Discussion Papers, Department of Finance and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics (NHH)
No 2008/10:
Voces Populi and the Art of Listening
Eivind Stensholt ()
Abstract: The strategy most damaging to many preferential election
methods is to give insincerely low rank to the main opponent of one’s
favorite candidate. Theorem 1 determines the 3-candidate Condorcet method
that minimizes the number of noncyclic profiles allowing this strategy.
Theorems 2, 3, and 4 establish conditions for an anonymous and neutral
3-candidate single-seat election to be monotonic and still avoid this
strategy completely. Plurality elections combine these properties; among
the others "conditional IRV" gives the strongest challenge to the plurality
winner. Conditional IRV is extended to any number of candidates. Theorem 5
is an impossibility of Gibbard-Satterthwaite type, describing 3 specific
strategies that cannot all be avoided in meaningful anonymous and neutral
elections.
Keywords: Preferential Election methods; Plurality Election methods; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: D72; (follow links to similar papers)
40 pages, June 12, 2008
Before downloading any of the electronic versions below
you should read our statement on
copyright.
Download GhostScript
for viewing Postscript files and the
Acrobat Reader for viewing and printing pdf files.
Full text versions of the paper:
1008.pdf 
Download Statistics
Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Stein Fossen ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ()
or Helena Lundin ().
Programing by
Design by Joachim Ekebom
