ABSTRACT
Expanding on the definition in Chapter 2, a procedure for making collective decisions by voting (a “voting procedure”) is composed of the following five elements: Setting the Agenda Some agreed process is used to identify a set of options for consideration. When voting is used to fill an office, the options are the nominated candidates. In other circumstances the options are alternative courses of action. The word “options” will be used to denote the possibilities among which a voting process selects, whether the options are candidates or more general courses of action. Eliciting Evaluations Each member of the collectivity provides evaluative information with respect to the options, in some prescribed form. In the type of voting that is most commonly used, each voter specifies the single option for which he or she votes. The information required of each voter could be a ranking of the options or a set of scores for the options, or it could take yet other forms. The evaluative information, whatever form it may take, will be referred to hereafter as a “vote.” Processing the Evaluations The votes are processed in a way that can be described by a mathematical function. A function used for this purpose will be called a “vote-processing rule.” The voteprocessing rule yields scores for the options or a ranking of the options or in some other way identifies one of the options (or more if the result is “a tie”) as the winner(s) of the election.
