Let’s reform the presidential election!
Generated summary Not a transcript. Check it against the video. Not a voting instruction.
- Two-round first-past-the-post is not neutral: tactical voting, similar candidates splitting a camp, a Condorcet winner being knocked out — 2002 is not a one-off accident.
- Arrow’s theorem: if voters only rank candidates, no “reasonable” aggregation rule can satisfy a short list of fairness conditions (except by naming a dictator).
- Majority judgment (Balinski & Laraki) asks voters to grade every candidate on a shared scale (Excellent → Reject). The winner is the one with the best median grade.
- Because it uses a median, it resists strategic exaggeration better than averaging scores — it is not magic if everyone only uses the two extremes.
- Why it sits here: some abstention is not indifference. It is a refusal to compress a preference into one box. Changing the box, or documenting why people refuse it, is not the same politics — and not the same conversation.
Author’s follow-up: post of 21 October 2016 (Arrow, ties, strategic voting). The video loads only if you click.