Editing 1844: Voting Systems

{{comic
| number    = 1844
| date      = May 31, 2017
| title     = Voting Systems
| image     = voting_systems.png
| titletext = Kenneth Arrow hated me because the ordering of my preferences changes based on which voting systems have what level of support. But it tells me a lot about the people I'm going to be voting with!
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is about types of single-winner voting systems:

# '''{{w|Approval voting}}''' has voters "approve" (i.e. select) any number of candidates. The winner is the most-approved candidate. It works with the same unranked ballot as plurality voting, but would allow a "compromise" candidate who is the second choice of a majority to defeat a candidate who is supported by a plurality but disliked by other groups.
# '''{{w|Instant-runoff voting}}''' (also known as Ranked Choice or Preferential Voting) has voters rank the candidates in order of preference. Ballots are initially counted for each elector's top choice. If a candidate secures more than half of these votes, that candidate wins. Otherwise, the candidate in last place is eliminated and removed from consideration. Ballots that had this candidate as the top choice now have the second preference as the top choice (this is the "instant runoff"). The top remaining choices on all the ballots are then counted again. This process repeats until one candidate is the top remaining choice of a majority of the voters or all but one candidate have been eliminated. IRV's proponents have successfully implemented it in a few places, such as the city of San Francisco, and Federal elections in Australia.
# A '''{{w|Condorcet method}}''' elects the candidate that would win a majority of the vote in all of the head-to-head elections against each of the other candidates. A candidate with this property is called the Condorcet winner. Due to the {{w|Condorcet paradox}}, an election with 3 or more candidates might not have a Condorcet winner, so Condorcet methods differ in the secondary set of rules used to handle that situation.
# Not directly mentioned in the comic, '''{{w|First-past-the-post voting}}''' (FPTP, aka '''{{w|Plurality (voting)|plurality voting}}''') is the method currently used in the US, UK, and several other countries. It only allows voters to choose a single candidate. Experts on voting methods agree there are multiple reasons why FPTP is not the best way to implement democracy,<ref>https://www.ippr.org/files/images/media/files/publication/2011/05/Worst%20of%20Both%20Worlds%20Jan2011_1820.pdf</ref><ref>https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/voting-methods/#ExamVotiMeth</ref><ref>https://electionscience.org/voting-methods/spoiler-effect-top-5-ways-plurality-voting-fails/</ref><ref>https://www.fairvote.org/plurality_voting_leaves_elections_open_to_manipulation</ref><ref>https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254419149_And_the_loser_is_Plurality_Voting</ref><ref>https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/first-past-the-post</ref><ref>https://blog.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/no-electoral-system-is-perfect-but-some-seem-fairer/</ref> but they made little progress in replacing it in the United States for decades. However, this is changing; the state of Maine and numerous cities have adopted either IRV or Approval in recent years.

'''{{w|Arrow's impossibility theorem}}''' gives a list of criteria for ranked voting systems and states that [http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q60ZXoXP6Hg no system] can satisfy all of them at once, despite that for each of them it may seem "obvious" that an electoral system ought to satisfy it. Some voting theorists (such as Cueball) dislike IRV because it {{w|Comparison of electoral systems#Compliance of selected single-winner methods (table)|fails more of the criteria}} than Condorcet does.

The primary joke in the comic is the premise that people who are pedantic or knowledgeable enough to find Arrow's theorem to be relevant will self-fulfill the theorem by being inclined to disagree on any effort to change the voting system. This is illustrated by Cueball's voting system preference that is contingent on the preferences of other people, which defeats their effort to produce a community-wide ranking.

A secondary joke in the comic is that often voters don't pick their favorite choice in a vote. Instead, they vote for a less favorable, but more likely electable, person as a way to prevent their least favorite choice from being elected. This is commonly called "spoiler effect"; in Arrow's parlance it is a form of {{w|Independence of irrelevant alternatives|IIA criterion failure}}. Cueball's strategic vote switch implies that they may be using FPTP (which they dislike) to make the decision, as FPTP is the only system to involve a potential "spoiler effect" (note, however, that certain vote distributions in systems such as IRV can produce a similarly problematic and illogical effect on the outcome).

A third joke is the recursive self-referencing inherent in voting to choose a voting system.

The title text stipulates that Cueball has no fixed ranking of preference for human candidates, but makes this choice dependent on which voting system is favored by the group. This exceeds strategic voting considerations as the ranking should have full information, whom Cueball prefers in each situation. Therefore Arrow's impossibility theorem and the analysis behind it assume the ranked preferences of an individual voter as a fixed given. To make them dependent on the voting system makes assessing the efficacy of the voting systems absurd or at least much more complicated to do as a general assessment. That is given as the reason why Arrow would wholeheartedly hate him.

==Transcript==
:[White Hat and Ponytail are standing on either side of Cueball who is talking while lifting one hand.] 
:Cueball: I prefer approval voting, but if we're seriously considering instant runoff, then I'll argue for a Condorcet method instead.

:[Caption beneath the panel:] 
:Strong Arrow's theorem: The people who find Arrow's theorem significant will never agree on anything anyway.

{{comic discussion}}

<references />

[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Elections]]