BlogWith the Democratic and Republican national conventions over, the race for the presidency is in its final sprint. Senators Obama and McCain will be spending millions in advertising to get you to vote in smaller numbers than the American Idol competition.
As Tournologists, we look for competition elements wherever we can, and we didn’t have to look hard to see the similarities between the presidential election and a judged tournament, similar to Battle of the Bands.
But the current system for choosing a winner of this tournament leaves much to be desired. For starters:
- Competition is limited to a few battleground states – Originally intended to allow elites to influence the election rather than the filthy masses, the Electoral College has given tremendous influence to a few key locations. If you aren’t in one of the ten or so swing states, you might as well abandon all hope, ye who live in Wyoming and want to see Obama in person.
- The competitors are too similar – While they aren’t quite clones of each other (yet), but the policy differences between Republicans and Democrats are fairly trivial. Political scientists call this phenomenon Duverger’s law, and it occurs with most first-past-the-post electoral systems.
Lots of smart people have thought of ways to refactor the contest. One of our favorites is instant runoff voting, which encourages voters to rank their candidates in preference. If no one candidate obtains a majority of first-ranked votes, the second choice of those who voted for the last place candidate gets aggregated in. We refer to this as a conditional boiloff tournament.
And check out some of the other alternatives to the current electoral system. You might even get some ideas for your next (non-political) tournament.
