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A lesson in manipulating the vote

Assume I ham having a party, and I want to give people the impression their vote matters for what desert we have, I like vanilla, but expect chocolate to win, so I set up the options as this: Vanilla, Dark Chocolate, and Milk Chocolate.

My guests vote, 8 for vanilla, 5 for dark chocolate, and 7 for milk chocolate. Vanilla wins, even though the majority wanted chocolate.

So, how did that happen? By making sure I listed multiple chocolate options, I split the chocolate vote, leaving the vanilla vote whole.

This happens in normal elections where a plurality is allowed, thus why most elections require a majority vote to win, plurality is easily manipulated by people nominating several candidates they know draw on the same votes to weaken them allowing a weaker candidate to win.

All hypothetical of course, no one would stoop to doing something like that... *grin*

August 21, 2007 (11:52am)

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