Wasted votes: Difference between revisions
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Next, since in order to win an election the winner need only have more votes then their opponent (and as FPTP elections are winner take all, they cannot win extra seats for beating their opponent by a large margin) the number of votes cast for the winning candidate above the threshold of votes needed to surpass the candidate with the 2nd most votes are also considered wasted.
== 1st generalization: Calculating the number of wasted votes under other voting methods that pass the participation criterion ==
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When this mathematical definition of the number of wasted votes in an election is applied to FPTP, it produces the same count for the number of wasted votes the procedure above produces.
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
== 2nd generalization: Calculating the number of wasted votes under other voting methods that pass the participation criterion ==
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Note that for methods that allow voters to omit preferences between candidates, calculating this metric exactly (footnote 2) requires knowing not just all of the votes used in the election to calculate, but also the preferences of all of the voters casting those votes. This means that this metric is no-longer defined by just the raw votes, as under such methods, multiple elections in which the exact same votes are cast can have different numbers of wasted votes depending on the voters casting those votes.
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Footnote 1: An election result in which 2 possible election outcomes are tied is a different election result then one in which there is only one winning election outcome (one winning candidate in a single winner election).
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