CONTACT:
Donald Saari at 847-491-5580, [email protected] or Bill Burton at (847) 491-3115 or e-mail at [email protected]u
FOR RELEASE: Immediate
As Minnesota Prepares For A Pro Wrestler Governor, Northwestern Mathematician Says Voting System Is Un-democratic
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Tuesday's unlikely result of a former pro wrestler besting two popular politicians for the governorship of Minnesota may not reflect voters' true wishes and is precisely what can happen when elections are decided on a simple plurality, a Northwestern University mathematician says.
In a plurality, in which the winning candidate receives more votes than any of his or her opponents but less than 50 percent of the votes overall, the winner may actually be the last choice of a majority of the people, says Donald G. Saari, Pancoe Professor of Mathematics at Northwestern, who has written one book on the mathematics of voting and is now at work on another.
"A plurality is un-democratic and unfair," said Saari. "It's the worst system anyone could think of for selecting officeholders and can easily lead to undesired results."
On Tuesday, in the race for governor in Minnesota, third party candidate Jesse Ventura received 37 percent of the vote to defeat Democrat Hubert Humphrey III, the state's attorney general and son of the former U.S. vice president; and Republican Norm Coleman, the mayor of St. Paul. Humphrey received 28 percent of the vote and Coleman 33 percent.
Many people who voted for Ventura may have been disaffected voters who were out to send a message. A CNN exit poll found that many of Ventura's voters would not have voted at all had he not been on the ballot.
"We have a Bill of Rights that protects us from what has been called the 'tyranny of the majority' -- what we also need is a voting system to protect us from the whim of a mere plurality," Saari said.
He said more fair election outcomes could be guaranteed if voters could cast weighted ballots for their first, second and third choices instead of voting for a single candidate.
"Allowing voters to name only their top choice is akin to ranking students based only on the number of As they receive," Saari said. "A student with three As and two Fs would be ranked above one with two As and three Bs. When elections are decided by a simple plurality, the same inequity can occur."
Using principles adopted from geometry, Saari has demonstrated that in most decision-making processes a weighted vote of two for first place, one for second and none for third is the most effective means of making choices. Such weighted voting was first proposed by the French mathematician Jean-Charles Borda in 1770.
Saari's research has shown that Borda was essentially correct. His goal, he said, is to understand which ranking procedures can unintentionally lead to inferior choices. The research relates not only to elections, but also to business decisions, such as weighing factors in deciding where to locate a new plant.
Saari has shown that the "Borda count" of weighted choices is far more reflective of an electorate's wishes than simple plurality voting, and more accurate even than a system with run-off elections.
"Weighted choices would not only ensure that the people's choice is elected, but would also help ethnic minority candidates reach office in areas in which they are not the majority," Saari said. For legislative representatives, he said, minority representation would be further helped if there were two or more representatives elected per district.
RSS