Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-2002
Department
Political Science
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to present a sample from the panoply of formal theories on voting and elections to Statistical Science readers who have had limited exposure to such work. These abstract ideas provide a framework for understanding the context of the empirical articles that follow in this volume. The primary focus of this theoretical literature is on the use of mathematical formalism to describe electoral systems and outcomes by modeling both voting rules and human behavior. As with empirical models, these constructs are never perfect descriptors of reality, but instead form the basis for understanding fundamental characteristics of the studied system. Our focus is on providing a general, but not overly simplified, review of these theories with practical examples. We end the article with a thought experiment that applies different vote aggregation schemes to the 2000 presidential election count in Florida, and we find that alternative methods provide different results.
Original Publication Information
This article was published in Statistical Science, volume 17, issue 4, in 2002.
ThinkIR Citation
Gill, Jeff and Gainous, Jason, "Why does voting get so complicated? : a review of theories for analyzing democratic participation." (2002). Faculty and Staff Scholarship. 40.
https://ir.library.louisville.edu/faculty/40
ORCID
0000-0002-3104-2313
