Borda Count

[Jurij Toplak]

Just a comment on the oppinions about Borda count:

In Slovenia we use Borda system to elect two of our parliament
representatives. They are elected in singlemember districts. (Other 88
members of parliament are elected using combination of Droop and D'Hondt
method).

As a teacher of constitutional law I use a following example to show
students possible anomalies of Borda system:

Borda system is one of rare systems where a person can be elected even if
practically noone votes for him.
For example, we have two strong candidates, a right party (RR) and a left
party (LL) candidate. They both enjoy 50% support. In addition there is one
more, totally unknown candidate, let's call him Billy. Nobody knows him and
nobody wants to vote for him.
Voters of RR candidate, of course, rank candidate RR as n. 1, and because
they do not want LL to get elected, they rank him as n. 3. They rank Billy
as n. 2. Voters of LL do the opposite thing.

Imagine, that there is 100.000 voters and half of them votes for LL and half
of them for RR. LL receives 200.000 points (50.000*3+50.000*1) and RR
receives 200.000 points. Although nobody voted for Billy, he also received
200.000 points (100.000*2).

It is enough for candidate Billy just to vote for himself and he wins.

Jure Toplak