dissenting from consensus
why I’ve been enjoying majority voting
note: This post was written from Evy's perspective and might not fully or correctly represent The Village.
Recently, The Village changed our decision-making model from consensus to majority (two thirds of permanent members to pass). I think it’s been working a lot better for us, and I want to share why.
Many community homes use consensus for decision-making, by which I mean they require everyone to consent to important decisions and any individual can block those decisions from moving forward. To help this go smoothly, they also often use facilitation techniques such as making time for discussion and collaborative problem solving before voting. Consensus can be great for encouraging a group to find solutions that work for everyone, but it can also be challenging and seed many conflicts.
Conflict in consensus usually arises when someone mentions the word “veto” or “block”, or generally when someone seems to be preventing a change from happening no matter how much the rest of the group wants it. Blocks are meant to happen extremely rarely in consensus. I’ve seen people say that consensus only works if people block only once or twice in their life, always highly prioritizing finding common ground and being willing to not get exactly what they wanted.
I often share concerns when I have them, but two things usually dissuade me from getting anywhere close to blocking: taking up time, and losing social capital. We have limited time in meetings, and time spent hashing out a disagreement is time we could be spending on other topics. When I find myself in disagreement with the majority of the group, I ask myself: do I care enough about this that it’s worth the time and emotional energy for all of us to find common ground? Often I find that it’s actually not, and I’m happy to make a compromise. I’m also regularly considering my social standing in a group -- no one likes to live with people who dislike them, and regularly blocking housemates or significantly slowing down decisions is an easy way to end up in that situation.
But sometimes people don’t appreciate the significance of this social cost and the impact it can have on future decision-making conversations. I’ve seen patterns in several communities where someone regularly blocks or slows down decisions (I’ll call them the “dissenter”), other people build resentment, and over time people become less willing to collaborate with the dissenter, in turn making it even harder to have consensus conversations. The dissenter doubles down on their opinions, because they can tell no one else will look out for their desires, and everyone else doubles down on their frustration and resentment.
The beauty of majority voting is that it rewards prosocial behavior. If blocking is no longer an option, then we must rely on housemates wanting to support us when we’re concerned about a decision passing. (Hopefully this doesn’t turn into some high school popularity contest, and if it does then the community probably isn’t one you want to be in.) At The Village, I see all kinds of behavior that improve people’s social capital: cooking for the house, responding to people’s requests for help, visibly helping with chores, asking people how they’re doing, coordinating fun activities people want to do together, and more. The people who do these things are much less likely to end up in situations where they don’t want a decision to be made and other people don’t have their back.
Majority voting also addresses the time and energy cost of consensus. We still talk through different people’s opinions and where and why we might disagree, but if there’s no easy solution that works for everyone then we pick a solution that works for most of us and move on. It forces the stance of “I still disagree, but it’s not worth it to hash it out, and I’m willing to compromise” -- which is notably the “stand aside” vote in consensus. By agreeing to try majority voting, we’ve collectively agreed to be forced to stand aside when we might have otherwise blocked, relying on the support of our community to not let something pass in situations that feel particularly dire. And if I regularly end up in situations where my community doesn’t have my back, then I would engage in conflict resolution processes or move out.
After switching from consensus to majority-voting, I’ve seen less resentment, less time spent decision-making or in meetings, and an overall increase in community happiness. I really wasn’t sold on majority voting before we tried it out, so I’m glad we did and I’m excited to be able to share what I’ve learned.