The new Pirates movie is fun. The reviews say the plot doesn't make any sense except to serious scholars of the second film, but I didn't even see the second one and I think I got a handle on what went down: there is a lot of backstabbing. They are pirates.
Anyway it turns out the pirates can only go to war if one is declared by the Pirate King. Trouble is, Pirate Kings have to be elected by the nine Pirate Lords, and all of them, being pirates, always vote for themselves. So the votes always deadlock with a nine-way tie, and the pirates can't declare war, even if they are unanimously in favor of it. With an English armada lying in wait outside headed by a magical ship captained by a half-octopus, I'm thinking to myself "what a poorly-designed voting system!" A simple instant runoff system would resolve almost all these contests by the second round. Three cheers for effective governance!
Presently, a vote is called, and the cunning Jack Sparrow gets to play kingmaker by voting last and simply anointing his favorite candidate. She wins 2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-0, gaining unilateral authority to declare war with a whopping 22% mandate. "See!" I scoff inwardly. "The policy space is shaped by the choice of institutions!"
1 comment:
Of course with a real instant runoff voting system the ballots would be secret and people would have more than one choice.
Your example is actually not too far removed from what was going on in the island-nation to the north of Australia called Papua New Guinea -- lots of candidates, and lots of divided votes with winners having 10%. They just went to instant runoff voing for next month's election. A tough place to hold fair elections, given its history of violence (we hope at least better than a pirate ship), but interesting to see.
instantrunoff.com has more info on "IRV."
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