Part of the Politics and Economics series |
Electoral systems |
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A major branch of social choice theory is devoted to the comparison of electoral systems, otherwise known as social choice functions. Viewed from the perspective of political science, electoral systems are rules for conducting elections and determining winners from the ballots cast. From the perspective of economics, mathematics, and philosophy, a social choice function is a mathematical function that determines how a society should make choices, given a collection of individual preferences.
This article discusses the methods and results of comparing different systems. There are two broad ways to compare voting systems: