Chapter 30 Voting procedures

Publisher Summary

The voting procedures used to elect candidates in large part determine whether elections are considered fair. The chapter focuses on the strategies that voters employ to try to effect better outcomes as long as they are allowed by the rules of a voting procedure. Voting procedures not only affect campaign strategies and electoral outcomes but also influence strategies and outcomes in legislatures, councils, and other voting bodies, wherein the alternatives that are voted on are not candidates but bills and resolutions. The chapter discusses how decision theory, and to a less extent game theory, can be used to illuminate the choice of better and worse strategies under different voting procedures. The strategic calculations that voters make result in outcomes that can be evaluated according to different normative criteria. The chapter describes some of the most important criteria that have been used to assess the quality of outcomes in voting bodies. Judgments about better and worse voting procedures can be made on the basis of these criteria. Preferential voting and proportional representation is described in the chapter that includes the Hare system of single transferable vote (STV), the Borda count, cumulative voting, and additional-member systems.