Wasted votes: Difference between revisions

Finnally, in an uncontested election where there is only one candidate, that threashold becomes 1 since as long as at-least one person votes for the single candidate, it does not matter how many votes they receive in order to win the election as long as they get at-least 1 vote.

 

For voting methods that pass the participation criterion, one possible way to define the number of wasted votes in an election under that voting method is fallowing:

 

However this definition does have it's limitations: in voting methods that do not pass the participation criterion, such participation failures can drastically deflate the tally of the number of wasted votes. Example: consider the fallowing voting method: voters cast single preference votes and if there are an odd number of votes cast, the candidate with the most votes wins, otherwise the candidate with the 2nd most votes wins. Under this definition of wasted votes, there are no wasted votes under this method because every vote changes the winner. However not every vote changes the winner in a way that benefits the voter who casted it, and if a voter casts a vote that worsens the election result from their perspective, then they might as well not even cast that vote to begin with.

 

 

The number of wasted votes is equal to number of votes in the largest possible set of votes such that for any possible subset of votes in this set, removing those votes cannot change the election result to one that is preferred by all the voters who's votes are in the subset.