Real-World Examples of Voting Paradoxes William H. Riker, Liberalism against Populism (Waveland Press, 1982). 1912 US Presidential race Popular vote: 42% Wilson 27% Roosevelt 24% Taft Thanks to the plurality rule, Wilson won (the Electoral College didn’t make a significant difference in this case. Let’s suppose that the voters formed three blocs with the followingContinue reading “Strategic and Insincere Voting”
Category Archives: democracy
Voting and Epistemology
Voting and Epistemology Voting to Track the Truth (Wisdom of Crowds) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Voting Methods,” Eric Pacuit, 2019 The most well-known analysis comes from the writings of Condorcet (1785). The following theorem, which is attributed to Condorcet and was first proved formally by Laplace, shows that if there are only two options, thenContinue reading “Voting and Epistemology”
Arrow’s Theorem and Democracy
Importance of Arrow’s Theorem Does Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem (Kenneth Arrow 1960) challenge the value of democracy? First, we have to ask: Is democracy an end in itself or a means to an end? For Locke: “For when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby madeContinue reading “Arrow’s Theorem and Democracy”
The Analytic Thomist 