Verdicts, elections, and counterterrorism: When teams take unofficial votes

Abstract

When groups make decisions, they often take preliminary, unofficial votes (straw polls) to see which option the members initially prefer. Does their method of voting matter? We ran an experiment in which 93 groups simulated counterterrorism pursuit teams and had to determine which of three suspects represented the greatest threat. Groups that used “multi-voting” in their unofficial votes—whereby members had multiple votes to distribute across options—were 50% more likely to choose the correct suspect than groups that used plurality or ranked-choice voting. This was because the members of the multi-voting groups were more likely to identify the correct suspect even before their team discussion. In this article, we look at various voting methods used for presidential elections, Hugo Award winners, and American Idol contestants. We show how different voting methods can lead to entirely different results and provide initial evidence that multi-voting may be a superior method for group decision-making.