The article confuses two issues, one illustrated by Arrow's Theorem which is more relevant to parliamentary procedures (where any set of more than two choices has to be resolved as a series of binary choices, and the voting population is small and its preferences well understood) and first past the post electoral systems which are completely hopeless, especially when tiered, as in the US.
Most of the article is essentially discussing an example of Arrow's Theorem where if you know people's preferences and can present them with binary options in an order of your choosing you can obtain any outcome except the least popular option. This is very artificial and not a real flaw of preferential and proportional electoral systems where (a) individual preferences are not known and (b) the entire vote is done in one step, not in a carefully chosen series of binary options. Great for gaming a committee, lousy for elections.
As others have observed, the chief purpose of voting is allowing government transitions without violence and with the appearance of procedural fairness, but the fact remains voting works just fine when the population has a clear cut preference ("throw the bastards out").
Well, modulo corrupt redistricting.
Americans who want to talk about voting really need to understand that there are other voting systems than the horse and buggy system used in the US and UK.
Most of the article is essentially discussing an example of Arrow's Theorem where if you know people's preferences and can present them with binary options in an order of your choosing you can obtain any outcome except the least popular option. This is very artificial and not a real flaw of preferential and proportional electoral systems where (a) individual preferences are not known and (b) the entire vote is done in one step, not in a carefully chosen series of binary options. Great for gaming a committee, lousy for elections.
As others have observed, the chief purpose of voting is allowing government transitions without violence and with the appearance of procedural fairness, but the fact remains voting works just fine when the population has a clear cut preference ("throw the bastards out").
Well, modulo corrupt redistricting.
Americans who want to talk about voting really need to understand that there are other voting systems than the horse and buggy system used in the US and UK.