In many decision making situations, it is necessary to gather the group consensus. This happens when a group of friends decides which movie to watch, when a company decides which product design to manufacture, and when a democratic country elects its leaders.

While the basic idea of voting is fairly universal, the method by which those votes are used to determine a winner can vary. Amongst a group of friends, you may decide upon a movie by voting for all the movies you’re willing to watch, with the winner being the one with the greatest approval. A company might eliminate unpopular designs then revote on the remaining. A country might look for the candidate with the most votes.

In deciding upon a winner, there is always one main goal: to reflect the preferences of the people in the most fair way possible.

In this lesson, we will study Preference Schedules and Preference Ballots as a means of deciding upon the winner of an election. A preference ballot is a ballot in which the voter ranks the choices in order of preference.

Plurality Method

Preference Schedules

To begin, we’re going to want more information than a traditional ballot normally provides. A traditional ballot usually asks you to pick your favorite from a list of choices. This ballot fails to provide any information on how a voter would rank the alternatives if their first choice was unsuccessful.

The following video will give you a summary of what issues can arise from elections, as well as how a preference table is used in elections.

Plurality

The voting method we’re most familiar with in the United States is the plurality method.

In this method, the choice with the most first-preference votes is declared the winner. Ties are possible, and would have to be settled through some sort of run-off vote.

This method is sometimes mistakenly called the majority method, or “majority rules”, but it is not necessary for a choice to have gained a majority of votes to win. A majority is over 50%; it is possible for a winner to have a plurality without having a majority.

What’s Wrong with Plurality?

The election from the above example may seem totally clean, but there is a problem lurking that arises whenever there are three or more choices. Looking back at our preference table, how would our members vote if they only had two choices?

Anaheim vs Orlando: 7 out of the 10 would prefer Anaheim over Orlando

	1	3	3	3
1st choice	A	A	O	H
2nd choice	O	H	H	A
3rd choice	H	O	A	O

Anaheim vs Hawaii: 6 out of 10 would prefer Hawaii over Anaheim

	1	3	3	3
1st choice	A	A	O	H
2nd choice	O	H	H	A
3rd choice	H	O	A	O

This doesn’t seem right, does it? Anaheim just won the election, yet 6 out of 10 voters, 60% of them, would have preferred Hawaii! That hardly seems fair. Marquis de Condorcet, a French philosopher, mathematician, and political scientist wrote about how this could happen in 1785, and for him we name our first fairness criterion.

Condorcet Criterion

If there is a choice that is preferred in every one-to-one comparison with the other choices, that choice should be the winner. We call this winner the Condorcet Winner, or Condorcet Candidate.

If you prefer to watch a video of the previous example being worked out, here it is.

Insincere Voting

Situations when there are more than one candidate that share somewhat similar points of view, can lead to insincere voting. Insincere voting is when a person casts a ballot counter to their actual preference for strategic purposes. In the case above, the democratic leadership might realize that Don and Key will split the vote, and encourage voters to vote for Key by officially endorsing him. Not wanting to see their party lose the election, as happened in the scenario above, Don’s supporters might insincerely vote for Key, effectively voting against Elle.

The following video gives another mini lesson that covers the plurality method of voting as well as the idea of a Condorcet Winner.

Instant Runoff Voting

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), also called Plurality with Elimination, is a modification of the plurality method that attempts to address the issue of insincere voting. In IRV, voting is done with preference ballots, and a preference schedule is generated. The choice with the least first-place votes is then eliminated from the election, and any votes for that candidate are redistributed to the voters’ next choice. This continues until a choice has a majority (over 50%).

This is similar to the idea of holding runoff elections, but since every voter’s order of preference is recorded on the ballot, the runoff can be computed without requiring a second costly election.

This voting method is used in several political elections around the world, including election of members of the Australian House of Representatives, and was used for county positions in Pierce County, Washington until it was eliminated by voters in 2009. A version of IRV is used by the International Olympic Committee to select host nations.

The following video provides another view of the example from above.

Here is an overview video that provides the definition of IRV, as well as an example of how to determine the winner of an election using IRV.

What’s Wrong with IRV?

In the following video, we provide the example from above where we find that the IRV method violates the Condorcet Criterion in an election for a city council seat.

This criterion is violated by this election. Note that even though the criterion is violated in this particular election, it does not mean that IRV always violates the criterion; just that IRV has the potential to violate the criterion in certain elections.

The last video shows the example from above where the monotonicity criterion is violated.

Borda Count

Borda Count is another voting method, named for Jean-Charles de Borda, who developed the system in 1770.

Here is a video showing the example from above.

What’s Wrong with Borda Count?

You might have already noticed one potential flaw of the Borda Count from the previous example. In that example, Seattle had a majority of first-choice votes, yet lost the election! This seems odd, and prompts our next fairness criterion:

The election from the previous example using the Borda Count violates the Majority Criterion. Notice also that this automatically means that the Condorcet Criterion will also be violated, as Seattle would have been preferred by 51% of voters in any head-to-head comparison.

Borda count is sometimes described as a consensus-based voting system, since it can sometimes choose a more broadly acceptable option over the one with majority support. In the example above, Tacoma is probably the best compromise location. This is a different approach than plurality and instant runoff voting that focus on first-choice votes; Borda Count considers every voter’s entire ranking to determine the outcome.

Because of this consensus behavior, Borda Count, or some variation of it, is commonly used in awarding sports awards. Variations are used to determine the Most Valuable Player in baseball, to rank teams in NCAA sports, and to award the Heisman trophy.

Copeland’s Method

So far none of our voting methods have satisfied the Condorcet Criterion. The Copeland Method specifically attempts to satisfy the Condorcet Criterion by looking at pairwise (one-to-one) comparisons.

In this method, each pair of candidates is compared, using all preferences to determine which of the two is more preferred. The more preferred candidate is awarded 1 point. If there is a tie, each candidate is awarded ½ point. After all pairwise comparisons are made, the candidate with the most points, and hence the most pairwise wins, is declared the winner.

Variations of Copeland’s Method are used in many professional organizations, including election of the Board of Trustees for the Wikimedia Foundation that runs Wikipedia.

Here is the same example presented in a video.

Watch the same example from above being worked out in this video.

What’s Wrong with Copeland’s Method?

As already noted, Copeland’s Method does satisfy the Condorcet Criterion. It also satisfies the Majority Criterion and the Monotonicity Criterion. So is this the perfect method? Well, in a word, no.

In the election from the last example, the IIA Criterion was violated.

Watch this video to see the example from above worked out again,

This anecdote illustrating the IIA issue is attributed to Sidney Morgenbesser:

After finishing dinner, Sidney Morgenbesser decides to order dessert. The waitress tells him he has two choices: apple pie and blueberry pie. Sidney orders the apple pie. After a few minutes the waitress returns and says that they also have cherry pie at which point Morgenbesser says “In that case I’ll have the blueberry pie.”

Another disadvantage of Copeland’s Method is that it is fairly easy for the election to end in a tie. For this reason, Copeland’s method is usually the first part of a more advanced method that uses more sophisticated methods for breaking ties and determining the winner when there is not a Condorcet Candidate.

So Where’s the Fair Method?

At this point, you’re probably asking why we keep looking at method after method just to point out that they are not fully fair. We must be holding out on the perfect method, right?

Unfortunately, no. A mathematical economist, Kenneth Arrow, was able to prove in 1949 that there is no voting method that will satisfy all the fairness criteria we have discussed.

Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem

Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem states, roughly, that it is not possible for a voting method to satisfy every fairness criteria that we’ve discussed.

To see a very simple example of how difficult voting can be, consider the election below:

	5	5	5
1st choice	A	C	B
2nd choice	B	A	C
3rd choice	C	B	A

Notice that in this election:

10 people prefer A to B

10 people prefer B to C

10 people prefer C to A

No matter whom we choose as the winner, 2/3 of voters would prefer someone else! This scenario is dubbed Condorcet’s Voting Paradox, and demonstrates how voting preferences are not transitive (just because A is preferred over B, and B over C, does not mean A is preferred over C). In this election, there is no fair resolution.

It is because of this impossibility of a totally fair method that Plurality, IRV, Borda Count, Copeland’s Method, and dozens of variants are all still used. Usually the decision of which method to use is based on what seems most fair for the situation in which it is being applied.

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