Myths and facts about voting

 

Myth #1:  The choice with the most votes is the most popular.

Fact:  The most popular choice cannot be correctly identified if you only collect each person's first choice and none of the choices gets a majority of those first-choice votes.

Myth #2:  Voting is only useful for identifying a single winning choice.

Fact:  A voting method that can't reveal the full ranking—from most popular to least popular—often fails to correctly identify which choice is really the most popular.

Myth #3:  The choice with fewest votes is least popular.

Fact:  The least-popular choice cannot be correctly identified if you only collect each person's first choice.

Myth #4:  Runoff voting gives fair results

Fact:  The most popular choice can be eliminated in an earlier round of runoff voting.

Myth #5:  It is impossible to correctly identify the second-most popular choice, the third-most popular choice, and so on.

Fact:  If order-of- preference ballots are used, there is enough information to correctly identify the second-most popular choice, the third-most popular choice, and so on.

Myth #6:  The American Idol singer with the fewest votes always deserves to be eliminated from the contest.

Fact:  Vote-splitting contributed to the early elimination of Jennifer Hudson, Elliott Yamin, Chris Daughtry, and Melinda Doolittle.

Myth #7:  Instant runoff voting (IRV) correctly identifies the most popular choice.

Fact:  Instant runoff voting (IRV) does not consider all the preferences of all the voters.

Myth #8:  The traditional way of voting has withstood the test of time.

Fact:  The recent arrival of computers gives us the opportunity to abandon (primitive) single-mark ballots and calculate fair results—which also reveal the full ranking of choices from most popular to least popular.

Myth #9:  If there is a second equivalent seat to be filled, the second-most popular candidate deserves to win it.

Fact:  If there is a second equivalent seat to be filled, the second-most representative candidate—based on VoteFair representation ranking—deserves to win it.