One can imagine, for example, a tribe inhabiting a village located in an environment so hostile, that in every moment of existence of the village, at least two thirds of adult men are patrolling at different spots on the circumference of the village. It happens from time to time that some warriors die in the battle and sometimes their chieftain dies as well. Given a security constraint that forbids the majority of men to meet at one spot and vote, thus leaving the perimeter of the village unprotected, what method could assure that the village shall always have a chieftain respected by the biggest number of his comrades ?

One can imagine the following answer: to every man of the tribe, a distinct color is associated, be it the color that only the man himself can mix. It does not really matter whether the knowledge of color's preparation was revealed to a given individual during a certain rite of passage or whether it was transferred to him by his father —what matters is, that any adult member of the tribe can use a distinct color as his unique identification token. In the middle of the village, there is a group of totems. One of the most central totems is divided into sections, for example stripes colored in different colors. The old legend states that once a man is able to mix his own distinct color, the spirit of the village shall allow him to do two things: Firstly, he can paint his stripe on the totem, hence creating his own section. Secondly, if ever he meets a man worthy of his respect, he can paint one and only one line into the stripe colored in the same color as is the tattoo on the forehead of such a respectable man. And if ever, after engraving such a line into the chosen section of the totem (let’s say green), one finds out that the chosensection contains more colored lines than any other section, one’s duty is to go and seek as much comrades as one can find in order to tell them that the village’s new chieftain is a man with a green tattoo on his forehead...

In this example, the totem represents a variable. When considered as a set, the group of all colors of different sections of the totem $chief represent the type of that variable. When taken individually, every colored section of the totem represents a possible value of the variable. Lines on different sections represent votes which a given possible value had obtained and the section which had obtained the biggest number of votes —i. e. a stripe with the biggest number of distinctly colored lines on it— represents the «active value» of the variable $chief. The act of writing a line correspond to the act of voting and the act of counting the lines within all the sections and the subsequent choice of the section which contain the maximum number of lines can be interpreted as aggregation of votes.

There are several crucial aspects to notice in the above «totem» scenario...