How Should Votes Be Cast and Counted?

This chapter evaluates extensions of majority rule for elections with multiple candidates, based on a judgment that the question should not be approached predominantly in terms of logical criteria, for no rule satisfies all desirable criteria and logical criteria take no account of the frequency with which conditions are violated. Instead, the question is explored in terms of a combination of three statistical frequencies with which rules achieve desirable conditions (identifying the highest-value candidate when voters vote sincerely, resistance to strategy, and resistance to tying), one two-stage logical criterion (resistance to clones), and three criteria of simplicity (ease of voting, ease of counting votes, and ease of understanding the vote-counting process). Eighteen rules selected from previous inquiries are evaluated in terms of these criteria. A winnowing process is recommended for identifying the rule that a group finds most attractive. The Condorcet-Hare rule is likely to be most attractive.