The likelihood of dubious election outcomes

Donald G. Saari () and Maria M. Tataru ()
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Donald G. Saari: Department of Mathematics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-2730, USA
Maria M. Tataru: Department of Mathematics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-2730, USA

Economic Theory, 1999, vol. 13, issue 2, 345-363

Abstract: A disturbing phenomenon in voting, which causes most of the problems as well as the interest in the field, is that election outcomes (for fixed preferences) can change with the way the ballots are tallied. This causes difficulties because with each possible choice, some set of voters can be dubious about whether it is the "correct" one. But, how likely are these settings allowing multiple election outcomes? By combining properties of the geometry of voting developed by Saari with a analytic-geometric technique created by Schlafli, we determine the likelihood that a three candidate election can cause these potentially dubious outcomes.

Keywords: Voting; ·; Central; limit; theorem; ·; Paradoxes. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-02-17
Note: Received: April 11, 1997; revised version: November 12, 1997
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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