Prepared by:
Joseph Malkevitch
Department of Mathematics
York College (CUNY)
Jamaica, New York 11451
email:
malkevitch@york.cuny.edu
web page:
http://york.cuny.edu/~malk
Fifty-five voters have produced the following collection of ballots on 5 choices:
Questions:
1. Who should be declared the winner? (Candidates higher up are preferred.)
2. What method did you use in deciding who the winner should be?
3. If a ranking is to be made, rather than selecting a single winner, how would
you rank the 5 choices from "highest" to "lowest?"
4. Are you still happy with the plurality method of conducting elections after studying this example?
5. If different reasonable methods of conducting elections lead to different winners what lesson does this have for democracies?
6. If all of the numbers of votes for the 6 kinds of ballots are doubled, does this affect the winner for any of the methods you looked at?
7. If all of the numbers of votes for the 6 kinds of ballots are increased by one, does this affect the winner for any of the methods you looked at?