In a democracy, who should win an election? This question may take some serious thinking to come up with an answer.

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In our elections, it is the person who gets the most votes who wins. Put another way, a candidate wins by being the first choice of the most voters. In a democracy, is this the right outcome? What is the right outcome for an election?

Are we getting it right or should we perhaps try to elect the candidate that is seen as satisfactory for the office by the most voters? Maybe some other objective would be even more appropriate.

Lets take an example. Suppose there are three parties fielding candidates for Mayor in a community of 100K voters.

40K members of the Cat party detest the Dog candidate, but 20K Cats would find the Fox candidate acceptable as a second choice if the Cat candidate could not win.

38K members of the Dog party detest the Cat candidate but 8K Dogs would find the Fox candidate an acceptable second choice.

22K members of the Fox party prefer the Fox candidate but 12K of them would choose the Dog candidate acceptable while 10K would find the Cat candidate acceptable as a second choice.

If the election were held with plurality voting (with only the first choice of voters counted), it is easy to see that the Cat candidate would win with 40K votes.

But in the abstract, if the community has a successful democratic election, who should win?

Authors Bio:

Attended college thanks to the generous state support of education in 1960's America. Earned a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Illinois followed by post doctoral research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Taught for several years at Lehigh University prior to a short stint at Bell Laboratories but followed by a much longer career at NEC punctuated by ten U.S. and international patents in the general area to semiconductor applications.

Now living in a comfortable Maine retirement community and focused on the prospect of upgrading democracy by means of an improved voting system.