“The Conversation” is an on-line publication, since 2011, with content from the academic and research community. It has published this article about multi-candidate elections, by Mathematics Professor Christoph Borgers of Tufts. It shows theoretical flaws in standard elections, elections using ranked choice voting, Condorcet, and Borda. If you aren’t sure what those last two systems are, the article is excellent for explaining them. Borgers then proposes a new system. Thanks to Craig Franklin for the link.
This article was very interesting and thought-provoking.
Condorcet with YES/NO Approval Voting tiebreaker.
Legis-Exec-Judic
Would need computers to do combinations math in any larger election.
Actually, his solution is very similar to what DR often, and just did, say: “Condorcet with YES/NO Approval Voting tiebreaker.” except his is “Condorcet with Borda tiebreaker.”
Intriguing concept, though in order for the public to buy into it, it would have to be explained in a way that the public could understand, and it would need to be executed correctly and with integrity.
In the late ’80s or early ’90s, the American Mathematical Monthly did a great article on voting systems, and concluded that no system was able to avoid all illogical outcomes, though other systems beyond the scope of that article might have been better.
Condorcet is obviously correct by the math of having a 3rd choice beat each of 2 existing choices head to head.
A > B
C comes along —
IF C > A and C > B, THEN C should be winner.
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Tiebreaker needed if C type winner does NOT win in ALL combinations.
—
Condorcet is like calculus math compared to simple plurality math.
There is an assumption that voters are willing or able rank candidates.
I read the article and it had the virtue of advancing for the readers consideration electoral methods superior to the plurality method in contests with more than two candidates. That’s fine, many do this and it is not hard to be critical of plurality voting, so no big deal. Finding better isn’t the problem.
The problem here and with others doing the same, that is, obsessing about methodology such that the reader is supposed to understand electoral contests happen outside the context of the electoral system and that the methodology is an interchangeable capstone on a set of campaigns that would involve the same number of candidates, same set of candidates, same set of ballot casting voters, same handicapping by pundits and press, same policy emphasis by candidates, same lawsuits started, and same set of rules by partisan organisation, bipartisan originations, nonpartisan organization, etc. The article does, as so many do, use the 2000 presidential election as an example of how his method would likely led to a different outcome. That’s tired and stupid thing to do because it’s such a incredibly massive counter-factual.
Every election is different some say, rightly. This article wants to assign, for reasons having nothing to do with better electoral methodology, Ralph Nader’s votes to Al Gore. By doing that the writer becomes small because the electoral system and larger political forces together (major party rules, corporatism, electoral college, supreme court, etc) combined with a 100 other factors to produce 2000.
Someone has to invent a word to label the indifference a math geek has to the endless range of incentives to game an electoral contest on behalf of any number of political actors and interests for their own economy. The weaknesses of the system in the 2000 presidential election like so many other contests in America suffer decades upon centuries to the plurality method and it’s particular vulnerability to being gamed and interested industries count on that but more all that gaming on that race shapes the rest of it. The system we have, in total, demands that a dozen or so on-board candidates run and receive votes despite non-viability. That’s manifestly incontrovertible.
If a political revolution pushes the two-party system aside, that’s fine. But till then reforms can’t use the intellectual fraud of explaining how a previous electoral contest would have turned out differently if only, at the end we counted the votes differently. Resist the too easy temptation, because with different rules everybody is going to reconsider everything and not just because they’re inclined to, they have to; Different universe of facts.
Why would voters not be willing and able to rank candidates? If that’s beyond the capabilities of the electorate then we probably ought to just give up on this democracy thing.