How Should We Elect Our Leaders?

Abstract

How should we choose the leader of our country — say, the president or prime minister? The easy answer is to hold an election. But there are many possible election methods — in other words, there are many methods for determining the winner on the basis of citizens’ votes. Indeed, citizens in both the United States and France, for example, vote for their presidents, but the two countries determine the winning candidate very differently.¹ Thus we need a way to compare the various methods and identify the best ones.