The other day as I was watching a popular TV program, where the winner was to be selected based on public vote. My Favorite singer lost , and I immediately could see the shortcoming of the simple voting system. No, I am not a sore loser, only that I really think that a voting system that lets you vote for a single candidate is flawed.
Let me elaborate with an example, on how the single voting system chooses the second best candidate instead of the best candidate.
Imagine 3 candidates ; Cathy, Tim and Jack. There are 10 voters, and your single voting system reveals the result as
No winner on guessing that this system will have Cathy as a winner with 60% of the votes. However There is a scenario in which Despite such voting, Cathy couldn’t be the most preferred singer.
Let’s ask the Voters again to vote , this time Each Vote is Complete Vote. They have to Rate the Singers, not just choose 1 singer.
So Voter 1, Says he likes Cathy the most and Tim the least , and we make a table based on each voters preferenace as follows.
Now, give the weightage of 3 to Most preferred category, 2 to Less preferred and 1 to Least preferred.
Cathy has 6 most preferred votes, 0 Less preferred and 4 least preferred votes. Total Score = 6 * 3+ 4*1 = 22
Jack has Only 3 most preffered votes, 7 less preferred votes and 0 least preferred . Total Score = 3*3 + 7*2 = 23
Tim has only 1 most preffered, 3 less preferred and 6 least preferred votes. Total score = 3*1 +3*2 + 6*1 = 15
Clearly Jack is a winner. However the problem with our conventional voting system is that you are allowed to choose only for 1 candidate. Highly flawed system I personally think.