Decision-making bodies such as committees, parliaments, and cabinets often
take votes when some of their members are absent and provided that some
predetermined minimal number (quorum) of the members are present. ⁵⁴ Under-
lying the requirement for a quorum is the intuitive assumption that the larger the
quorum the higher will be the probability that the voting body will reach a
"correct decision," the same decision that would have been reached if the body
were fully assembled.

Rodgers Price, and Nicewander ( 1985) have shown that if at least a simple
majority of the members present is needed to pass an issue, then this assumption
is wrong in certain cases. This is so because of the discrete nature of voting (e.g.,
if an issue is to pass by a simple majority, at least four voters must support it
when there are six as well as when there are seven voters), and since the proba-
bility of a "correct decision," when not all members of the voting body are
present, may not be a monotonically increasing function of the number of mem-
bers present.

When voters have to choose one of two alternatives (e.g., aye or nay), a tie
may occur if the number of voters is even. In most parliaments and cabinets
adopting the simple majority rule for passing issues, one of the following three
procedures is adopted when a tie occurs: (1) the status quo remains (i.e., the issue

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