Basic Geometry of Voting

Basic Geometry of Voting PDF Author: Donald G. Saari
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642577482
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Amazingly, the complexities of voting theory can be explained and resolved with comfortable geometry. A geometry which unifies such seemingly disparate topics as manipulation, monotonicity, and even the apportionment issues of the US Supreme Court. Although directed mainly toward students and others wishing to learn about voting, experts will discover here many previously unpublished results. As an example, a new profile decomposition quickly resolves the age-old controversies of Condorcet and Borda, demonstrates that the rankings of pairwise and other methods differ because they rely on different information, casts serious doubt on the reliability of a Condorcet winner as a standard for the field, makes the famous Arrow's Theorem predictable, and simplifies the construction of examples.

Basic Geometry of Voting

Basic Geometry of Voting PDF Author: Donald G. Saari
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642577482
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book Here

Book Description
Amazingly, the complexities of voting theory can be explained and resolved with comfortable geometry. A geometry which unifies such seemingly disparate topics as manipulation, monotonicity, and even the apportionment issues of the US Supreme Court. Although directed mainly toward students and others wishing to learn about voting, experts will discover here many previously unpublished results. As an example, a new profile decomposition quickly resolves the age-old controversies of Condorcet and Borda, demonstrates that the rankings of pairwise and other methods differ because they rely on different information, casts serious doubt on the reliability of a Condorcet winner as a standard for the field, makes the famous Arrow's Theorem predictable, and simplifies the construction of examples.

Geometry of Voting

Geometry of Voting PDF Author: Donald G. Saari
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642486444
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Over two centuries of theory and practical experience have taught us that election and decision procedures do not behave as expected. Instead, we now know that when different tallying methods are applied to the same ballots, radically different outcomes can emerge, that most procedures can select the candidate, the voters view as being inferior, and that some commonly used methods have the disturbing anomaly that a winning candidate can lose after receiving added support. A geometric theory is developed to remove much of the mystery of three-candidate voting procedures. In this manner, the spectrum of election outcomes from all positional methods can be compared, new flaws with widely accepted concepts (such as the "Condorcet winner") are identified, and extensions to standard results (e.g. Black's single-peakedness) are obtained. Many of these results are based on the "profile coordinates" introduced here, which makes it possible to "see" the set of all possible voters' preferences leading to specified election outcomes. Thus, it now is possible to visually compare the likelihood of various conclusions. Also, geometry is applied to apportionment methods to uncover new explanations why such methods can create troubling problems.

Geometry of Voting

Geometry of Voting PDF Author: Donald G. Saari
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783642486456
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description


The Geometry of Elections

The Geometry of Elections PDF Author: Ernest W. Adams
Publisher: Stanford Univ Center for the Study
ISBN: 9781575864860
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
How can we ensure that the "right" person is elected to office? Voter turnout, balloting methods, candidates, and, in the case of the 2000 U.S. presidential election, the courts all conspire to produce electoral results that are horrific to some, wonderful to others, and tolerable to most. The Geometry of Elections utilizes mathematical theories to analyze how people vote and explores possible voting systems that could minimize the likelihood of the "wrong" candidate being elected. The Geometry of Elections examines real world elections held in the United States, Britain, and France and asks: What criteria do voters use to determine the "right" candidate or party, and if there is a "right" candidate, how can we design a more accurate voting system? Applying spatial modeling and insights from geometry to real-world political elections, the authors present an intriguing examination of how voters conceptualize and eventually vote for politicians and policy positions.

Voting Paradoxes and How to Deal with Them

Voting Paradoxes and How to Deal with Them PDF Author: Hannu Nurmi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3662037823
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Voting paradoxes are unpleasant surprises encountered in voting. Typically they suggest that something is wrong with the way in dividual opinions are being expressed or processed in voting. The outcomes are bizarre, unfair or otherwise implausible, given the expressed opinions of voters. Voting paradoxes have an important role in the history of social choice theory. The founding fathers of the theory, Marquis de Condorcet and Jean-Charles de Borda, were keenly aware of some of them. Indeed, much of the work of these and other forerunners of the modern social choice theory dealt with ways of avoiding paradoxes related to voting. One of the early paradoxes, viz. that bearing the name of Condorcet, has subsequently gained such a prominent place in the literature that it is sometimes called the paradox of voting. One of the aims of the present work is to show that Condorcet's is but one of many paradoxes of voting. Some of these are pretty closely interrelated making it meaningful to classify them. This is the second main aim of this book. The third objective is to suggest ways of dealing with paradoxes. Since voting is and has always been an essential instrument of democratic rule, it is of some in terest to find out how voting paradoxes are being dealt with by past and present methods of voting. Of even greater interest is to find ways of minimizing the probability of occurrence of various paradoxes. By their very nature some paradoxes are unavoidable.

Political Geometry

Political Geometry PDF Author: Moon Duchin
Publisher: Birkhäuser
ISBN: 9783319691602
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
“Why does my congressional district look like a salamander?” Politically engaged citizens have been asking this question for far too long. This volume collects perspectives from a wide cross-section of disciplines to explain what drives gerrymandering, why it can be hard to stamp out, and how we might go about fixing it. With topics ranging from the Voting Rights Act to Markov chains to the geography of communities, this book serves as a 21st century toolkit for how we can better approach this corrosive phenomenon. The volume editors gather experts from a variety of fields to provide as many different perspectives on gerrymandering as possible. Thanks to the breadth of expertise found across these chapters, ranging from lawyers to mathematicians to civil rights activists, readers will discover new ways of thinking about redistricting in the United States. Illustrations and helpful walkthroughs appear throughout to clearly explain otherwise complex ideas from these areas. Political Geometry is a must-have for anybody interested in political representation in the United States elections, and for anyone who’s ever thought, “There must be a better way to do this.”

The Mathematics of Elections and Voting

The Mathematics of Elections and Voting PDF Author: W.D. Wallis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319098101
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 103

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Book Description
This title takes an in-depth look at the mathematics in the context of voting and electoral systems, with focus on simple ballots, complex elections, fairness, approval voting, ties, fair and unfair voting, and manipulation techniques. The exposition opens with a sketch of the mathematics behind the various methods used in conducting elections. The reader is lead to a comprehensive picture of the theoretical background of mathematics and elections through an analysis of Condorcet’s Principle and Arrow’s Theorem of conditions in electoral fairness. Further detailed discussion of various related topics include: methods of manipulating the outcome of an election, amendments, and voting on small committees. In recent years, electoral theory has been introduced into lower-level mathematics courses, as a way to illustrate the role of mathematics in our everyday life. Few books have studied voting and elections from a more formal mathematical viewpoint. This text will be useful to those who teach lower level courses or special topics courses and aims to inspire students to understand the more advanced mathematics of the topic. The exercises in this text are ideal for upper undergraduate and early graduate students, as well as those with a keen interest in the mathematics behind voting and elections.

Spatial Models of Parliamentary Voting

Spatial Models of Parliamentary Voting PDF Author: Keith T. Poole
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139446754
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This book presents a simple geometric model of voting as a tool to analyze parliamentary roll call data. Each legislator is represented by one point and each roll call is represented by two points that correspond to the policy consequences of voting Yea or Nay. On every roll call each legislator votes for the closer outcome point, at least probabilistically. These points form a spatial map that summarizes the roll calls. In this sense a spatial map is much like a road map because it visually depicts the political world of a legislature. The closeness of two legislators on the map shows how similar their voting records are, and the distribution of legislators shows what the dimensions are. These maps can be used to study a wide variety of topics including how political parties evolve over time, the existence of sophisticated voting and how an executive influences legislative outcomes.

The Mathematics of Voting and Apportionment

The Mathematics of Voting and Apportionment PDF Author: Sherif El-Helaly
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030147681
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This textbook contains a rigorous exposition of the mathematical foundations of two of the most important topics in politics and economics: voting and apportionment, at the level of upper undergraduate and beginning graduate students. It stands out among comparable books by providing, in one volume, an extensive and mathematically rigorous treatment of these two topics. The text’s three chapters cover social choice, yes-no voting, and apportionment, respectively, and can be covered in any order, allowing teachers ample flexibility. Each chapter begins with an elementary introduction and several examples to motivate the concepts and to gradually lead to more advanced material. Landmark theorems are presented with detailed and streamlined proofs; those requiring more complex proofs, such as Arrow’s theorems on dictatorship, Gibbard’s theorem on oligarchy, and Gärdenfors’ theorem on manipulation, are broken down into propositions and lemmas in order to make them easier to grasp. Simple and intuitive notations are emphasized over non-standard, overly complicated symbols. Additionally, each chapter ends with exercises that vary from computational to “prove or disprove” types. The Mathematics of Voting and Apportionment will be particularly well-suited for a course in the mathematics of voting and apportionment for upper-level undergraduate and beginning graduate students in economics, political science, or philosophy, or for an elective course for math majors. In addition, this book will be a suitable read for to any curious mathematician looking for an exposition to these unpublicized mathematical applications. No political science prerequisites are needed. Mathematical prerequisites (included in the book) are minimal: elementary concepts in combinatorics, graph theory, order relations, and the harmonic and geometric means. What is needed most is the level of maturity that enables the student to think logically, derive results from axioms and hypotheses, and intuitively grasp logical notions such as “contrapositive” and “counterexample.”

Geometric Ways of Understanding Voting Problems

Geometric Ways of Understanding Voting Problems PDF Author: Tomas McIntee
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781321964608
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
General conclusions relating pairwise tallies with positional (e.g., plurality, antiplurality ('vote-for-two')) election outcomes were previously known only for the Borda Count. While it has been known since the eighteenth century that the Borda and Condorcet winners need not agree, it had not been known, for instance, in which settings the Condorcet and plurality winners can disagree, or must agree. Results of this type are developed here for all three-alternative positional rules. These relationships are based on an easily used method that connects pairwise tallies with admissible positional outcomes; e.g., a special case provides the first necessary and sufficient conditions ensuring that the Condorcet winner is the plurality winner; another case identifies when there must be a profile whereby each candidate is the 'winner' with some positional rule. Previous work relating the probability of positional and pairwise tallies have used specific selected distributions (primarily the Impartial Culture and Impartial Anonymous Culture assumptions) and specific voting rules (particularly plurality). Techniques are developed here that can be applied to analyzing the probability of conflict between all different positional methods, and between combinations of pairwise tallies with positional results. Results are given for several broad categories of probability distribution, along with a qualitative analysis of the relationship between probability distributions over voter profiles and the likelihood of voting paradoxes. A method of geometrically comparing multiple-stage and single-stage elections is developed, which shows that multiple stage elections are not necessarily more vulnerable to being manipulated, but less vulnerable when all rank-order outcomes matter, and specifically only similar when an election only identifies a first-place winner. In the case where results are defined in terms of a singular winner, a plurality vote is identified as less manipulable in a single stage than in multiple stages, while an antiplurality vote is identified as more vulnerable in a single stage than in multiple stages.