era. The simple majority rule was introduced much later by the Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 though it has elicited a lot of controversies (Boros et al., 1998). It has been argued that either of the two decision rules can be used in attaining similar verdicts. The decisions of the juror, however, may become affected by a defendant who might belong to drug rings and other organized criminal gangs. In a country like the UK, the decision can be varied by the judge whether it is from unanimity or simple majority rule in case it is often to twelve members after a particular time frame during the deliberation process. It will allow the judge to remove the likelihood of having a hung jury or defendants manipulating the decision. Spain has also introduced the qualified majority to remove hung jury whereby a decision made up of five to seven and seven to nine can determine the innocence or guilt of a defendant (Boros et al., 1998).
Answers
How do different electoral rules aggregate information?
The best means through which electoral rules aggregate information is through voting. For this type of system to be labeled as efficient, the parties involved must arrive at a decision that will seem to speak for the entire participants in the group. The decision that is achieved by the panel is bound to have a binding effect on the whole team. In case the individuals might share same preferences over particular aspects that need voting to arrive at a decision, three types of voting behavior are evident; sincere voting, informative voting and rational voting. In sincere voting, the person is bound to choose an alternative that will result into the highest expected payoff which is conditional to their signal. In rational voting, the person voting decisions adhere to the Nash Equilibrium properties. Informative voting is based on the individual's signals and it can also achieve a rational base despite the fact that information aggregation may fail to reach its maximum (Austen-Smith and Banks, 1996).
How does the number of voters affect the decision quality?
In the USA, there have been arguments about the quality of decision made by juries, in this case, six and twelve person juries. According to the Condorcet Jury Theorem, the higher the jury, the more accurate a decision is brought forward. However, according to this theorem, it assumes that there is no relationship between the jury size and information. According to Mukhopadhaya, (2003), this is not true because, the larger the jury, the poorer the decision made. It is attributed to what is referred to as the "free-rider problem." It means that a much bigger jury will have less reason to pay responsiveness in the court despite the fact that they will all have equal opportunities in providing a verdict after the trial. As such, this means that the more people vote on a particular decision, the poorer it is bound to become.
What is the role of communication and information acquisition?
The role of communication and information communication is to reduce the levels of uncertainty between members of a particular group. Through data acquisition, it makes it possible for the capturing of relevant information on the current trends in society. Through communication acquisition, the obtained information will be passed to the concerned groups without any breakdown in the communication life. As such, the users of the information will have a firm foundational ground upon which they can make various decisions.
Which equilibrium is plausible?
The Nash equilibrium is part of the game theory. According to Mukhopadhaya, (2003), this type of balance is achieved in the case of non-cooperation game whereby there are two or more parties. Each of the parties has information regarding the other party's equilibrium strategies thus making no party to have an advantage by changing their approach. In case each of the parties involved chose their strategy, and none of them can benefit in any way even though a change occurs even though the other party keeps their approach constant, the strategy choices and conforming playoffs led to the Nash Equilibrium.
Which should the voting procedure be used by the jury?
According to Feddersen and Pesendorfer, (1998), most people have come to believe that a unanimous voting system is bound to protect the innocent from getting the guilty verdict. According to the current society, convicting an innocent defendant is much worse than acquitting the guilty defendant. With the unanimous voting procedure, using a larger jury, there is a higher probability that an innocent defendant will become convicted. The main reason as to why more generous juries are giving out a weak unanimous decision is because they suffer from the "free-rider problem”. As such, the best voting procedure to become used is one that will rather acquit a guilty defendant which is the simple majority voting system.
Why is there equilibrium with properties 1 and 2?
The reason as to why there is equilibrium with such properties is that the rules and the procedures of the voting process are usually known to the parties in advance. This type of balloting, so a particular option is referred to as " voting strategically "It is because voters have the freedom to vote and a choice of choosing whatever they want.
Does this have an impact on the decision quality?
Communication before voting has a huge effect on the group decisions that are to be made during a voting process. In case damaging information is brought forward about a particular candidate in the voting process, they can end up losing a huge number of votes as people will vote for other candidates. However, in case the information dispersed to the general public is similar, and none seem to favor either candidate, the voting decision will not become affected.
Does it nevertheless make sense to study the case without prior communication?
Considering the case without communication will not bring about the expected findings an individual is seeking. It is because, all the people will have the same voting information, as such, and one will not have the ability to determine what made them come up with the decisions they made. It is evident that communication and information acquisition brings about a significant impact on the decisions made by the voters; as such the two factors should be carried out prior to the case study.
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References
Austen-Smith, D., & Banks, J. S. (1996). Information aggregation, rationality, and the Condorcet jury theorem. American political science review , 90 (01), 34-45.
Boros, J., Münnich, I., Szegedi, M., & European Association of Psychology and Law. (1998). Psychology and criminal justice: International review of theory and practice . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Feddersen, T., & Pesendorfer, W. (1998). Convicting the innocent: The inferiority of unanimous jury verdicts under strategic voting. American Political science review , 92 (01), 23-35.
Goodin, R.E., &List, C. (2006).A conditional defense of plurality rule: generalizing May’s Theorem in a restricted informational environment. American Journal of Political Science , 50(4), 940-949
Mukhopadhaya, K. (2003). Jury size and the free rider problem. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization , 19 (1), 24-44.
