Here we have eleven voters, A-K, voting on eleven questions. Seven of them, A-G, vote in the minority in a majority of the decisions: A-F in seven out of the eleven cases, G in six. The majority is always 6-5. These figures can of course be varied. If we imagine an ideal democracy with a whole population voting directly on all questions, there will obviously be room for much variation in results over a long period, all of which however conform to the description: the majority votes in the minority in a majority of cases. This fact, I thought when I stumbled on it, must be familiar to voting experts. But I have not found it remarked upon. It sometimes startles people, eliciting the reaction: 'But doesn't this make nonsense of democracy?' In the West, and perhaps in the whole world where Western forms of education prevail, men are brought up in a conviction of the unique fairness of democracy. It is even conceived to be as it were the sole legitimate form of government. 'It's not democratic' is a condemnation. Pope Pius XII once spoke in a Christmas allocution of the right of democracies to defend themselves by whatever means they might think necessary. One could hardly have better proof of the pervasiveness of