President Perot or Fundamentals of Voting Theory Illustrated with the 1992 Election

Different voting systems can lead to different election outcomeseven when voter preferences are held constant. Using the 1992 election as anexample, it is shown how the outcome of every positional votesystem can be found. Similarly, every possible cumulative andapproval vote outcome is shown. Multiple vote systems, likeapproval and cumulative voting, have disturbing properties. Usingthe 1992 election as illustration, it is shown how a candidate whowins under every positional vote system, who wins every pairwisevote (i.e. is the Condorcet winner), and who has the most firstplace and least last place votes may nevertheless lose underapproval or cumulative voting. Similarly, it is shown how acandidate who loses under every positional system, who loses everypairwise vote (i.e. is the Condorcet loser), and who has the leastfirst place and most last place votes may nevertheless win underapproval or cumulative voting.

[1]  D. Saari,et al.  The problem of indeterminacy in approval, multiple, and truncated voting systems , 1988 .

[2]  D. Saari Susceptibility to manipulation , 1990 .

[3]  S. Brams,et al.  Would Ross Perot Have Won the 1992 Presidential Election Under Approval Voting? , 1994, PS: Political Science & Politics.

[4]  Robert R. Brischetto Cumulative voting as an alternative to districting. An exit survey of sixteen texas communities , 1995 .

[5]  Lee Spector,et al.  Would the Borda Count Have Avoided the Civil War? , 1999 .

[6]  Richard A. Joslyn The impact of decision rules in multi-candidate campaigns , 1976 .

[7]  Duncan MacRae,et al.  Game Theory and Cumulative Voting in Illinois: 1902–1954 , 1962, American Political Science Review.

[8]  Douglas Muzzio,et al.  APPROVAL VOTING , 1983 .

[9]  Donald G. Saari,et al.  Is approval voting an ‘unmitigated evil’?: A response to Brams, Fishburn, and Merrill , 1987 .

[10]  N. Schofield The Geometry of Voting , 1983 .

[11]  Steven J. Brams,et al.  Approval voting in practice , 1991 .

[12]  D. Roderick Kiewiet Approval Voting: The Case of the 1968 Election , 1979, Polity.

[13]  A. A. J. Marley,et al.  On the model dependence of majority preference relations reconstructed from ballot or survey data , 2002, Math. Soc. Sci..

[14]  R. Niemi The Problem of Strategic Behavior under Approval Voting , 1984, American Political Science Review.

[15]  Barry Nalebuff,et al.  An Introduction to Vote-Counting Schemes , 1995 .

[16]  John Kellett,et al.  Presidential Primaries: Measuring Popular Choice , 1977, Polity.

[17]  Peter C. Fishburn,et al.  The responsiveness of approval voting: Comments on Saari and Van Newenhizen , 1988 .

[18]  Francis T. Seow,et al.  The tyranny of the majority , 1990 .

[19]  R. Weber,et al.  A Theory of Voting Equilibria , 1993, American Political Science Review.

[20]  Sanjai Bhagat,et al.  Cumulative Voting: The Value of Minority Shareholder Voting Rights , 1984, The Journal of Law and Economics.