How election reform can eliminate spoilers, promote third party efforts, and clarify the meaning of democracy.

Home PurposeThe motivation of this site: the necessity and practicality of a new election system for a changing world. Election TheoryThe basic axioms of what we should desire in an election, and descriptions of several methods that attempt to address these. Why Condorcet?Argument for why Condorcet is the optimal system which we should strive to implement. PracticalityHow electronic methods make Condorcet practical, secure, and desirable. Links/ContactSite credits, contact information, and links to other resources. GlossaryGlossary of specific terms used throughout the site.

Confronting the Paradox

The most pressing question about CondorcetThe general term for any election method that uses ranked ballots and has, as it's first princple, the Condorcet Criterion: any candidate which beats every other candidate individually must win the election. Any Condorcet method must come along with an ambiguity resolution procedure for cases in which there is no winner by this first criterion. voting is how it can possibly be considered an effective method in the face of Condorcet's ParadoxThis paradox is that in some situations it is impossible to obey majority rule in an election. The situation in which paradox can arise is what is called a majority rule cycle. This is when, according to the result of the election, there is a cycle of candidates, each beating the next in a runoff. Imagine the simplest case: there are three candidates: A, B, and C. A majority rule cycle occurs when A defeats B, B defeats C, and C defeats A. This is a paradox because to install any one of these three candidates defies majority rule, since there exists another candidate which the majority prefers.. The short answer is that the paradox, and the potential for a majority rule cycle, is always present. The difference is that Condorcet voting meets the paradox head-on, rather than pretending that it doesn’t exist.

The “False Ambiguity” Objection

A natural objection to Condorcet methods in general is that they might detect an ambiguity where one does not exist. Namely, a majority rule cycle might emerge in the results of the election when the population does not actually have circular preferences. This can only occur as a consequence of strategicA vote is called "strategic," "tactical," or "pragmatic" if it does not reflect the voter's true preference, but is rather an attempt by the voter to secure the best possible outcome, given the voter's prediction of how other voters will act. voting. Of course, we cannot ignore this possibility, and indeed it is the only way in which strategic voting can emerge in Condorcet. Also, if this does occur due to strategic voting, it is likely to be only a slight ambiguity (one of the links in the cycle will be rather weak), and any of the accepted ambiguity resolution methods would disregard this link, removing the incentive for such strategy. For the most part, if a Condorcet ambiguity emerges, we should treat it as a state of true cyclical preferences.

How Common Would Ambiguities Be?

If you simply consider your own common sense, the emergence of an electoral ambiguity is a very unlikely event. Typically candidates range in a nearly linear fashion from liberal to conservative, and the change of a preference chain looping back around is very slim (try to imagine, in 2000, the public preferring Bush to Gore to Nader to Bush).

Can we Truly Resolve Ambiguities?

We cannot. There is no foolproof way to decide what the best solution is in a majority rule cycle. Consider the Rock-Paper-Scissors thought experimentI propose the following thought experiment of an example in which a majority rule cycle can occur.

Every citizen is given a card with “rock,” “paper,” or “scissors” written on it. Exactly one third of the citizens have each type.

The government conducts will choose to "play" one of the three moves.

Anyone voter who is beaten (rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, paper beats rock) by the government must pay extra taxes; anyone who wins receives a tax rebate; anyone with the same move as the government is unaffected.

By varying the proportions of voters with each type of card, various interesting results can be obtained. As a basic example, if one third of the population has each, there is a majority rule cycle: two-third of voters prefer rock to paper, another two thirds prefer paper to scissors, and yet another two thirds prefer scissors to rock. . In this case, we were able to decide which result was the most utilitarian, and therefore make an objective judgment about which was best to compare to the results of the various procedures. However, there are various ways this calculation could change without changing the votes. For example, if citizens were harmed much more for “losing” to the government than they benefit from winning, the utilitarian calculation would change, while the votes would remain the same. Thus given only the votes, there is no unique “best” solution, without also looking at context. However, such an examination of context would certainly not be a fair system.

Could a Different Kind of Ballot Solve this Problem?

A natural question to ask, in reply to the explanation above, is whether a different kind of ballot could be used than the ordinary ranked ballotA ballot on which a vote consists in ranking the candidates in order of preference. we propose. For example, rather than just ranking candidates, voters might also give a “degree of preference” which could be used for some sort of calculation. But this is a compromise we cannot be willing to make because it would introduce strategic voting too strongly. There would be almost no incentive for a voter not to express every one of their preferences as very strong, therefore any intelligent voter would do this if they want to elect their preferences. Alternatively, the voter could have a limited amount of preference to split up between the various decisions. This would not only be too complicated, but it would also introduce strategy, since voters might put their strongest preference on ranking a candidate they know can win over the others, rather than the candidate they actually prefer most strongly. Ultimately, there are far too many problems with this idea to take it seriously.