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The idea of weighted voting is not new. In 1849 Sir George Cornewall Lewis stated that "history affords instances in which opinions have been weighed instead of counted", and the subsequent unfolding of a system which finds notable contemporary expression in the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Monetary Fund has seen various manifestations. While it would be extravagant to assert that weighted voting is a crucial issue of the present day, or even a hotly-contested one, its potentialities as a means toward more effective international procedure merit discussion.

Past voting turnout studies almost always have been static analyses. Usually they have described the relationship between participation rates and the demographic attributes, attitudes, and social experiences of members of the electorate. Since each such study ordinarily is based on a single cross-sectional survey or on statistics referring to the Election Day period alone, both turnout and its determinants are derived at the same point of time, only simultaneous correlations are possible, and the analyst cannot show how turnout is affected by temporally prior conditions.The development of multi-wave panel interviews in modern social research permits the study of attitude change, decision-making, and action over time. By re-interviewing the same respondents at intervals, political sociologists already have discovered much about how voters decide their candidate choices during the course of an election campaign. A panel design permits such process analysis not only of candidate preference but also of turnout and non-voting.

Writers on parliamentary law frequently begin their essays by citing with approval Hatsell's famous observation that "… it is more material that there should be a rule to go by than what that rule is …." So generally is this notion accepted that it probably ought to be regarded as a fundamental premise of parliamentary law. Indeed the whole structure of this branch of law rests on the assumption that form is more important than content. Its literature consists almost entirely of the compilation of precedents, and, furthermore, parliamentarians have seldom been concerned to justify the decisions they compile. This indifference to rationalization clearly follows from Hatsell's premise: if one believes that form alone is important, one appropriately concentrates on the form of rules, largely ignoring questions of whether or not their substance is efficient, or fair, or reasonable.