Borda Count Procedures An Example Potential For Tactical Voting

A number n is selected; this number can be smaller than or equal to the number of candidates. Each voter lists their top n choices, in order of preference.

A first-place rank is worth n points, a second-place rank is worth n-1 points, down to an nth rank being worth 1 point. A candidate's score is the sum of the number of points they received. The highest-scoring candidate is elected.

In the trivial case of n=1, this is mathematically identical to plurality voting.

In the trivial (limiting case) of n=∞, allowing truncated preferences, this is mathematically identical to approval voting. This is approximately true for large n the votes offered to ranked candidates will be approximately equal and nonranked candidates will all get zero votes. Example, if n=10, and I rank only only three choices, they each get 10,9,8 votes respectively, normalized to 1.0, 0.9, 0.8 votes, close to 1.0 vote for an equivalent vote offered in Approval.

If all candidates are to be ranked, the number of points given per candidate can be reduced by one (so that a first-place rank is worth n-1 points and the last-place ranks is worth no points at all). This variation has the (possibly convenient) property that the number of possible points per candidate will be between 0 and (c-1)*v inclusive, where c is the number of candidates and v the number of voters.

2 An Example

Imagine an election for the capital of Tennessee, a state in the United States that is over 500 miles east-to-west, and only 110 miles north-to-south. In this vote, the candidates for the capital are Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville. The population breakdown by metro area is as follows:

If the voters cast their ballot based strictly on geographic proximity, the voters' sincere preferences might be as follows:

City	First	Second	Third	Fourth	Points
Memphis	42	0	0	58	226
Nashville	26	42	32	0	294
Chattanooga	15	43	42	0	273
Knoxville	17	15	26	42	207

Nashville is the winner in this election, as it has the most points. Nashville also happens to be the Condorcet winner in this case, but the Borda count does not always select the Condorcet winner.

3 Potential for Tactical Voting

The Borda count encourages tactical voting in many ways. Voters can be encouraged to "bury their favorite" candidate if they have no chance of winning. In the above example, voters from Memphis and Knoxville are encouraged to compromise because their first choices are unlikely to win.

In addition, voters are also encouraged to "bury" likely opponents by insincerely ranking them lower or not at all. In the above example, voters from both Memphis and Nashville are encouraged to insincerely "bury" Chattanooga, the candidate most likely to challenge Nashville, while voters from Chattanooga and Knoxville are encouraged to insincerely rank Nashville lower for the same reason.

In an extreme example of burying likely rivals, voters may "bullet vote": vote for a single choice only, thus allocating no points to other choices. One variation of Borda addresses this by allocating a number of points for the first choice equal to the number of choices made. In the above example, a partisan for Memphis who listed only Memphis on her ballot would give one point to Memphis, while a voter who listed Memphis first and listed second, third, and fourth choices on the ballot would allocate four points to Memphis. If there were more choices, this form of Borda encourages voters to vote for "push-overs", candidates absolutely unlikely to win the election, in order to get more points for their preferred candidate.

In addition to tactical voting, strategic nomination considerations reign supreme in the Borda count. Running multiple, similar candidates may enhance a party's chance of winning the election by increasing the point differences with opposing candidates, if the party is allowed to advance more than one candidate for consideration.

4 See also

List of democracy and elections-related topicsThis is a list of articles related to democracy and the various aspects of a democratic system, most notably elections. In general, all the following articles have at least some connection with the democratic decision-making process. Government Government
Voting system - many other ways of voting
First Past the Post electoral systemThe first-past-the-post electoral system is a voting system for single-member districts, variously called first-past-the-post (FPTP or FPP winner-take-all plurality voting or relative majority . In political science, it is known as Single-Member District
Instant-runoff votingWhen the single transferable vote voting system is applied to a single-winner election it is sometimes called instant-runoff voting (IRV), as it is much like holding a series of runoff elections in which the lowest polling candidate is eliminated in each
Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential DroppingCloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping CSSD is a voting system developed by Markus Schulze that selects a single winner using votes that express preferences. CSSD can also be used to create a sorted list of winners. CSSD is also known as "Schwartz Sequen
Approval voting

5 External link

The de Borda Institute, Northern Ireland

Voting systems

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1 Procedures