Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Borda Count

[John Faust (wjfaust]

Voting systems were addressed in a recent Mother Jones interview on voting
fairness<http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2008/01/verdict-is-in-our%20voting-system-is-a-loser.html>with
William Poundstone. The essence of the interview is captured in the
following exchange:

*MJ:* In 2000, mathematician Warren Smith published a study where he ran
simulations to determine which of the common voting methods gave the most
satisfactory, or least regrettable, outcome for the greatest number of
voters. He found that range voting was the most fair.

*WP:* That one paper has convinced a lot of people that we ought to be
taking range voting pretty seriously.

*MJ:* How did the other methods rank?

*WP:* The second best was approval voting, which is the short-form version
of range voting. Instead of rating someone on one to five stars, or one to
ten, you basically have two ratings—thumbs down and thumbs up—and it's
almost as good. Next is the Borda count, although this particular simulation
doesn't factor in that there's an incentive to manipulate the vote, so I
wouldn't rate that as too great an endorsement—Condorcet voting is a little
better. Then you get into instant runoff and then plurality voting, which is
the worst of all these systems.
John