Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Math And Voting: Voting Methods, Fair Representation, And The Electoral College, Sarah Nelson

Honors Scholar Theses

Voting is in integral part of any functioning democracy, but there exist more than just one way to count votes. Some voting methods use only a voter’s top-choice candidate, while others require a ranking of all candidates, most-preferred to least-preferred, from each voter. We examine some of these ranked-choice voting methods, including the anti-plurality method, Hare’s method, and Coomb’s method.

Because of the variety of voting methods, we introduce criteria, which allow for an evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of each method. The criteria give various definitions for what “good” or “bad” voting methods look like, depending on context. …