Voting Methods and Procedures - Case Study Example

However, an alternative within the plurality procedures is called a runoff election where the top two candidates would have a separate election after the initial plurality vote. In this case, it is likely that the top two candidates would be the liberal and conservative candidates winning 41% and 39%, respectively. These candidates would face off in a runoff election. If the results are at all similar to the support numbers in the polls for the 1992 election with Clinton, Bush, and Perot, it may be likely that the 20% of the voters who chose our moderate candidate in this example would favor the conservative candidate at 39% and this candidate would become the winner.

If the majority of the 20% would go in favor of the liberal at 41% then the candidate would likely win the majority vote and win in a landslide.The remaining two types of voting processes are called a preference ballot and a Borda count. These two processes require the voter to rank each candidate in the election in the order they like the candidates the best. The votes are counted and each candidate receives the number of votes they won, 3 would stand for the top choice, 2 for the middle choice, and 1 for the least choice in our three-person example.

The goal of the preference ballot or Borda count is to find the majority winner or the person with more than 50% of the total votes. If this does not occur, then in places such as Australia, a sequential runoff is performed where the weakest candidate’s votes are given to the #2 choice on each voter’s ballot. This process is more difficult to predict. If more people vote that our moderate candidate at 20% is their second choice, it will cause more total votes to be given to that candidate and result in he or she is the winner.