Voting Systems for Social Choice

Abstract

The decision to take a vote is no doubt important, but so are the ques- tions related to the way in which the vote is taken. In other words, the voting procedure to be applied plays an important role as well. In fact, voting rules are as important determinants of the voting outcomes as the individual opinions expressed in voting. An extreme example is one where – for a fixed set of expressed opinions of the voters – the outcome can be any one of the available alternatives depending on the procedure applied.