Comparison of electoral systems

Electoral systems can be compared by different means. These comparisons can focus on different aspects: on suffrage or rules for voter eligibility; on candidate eligibility and the rules governing political parties; on the way elections are scheduled, sequenced, and combined; or on the rules for determining the winner within a given election (also called the "election rule" or "voting method").

Attitudes towards systems are highly influenced by the systems' impact on groups that one supports or opposes, which can make the objective comparison of electoral systems difficult. There are several ways to address this problem. For example, criteria can be defined mathematically, such that any voting method either passes or fails. This gives perfectly objective results, but their practical relevance is still arguable. Another approach is to define ideal criteria that no voting method passes perfectly, and then see how often or how close to passing various methods are over a large sample of simulated elections. This gives results which are practically relevant, but the method of generating the sample of simulated elections can still be arguably biased. A final approach is to create imprecisely defined criteria, and then assign a neutral body to evaluate each method according to these criteria. This approach can look at aspects of voting methods which the other two approaches miss, but both the definitions of these criteria and the evaluations of the methods are still inevitably subjective.

To compare methods fairly and independently of political ideologies, voting theorists use voting method criteria, which define potentially desirable properties of voting methods mathematically.

Using criteria to compare methods does not make the comparison completely objective. For example, it is relatively easy to devise a criterion that is met by one's preferred voting method, and by very few other methods. Doing this, one can then construct a biased argument for the criterion, instead of arguing directly for the method. There is no ultimate authority on which criteria should be considered.

The following criteria, which apply to single-winner voting methods, are considered to be desirable by many voting theorists:

These are criteria that state that, if the set of ballots is a certain way, a certain candidate must or must not win.

These are criteria that state that, if a certain candidate wins in one circumstance, the same candidate must (or must not) win in a related circumstance.

These are criteria which relate to the process of counting votes and determining a winner.

These are criteria that relate to a voter's incentive to use certain forms of strategy. They could also be considered as relative result criteria; however, unlike the criteria in that section, these criteria are directly relevant to voters; the fact that a method passes these criteria can simplify the process of figuring out one's optimal strategic vote.

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