Wasted votes: Difference between revisions

Finally, in an uncontested election where there is only one candidate, that threshold 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 cast 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.

 

A 2nd possible generalization of the previous generalized definition of wasted votes to methods that do not pass the participation criterion is as fallows: