Criteria for Elections
What is a fair election?
It is important to understand that an election is only a mathematical formula. In the plurality election method, the formula is very simple: each citizen gives one vote to one candidate; count the number of vote for each candidate. The candidate with the highest number of vote wins. The mathematics involved here is very simple: count (one vote, two votes, three votes...) then compare numbers to find out which one is the biggest. It isn't however necessarily the best one. There are other election methods relying on other mathematical formulas.
So, before discussing different election methods and the merits and weaknesses of their respective formulas, we shall have a look at some of the key caracteristics we are looking for in an election. Over the years, many different criteria have been devised to define what is a fair election. In this page, I will consider only the most important ones.
Monotonicity criterion
The name sounds awfully complicated, but Monotonicity is only a matter of common sense. What it simply means is that you cannot cause a candidate to loose by voting for her. It sounds obvious but not all election methods comply to this criterion. For example, the Instant Runoff Vote election method that is used for the London Mayoral election is not monotonous. In the Instant Runoff Vote, voters rank the candidates by order of preference and the candidates with the least first place vote are eliminated and the votes attributed to the subsequantly ranked candidates. It can be proved with simple examples that with IRV, people can cause a candidate to loose by voting for them.
In a simple plurality vote, however, there is no way that I can cause a candidate to loose by voting for them. Other popular voting methods such as Approval Voting and Condorcet Voting, also comply to the Monotonicity criterion.
The Ideal Democratic Winner or Condorcet Criterion
Imagine an election with more than two candidates. Let's say we have five candidates A, B, C, D and E. In simple plurality Voting, citizens can only vote for one candidate and the candidate with the most votes wins. It sounds fair: we are used to this system. Imagine however that candidate A won each of the one on one election against each of the other four candidates. It would mean that the population prefers A to B, and they also prefer her to C, to D and to E. It would seem fair to say that such a candidate should win. This candidate is called the Ideal Democratic Winner. Under plurality Voting however, the Ideal Democratic Winner does not necessarily win. The Marquis the Condorcet, a French philosopher, devised a voting system that now bears his name to ensure that the IDW wins the election.
Strategy-Free Criterion
If we are looking to have a truely free and representative election, it is important that voters feel they can express their real preference without fear that it will backfire at them. For example, in many election systems we have today, many voters do not support their favorite candidate because they are afraid that it will help the candidate they dislike the most to be elected. In many elections we can witness how people, often encouraged by political parties, vote not according to their true heart but vote strategically.
The Lesser of Two Evils
Election Methods used today throughout the world favorise a two-party system. It doesn't mean that citizen all favor either the one party or the other. The spectrum of opinions is actually much wider and much more varied than a mere duality of political choice. The problem is that voters tend to support the candidate that is most likely to defeat the main candidate from the other side of the political spectrum. Often, voters would admit that they actually dislike both of the main candidates, but would still prefer seeing one of them elected rather than the other one. They give up on the candidate with the best policies and the best qualities and choose what is often called the lesser of two evils.
Choosing the lesser of two evils may be the best choice within given the flaws of the election methods in use. It is nonetheless a shame because, most of the time, the candidate elected is an evil, albeit a smaller one than could have been. Meanwhile, the good candidates, those with all the good qualities that citizens are longing to see in a politician, never get significantly promoted.
Are small parties really that small?
This strategic practice of choosing the lesser of two evils is boosting the performance of the two main parties in the election. Their dominant position is thus affirmed. Voters betray their favorite candidates if they stem from a small party, depriving such small parties from much needed boosting votes that would allow them to prove themselves to be worthy to become a mainstream party. This phenomenum has been observed times and times again in many elections all over the world.
If a small party does not really appeal to the public, then it is only fair that such a party garners only a small percentage of votes. However it is felt that many small parties which could or would be approved of by a high percentage of voters suffer from a vicious circle: they are perceived as only a small party and therefore people don't vote for them but for the lesser of two evils, therefore the small party makes a poor showing at the election and they are perceived even weaker...
The interesting question is, given an election method where voters could vote for according to their true wishes, without any fear and without any need to think of strategy, how big could those small candidate become?
A fair election shouldn't be strategic
The Strategy Free Criterion is an important criterion if we wish to have an election result that truly represents the will of the people.
