[EM] How choice of voting systems depend on amount of participants

[Richard Fobes]

On 9/24/2014 4:59 PM, dikov dikov wrote:
 > .... Since amount of
 > voters (participants+followers) may reach even thousands I suspect that
 > different voting mechanisms would be appropriate, depending on amount of
 > votes.
 > Is that right or he can stick to some systems that would be efficient on
 > large and small scales?

Thousands of voters does not cause any problem for any election method.

In fact, based on my experiences with surveys/polls/elections at 
VoteFair.org, a smaller number of voters can be more of an issue.

In particular, a small number of voters can more easily lead to a tie, 
and can more easily lead to the result not having a Condorcet winner. 
By contrast, a large number of voters decreases the chances of a tie, 
and increases the chances that there will be a Condorcet winner.

(Clarification: Instant-runoff voting (IRV) has a limitation if ballots 
are collected at different locations, because it cannot handle the 
summarizing that works with other counting methods.  Yet even IRV can 
handle tens of thousands of ballots if they are cast at a single website.)

Thanks for asking, and especially thanks for learning about how voting 
should be done.

Richard Fobes

On 9/24/2014 4:59 PM, dikov dikov wrote:
> Hi,
>
> One of my friends wants to implement contests to his website and
> learning on the topic brought me to the voting systems. Since amount of
> voters (participants+followers) may reach even thouthands I suspect that
> different voting mechanisms would be appropriate, depending on amount of
> votes.
> Is that right or he can stick to some systems that would be efficient on
> large and small scales?
>
> Thank you in advance,
>
> Dmytro