Strategy and Effectiveness: An Analysis of Preferential Ballot Voting Methods

Abstract

To provide insight on various voting systems, we study six election methods using three categories of analysis. First, we prove and discuss the various fundamental election properties satisfied by each method. Since the better election methods tend to satisfy more of these properties, we are able to narrow down the list of preferable voting systems. The next phase focuses on the “crowding out” of candidates in elections. We study the susceptibility of each voting system to this crowding phenomenon, verifying that the best methods are those that do not tend to exhibit this problem. Finally, we take two of the best voting systems and run simulated random elections to assess how often they choose the same winner and which method has the best head-to-head winning percentage. We compare these top methods to another system from the original pool of six as a control example. This thesis should help inform studies of how to choose the best election method and provide a recommendation regarding which methods are generically the best.