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.

Electronic Implementation

An obvious practical concern regarding 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. elections is how to implement, count, and tabulate the ranked ballotA ballot on which a vote consists in ranking the candidates in order of preference. results. Electronic voting is almost completely necessary to any implementation of ranked ballots, Condorcet or otherwise. However, we believe that in the interest of verifiability, there must exist a paper trail, and the counting process should be as physical as possible. Thus we propose the following solution: electronic voting machines which print legible paper ballots, to be counted by a different electronic machine and then saved for the purpose of a paper trail.

The Problem with Ordinary Paper Ballots

Ordinary paper ballots (those filled out by hand by the voter) are not a good idea for Condorcet elections.

Following directions. The voter might not follow directions properly, creating an ineligible and unusable ballot. Tracking down the voter to “fix it” would be ridiculous.
Legibility. The exact ordering of candidates must be absolutely foolproof, and the only thing worse that one hanging chad is several.

The Ease of Printed Paper Ballots

Printed paper ballots have all the security of voter-generated ballots, with the following advantages.

Ease of Entry. Rather than following a complex maze of bubbles, a very easy interface would be created where voters could simply use a touch screen to select their preferred candidates in the order they prefer them.
Layout Generation. It would be very easy to simply print the voter’s choices, top to bottom, rather than having a difficult to read zig-zag of dots. Moreover, the Condorcet MatrixThe typical way of representing the votes of a Condorcet election are in a matrix. For example, the following might be the result of a Condorcet election between three candidates. Each number corresponds to the number of voters who chose the candidate for that row over the candidate for that column. In this case, Bob Jones is the Condorcet winner, John Hennessy second place.

John Hennessy Bob Jones Tiger Woods

John Hennessy 27 98

Bob Jones 73 52

Tiger Woods 2 48

(the voter’s pairwise votes) could be printed right onto the ballot for easy reference (voters could not be trusted to fill out their own matrix).
Accessibility and Foolproof Nature. It would be easy enough to make adapters so that the blind, disabled, and elderly could interact with them, whereas a paper ballot might be harder. Also, the voting process could be made fool-proof by ensuring that a ballot is only printed if the vote is done properly.

Would Everyone Understand the System?

One problem is whether such a system would be user-friendly enough for voters of all ages to make sense of it. The instructions on a touch screen can be very simple, but still might confuse the elderly. It would, however, we easy enough to provide alternatives. For those who did not understand the multiple-candidate system, they could simply use the same touch screen to vote for their preferred candidate, and push some “end” button. Their vote would be tallied as ranking that candidate above all the others, with no preference among the remaining candidates.