Rousseau saw majority preferences as an expression of the general will (The Social Contract). With Condorcet, the general will was also imbued with the notion of correctness. As contradictory evidence is ample, it is time to remove the false comfort of any epistemic benefit accruing from such aggregation. Condorcet Jury

“Representation means the making present of something that is nevertheless not literally present.” (Pitkin, 1967) In a representative democracy, which, minimally construed, involves a mediating assembly for political decision making, representation, implies an attempt to find the people in assembly’s political decision making. But what do we mean by

Presidential debates occupy a unique place in the American political process. Debates trace their ancestry to the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, which were actually between Senators and focused mostly on the issue of slavery. The Lincoln-Douglas debates were long, often boring, and if voting returns from Illinois counties, where debates