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Electoral systems |
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The sincere favorite or no favorite-betrayal criterion is a property of some voting systems, that says voters should have no incentive to vote for someone else over their favorite. [1] It protects voters from having to engage in a kind of strategy called lesser evil voting or decapitation (i.e. removing the "head" off a ballot). [2]
Most rated voting systems, including score voting, satisfy the criterion. [3] [4] [5] By contrast, instant-runoff, traditional runoffs, plurality, and most other variants of ranked-choice voting (including all strictly-Condorcet-compliant methods) fail this criterion. [4] [6] [7]
Duverger's law says that systems vulnerable to this strategy will typically (though not always) develop two party-systems, as voters will abandon minor-party candidates to support stronger major-party candidates. [8]
Instant-runoff voting fails the favorite-betrayal criterion whenever it fails to elect the Condorcet winner, a situation referred to as center-squeeze.
The no favorite betrayal criterion is defined as follows:
The Center for Election Science argues systems that violate the favorite betrayal criterion strongly incentivize voters to cast dishonest ballots, which can make voters feel unsatisfied or frustrated with the results even after having the opportunity to participate in the election. [9] [10] [11]
Other commentators have argued that failing the favorite-betrayal criterion can increase the effectiveness of misinformation campaigns, by allowing major-party candidates to sow doubt as to whether voting honestly for one's favorite is actually the best strategy. [12]
Because rated voting methods are not affected by Arrow's theorem, they can be both spoilerproof (satisfy IIA) and ensure positive vote weights at the same time. Taken together, these properties imply that increasing the rating of a favorite candidate can never change the result, except by causing the favorite candidate to win; therefore, giving a favorite candidate the maximum level of support is always the optimal strategy.
Examples of systems that are both spoilerproof and monotonic include score voting, approval voting, and highest medians.
Interpreted as a ranked voting method where every candidate but the last ranked gets one point, Anti-plurality voting passes the sincere favorite criterion. Because there is no incentive to rank one's favorite last, and the method otherwise does not care where the favorite is ranked, the method passes.
Anti-plurality voting thus shows that the sincere favorite criterion is distinct from independence of irrelevant alternatives, and that ranked voting methods do not necessarily fail the criterion.
This example shows that instant-runoff voting violates the favorite betrayal criterion. Assume there are four candidates: Amy, Bert, Cindy, and Dan. This election has 41 voters with the following preferences:
# of voters | Preferences |
---|---|
10 | Amy > Bert > Cindy > Dan |
6 | Bert > Amy > Cindy > Dan |
5 | Cindy > Bert > Amy > Dan |
20 | Dan > Amy > Cindy > Bert |
Assuming all voters vote in a sincere way, Cindy is awarded only 5 first place votes and is eliminated first. Her votes are transferred to Bert. In the second round, Amy is eliminated with only 10 votes. Her votes are transferred to Bert as well. Finally, Bert has 21 votes and wins against Dan, who has 20 votes.
Votes in round/ Candidate | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
---|---|---|---|
Amy | 10 | 10 | – |
Bert | 6 | 11 | 21 |
Cindy | 5 | – | – |
Dan | 20 | 20 | 20 |
Result: Bert wins against Dan, after Cindy and Amy were eliminated.
Now assume two of the voters who favor Amy (marked bold) realize the situation and insincerely vote for Cindy instead of Amy:
# of voters | Ballots |
---|---|
2 | Cindy > Amy > Bert > Dan |
8 | Amy > Bert > Cindy > Dan |
6 | Bert > Amy > Cindy > Dan |
5 | Cindy > Bert > Amy > Dan |
20 | Dan > Amy > Cindy > Bert |
In this scenario, Cindy has 7 first place votes and so Bert is eliminated first with only 6 first place votes. His votes are transferred to Amy. In the second round, Cindy is eliminated with only 10 votes. Her votes are transferred to Amy as well. Finally, Amy has 21 votes and wins against Dan, who has 20 votes.
Votes in round/ Candidate | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
---|---|---|---|
Amy | 8 | 14 | 21 |
Bert | 6 | – | – |
Cindy | 7 | 7 | – |
Dan | 20 | 20 | 20 |
Result: Amy wins against Dan, after Bert and Cindy has been eliminated.
By listing Cindy ahead of their true favorite, Amy, the two insincere voters obtained a more preferred outcome (causing their favorite candidate to win). There was no way to achieve this without raising another candidate ahead of their sincere favorite. Thus, instant-runoff voting fails the favorite betrayal criterion.
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Approval voting is a single-winner electoral system in which voters mark all the candidates they support, instead of just choosing one. The candidate with the highest approval rating is elected.
The two-round system is a voting method used to elect a single winner. In the United States, it is often called a jungle or nonpartisan primary. The system is also called runoff voting, though this term often means the closely-related exhaustive ballot and ranked-choice runoff systems.
Strategic or tactical voting is voting in consideration of possible ballots cast by other voters in order to maximize one's satisfaction with the election's results. For example, in plurality or instant-runoff, a voter may recognize their favorite candidate is unlikely to win and so instead support a candidate they think is more likely to win.
In social choice theory and politics, the spoiler effect or Arrow's paradox refers to a situation where a losing candidate affects the results of an election. A voting system that is not affected by spoilers satisfies independence of irrelevant alternatives or independence of spoilers.
A Condorcet method is an election method that elects the candidate who wins a majority of the vote in every head-to-head election against each of the other candidates, whenever there is such a candidate. A candidate with this property, the pairwise champion or beats-all winner, is formally called the Condorcet winner. The head-to-head elections need not be done separately; a voter's choice within any given pair can be determined from the ranking.
Coombs' method is a ranked voting system popularized by Clyde Coombs. It was described by Edward J. Nanson as the "Venetian method", but should not be confused with the Republic of Venice's use of score voting in elections for Doge. Coombs' method can be thought of as a cross between instant-runoff voting and anti-plurality voting.
The positive response, monotonicity, or nonperversitycriterion is a principle of social choice theory that says that increasing a candidate's ranking or rating should not cause them to lose. Positive response rules out cases where a candidate loses an election as a result of receiving too much support from voters ; rules that violate positive response are called perverse.
Ranked Pairs (RP) is a tournament-style system of ranked-choice voting first proposed by Nicolaus Tideman in 1987.
In an election, a candidate is called a majority winner or majority-preferred candidate if more than half of all voters would support them in a one-on-one race against any one of their opponents. Voting systems where a majority winner will always win are said to satisfy the majority-rule principle, because they extend the principle of majority rule to elections with multiple candidates.
The participation criterion, also called vote or population monotonicity, is a voting system criterion that says that a candidate should never lose an election as a result of receiving too many votes in support. More formally, it says that adding more voters who prefer Alice to Bob should not cause Alice to lose the election to Bob.
The majority favorite criterion is a voting system criterion that says that, if a candidate would win more than half the vote in a first-preference plurality election, that candidate should win. Equivalently, if only one candidate is ranked first by a over 50% of voters, that candidate must win. It is occasionally referred to simply as the "majority criterion", but this term is more often used to refer to Condorcet's majority-rule principle.
The mutual majority criterion is a criterion for evaluating electoral system. It requires that whenever a majority of voters prefer a group of candidates above all others, someone from that group must win. It is the single-winner case of Droop-Proportionality for Solid Coalitions.
In single-winner voting system theory, the Condorcet loser criterion (CLC) is a measure for differentiating voting systems. It implies the majority loser criterion but does not imply the Condorcet winner criterion.
Bullet, single-shot, or plump voting is when a voter supports only a single candidate, typically to show strong support for a single favorite.
Reversal symmetry is a voting system criterion which requires that if candidate A is the unique winner, and each voter's individual preferences are inverted, then A must not be elected. Methods that satisfy reversal symmetry include Borda count, ranked pairs, Kemeny–Young method, and Schulze method. Methods that fail include Bucklin voting, instant-runoff voting and Condorcet methods that fail the Condorcet loser criterion such as Minimax.
Later-no-harm is a property of some ranked-choice voting systems, first described by Douglas Woodall. In later-no-harm systems, increasing the rating or rank of a candidate ranked below the winner of an election cannot cause this higher-ranked candidate to lose.
In social choice theory, the independence of clones criterion says that adding a clone, i.e. a new candidate very similar to an already-existing candidate, should not spoil the results. It can be considered a very weak form of the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) criterion.
Instant-runoff voting (IRV), also known as ranked-choice voting or the alternative vote (AV), combines ranked voting together with a system for choosing winners from these rankings by repeatedly eliminating the candidate with the fewest first-place votes and reassigning their votes until only one candidate is left. It can be seen as a modified form of a runoff election or exhaustive ballot in which, after eliminating some candidates, the choice among the rest is made from already-given voter rankings rather than from a separate election. Many sources conflate this system of choosing winners with ranked-choice voting more generally, for which several other systems of choosing winners have also been used.
In game theory and political science, Poisson games are a class of games often used to model the behavior of large populations. One common application is determining the strategic behavior of voters with imperfect information about each others' preferences. Poisson games are most often used to model strategic voting in large electorates with secret and simultaneous voting.
Ranked voting is any voting system that uses voters' orderings (rankings) of candidates to choose a single winner. For example, Dowdall's method assigns 1, 1⁄2, 1⁄3... points to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd... candidates on each ballot, then elects the candidate with the most points. Ranked voting systems vary dramatically in how preferences are tabulated and counted, which gives each one very different properties.
A key feature of evaluative voting is a form of independence: the voter can evaluate all the candidates in turn ... another feature of evaluative voting ... is that voters can express some degree of preference.