[EM] A design flaw in the electoral system

[Juho Laatu]

On 3.10.2011, at 11.56, James Gilmour wrote:

> Michael Allan  > Sent: Monday, October 03, 2011 9:31 AM
>> ABSTRACT
>> --------
>> An individual vote has no effect on the formal outcome of the 
>> election; whether the vote is cast or not, the outcome is the 
>> same regardless.
> 
> These statements worry me  -  surely they contain a logical flaw?  If these statements were true and every elector responded
> rationally, no-one would ever vote.  Then the outcome would not be the same.

One could also turn this around and say that a good method does not give the decision making power to any one individual voter. Voters should think in terms "what do we want" instead of "what do I want". One voter with his numerous anonymous friends that have similar thoughts can make the difference and decide who wins. It is not a question of "what if I don't vote" but a question of "what if we don't vote".

> 
> I am not "into logic", but I suspect the flaw is in some disconnection between the individual and the aggregate.  When A with 100
> votes wins over B with 99 votes, we cannot say which of the 100 individual votes for A was "the winning vote", but it is clear that
> is any one of those 100 votes had not been for A, then A would not have won.  At best, if one A-voter had stayed at home, there
> would have been a tie.  If one of the A-voters had voted for B instead, the outcome would have been very different.

One way to measure the impact of a vote would be to count how large percentage of some group of voters was needed. If A gets 100 votes and B gets 50, then A supporters needed 51% of their votes. Also all individual A supporters could in this case say that 51% of their vote was needed to win the election.

> 
> Or am I missing something?
> 
> I do appreciate that there can be a disconnection, large or small, between the outcome of an election and the consequences in
> government (policy implementation  -  or not), but the statements quoted above were specifically about elections per se.  That's why
> I'm puzzled.

I think it is incorrect or at least misleading to say that individual votes do not have any influence. They do, as a group.

Juho


> 
> James Gilmour
> 
> 
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