While I was surfing the net for pros and cons of different voting systems, I came upon this blurb about Lewis Carroll:
"Writing in 1884, he praised the unpopular 'limited vote' which then operated in the big English cities, in which each voter had fewer votes than there were seats to fill. Most people thought that this was less democratic than giving each voter as many votes as there were seats. Dodgson proved that it was more democratic. To do so, he used concepts we would today label 'game theoretic', although such concepts were not formalised until decades after his death." This raised a few questions in my mind, such as: 1.) Is there a fairly simple description of this proof? 2.) Does it matter if the voting method is positional (like Condorcet) or simply yes-no (Approval-style)? 3.) At what point does limiting the vote maximize the "democratic" aspects -- 50% of the total seats? 75%? Or does it depend on the strength of the party? 4.) What about methods that allow you to rank any number of candidates? For example, if there were 50 seats and 100 candidates, and you ranked all 100 candidates? What about fifty candidates? What about only 25? Thanks for any information. Michael Rouse [EMAIL PROTECTED]
