Decibels Determine Democracy?

Voice voting is still used at some civic, local and county meetings. In more of a traditional sense, it's also still employed in Congress and some state meetings. But new paper finds that a single loud voice can skew the result if that's not accounted for - the louder the voice, the cloudier the choice, according to a paper in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. In voice voting, if you have never witnessed it, a presiding officer states a question, and the group that replies either yea or nay. The loudest is declared the winner, because volume is usually representative of numbers. read more

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