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Strategic Voting and Majority Rule
We exhibit a voting method for elections that is resistant to strategic voting and elects the majority winner (i.e., the Condorcet winner) when voters’ preferences over candidates are single-peaked, meaning that a voter prefers candidates closer to her in ideology to those further away. Moreover, we show that this system is essentially the unique strategy-resistant method among all voting systems satisfying anonymity (equal treatment of voters) and neutrality (equal treatment of candidates) for single-peaked preferences.
Preferences in actual political elections do not usually adhere strictly to single-peakedness. Nevertheless, we demonstrate that in every state and federal ranked-choice election held in the U.S. to date preferences satisfy a weak form of single-peakedness sufficient to ensure that a slight modification of our voting method remains strategic-resistant.
Thus, we commend this voting system as an especially attractive proposal for voting reform in the United States
Date:
27 February 2026, 16:00
Venue:
Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details:
Lecture Theatre
Speaker:
Eric Maskin (Harvard University)
Organising department:
Department of Economics
Part of:
Department of Economics Seminar
Booking required?:
Required
Booking url:
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/department-of-economics-university-of-oxford/t-glarezd
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Edward Valenzano
