Minimax is the best electoral system after all
Richard B. Darlington

TL;DR
This paper demonstrates that the minimax electoral system is highly effective, surpassing most other systems in selecting the best candidate, and introduces an improved version called minimax-T with enhanced features.
Contribution
The paper provides a comprehensive analysis of electoral systems, validating minimax's robustness and proposing minimax-T with improved transparency, privacy, and resistance to strategic voting.
Findings
Minimax system consistently outperforms 18 other electoral systems in simulations.
Minimax-T improves on minimax with a new tie-breaker, enhancing fairness and simplicity.
Simulations show minimax and minimax-T closely match the optimal CMO system in candidate selection.
Abstract
When each voter rates or ranks several candidates for a single office, a strong Condorcet winner (SCW) is one who beats all others in two-way races. Among 21 electoral systems examined, 18 will sometimes make candidate X the winner even if thousands of voters would need to change their votes to make X a SCW while another candidate Y could become a SCW with only one such change. Analysis supports the intuitive conclusion that these 18 systems are unacceptable. The well-known minimax system survives this test. It fails 10 others, but there are good reasons to ignore all 10. Minimax-T adds a new tie-breaker. It surpasses competing systems on a combination of simplicity, transparency, voter privacy, input flexibility, resistance to strategic voting, and rarity of ties. It allows write-ins, machine counting except for write-ins, voters who don't rate or rank every candidate, and tied…
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Taxonomy
TopicsGame Theory and Voting Systems · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Local Government Finance and Decentralization
