Chaotic Elections! A Mathematician Looks at Voting

[nooniansoong]

He seems to care about qualities of election methods that nobody else cares about. He's the only Borda advocate I know of. My studies show Borda distorts election results. Condorcet is better. IRV is chaotic and terrible. Look up "Instant Runoff Normalized Ratings"

[MrSteveSpears]

Excellent. I have seen the Teaching Co. video by Scott P. Stevens "Voting: Determining the will of the people" (Not on YouTube) and it is very worth while. However, based on the charts that he showed I would have to conclude that this method, the Borda Count, is most representative. The summary of his lecture begins at 43 min.

[progressnerd]

Instant Runoff Voting is as good as it gets for single-winner systems.

[vcool]

Why that is utter nonsense

[MrSteveSpears]

@progressnerd If you are interested in a reasonable refutation of Instant Runoff Voting, have a look at the video at the Teaching Co. website titled "Voting: Determining the will of the people." At the 20 min. mark he shows some very interesting graphs to compare about five voting methods>

[vcool]

This was an interesting video to watch. It's a pity that the video doesn't focus on the presentation screen itself.

The Borda count is recommended, but it is hardly the perfect method. Like nearly all other methods, it too suffers from problems. You can look at the Wikipedia article on 'Voting system' and 'Borda count' to learn what these problems are. 'Range voting' as a method was not discussed.

For another good video on voting systems, google "Voting: Determining the Will of the People".

[MrSteveSpears]

@vcool He does seem to allude to Range voting at 57 min., but does not give a detailed explanation for his disqualification, other than the reference to figure skating.