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Address and contacts

Rudolf Fara or Moshé Machover

Voting Power and Procedures (VPP)
London School of Economics
CPNSS, Lakatos Building
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7955 6819
Fax: +44 (0)20 7955 6869
Email: vpp@lse.ac.uk|

E-Mailing list

If you'd like to be on our emailing list to receive information about our seminars, lectures, publications, etc please email your name (including title), work/study affiliation and email address to: vpp@lse.ac.uk|

Voting Power & Procedures (VPP)

deBorda, Penrose, Condorcet

VPP is the leading international centre for research in the theory, methodology and practice of voting power and its applications. From the design of national and international governmental voting systems to corporate mergers and acquisitions strategies understanding voting power is the key to achieving successful empowerment and legitimate representative governance. VPP's current Voting Power in Practice research project is sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust.



First Past the Post loses in
poll of voting experts

Voting| for a detailed analysis of the
poll held to select 'the best voting
procedure'. 

VPP Co-Directors Rudolf Fara, Dennis Leech and Moshe Machover, who voted in the poll, said that First Past the Post
(FPTP) - also known as Plurality Voting - was rejected unanimously most likely because it was the worst of any known system to elect fairly a single winner from three or more candidates. The most serious problem, they said, is that FPTP often elects the candidate least preferred by an absolute majority of voters.
 
The poll was held at VPP's Assessing Alternative Voting Procedures Workshop which focused on voting systems for single member constituencies such as the single member district system used in the UK for elections to the House of Commons.
 
Voting in the poll was by secret ballot using Approval Voting. Each voter chose from a list of 18 nominated voting procedures as many as she/he approved of. From a possible maximum of 22 votes, FPTP received no votes. Approval Voting won the contest with 15 votes. The Alternative Vote (AV) took second place with 10 votes.
 
And the loser is... Plurality Voting will be included in the forthcoming book of the VPP workshop proceedings to be published by Springer.
 
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Events

Voting Power in Practice Symposium 2011

Voting Power in Social/Political Institutions:
Typology, Measurement, Applications


London School of Economics
20 - 22 March
Sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust