Loading [MathJax]/jax/output/HTML-CSS/jax.js
Skip to main content
Library homepage
 

Text Color

Text Size

 

Margin Size

 

Font Type

Enable Dyslexic Font
Mathematics LibreTexts

2.2: Preference Schedules

( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\)

To begin, we’re going to want more information than a traditional ballot normally provides. A traditional ballot usually asks you to pick your favorite from a list of choices. This ballot fails to provide any information on how a voter would rank the alternatives if their first choice was unsuccessful.

Preference ballot

A preference ballot is a ballot in which the voter ranks the choices in order of preference.

Example 1

A vacation club is trying to decide which destination to visit this year: Hawaii (H), Orlando (O), or Anaheim (A). Their votes are shown below:

 Bob  Ann  Marv  Alice  Eve  Omar  Lupe  Dave  Tish  Jim 1st  choice AAOHAOHOHA2nd choice OHHAHHAHAH3rd choice HOAOOAOAOO

Solution

These individual ballots are typically combined into one preference schedule, which shows the number of voters in the top row that voted for each option:

13331st  choice AAOH2nd  choice OHHA3rd  choice HOAO

Notice that by totaling the vote counts across the top of the preference schedule we can recover the total number of votes cast: 1+3+3+3=10 total votes.


This page titled 2.2: Preference Schedules is shared under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by David Lippman (The OpenTextBookStore) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.

Support Center

How can we help?