EPT- Pizza
- Hamburgers
- Spareribs
- Sishkebab
- Taco
- Vegetarian sandwiches with fresh lettuce
- Half eaten Teamliquid shirt
Aaand the votes are in:
- Pizza: 1
- Hamburgers: 2
- Sparerribs: 2
- Sishekebab 1
- Taco: 1
- Vegetarian Sandwiches with fresh lettuce: 3
- Half eaten teamliquid shirt: 0 (aww man)
Well, done deal, the Vegetarian sandwiches win.
Now, what the hell was wrong with this? It should be obvious. I selected 5 options with meat/unhealthy things and one healthy/vegetarian thing and one thing which seemingly makes you burp a lot. I actually on purpose selected 5 things which are similar to the rest so that they would eat into each other's votes to ensure that the Vegeterian sandwiches would win. Chances are that if I gave the option between pizza and vegetarian sandwiches it would be 7 to 3 and the pizza would win.
The system used to pick above is called plurality-takes-all or PTA for short. The name is apt, it's simple, whichever has the plurality of votes takes it all. This system is incredibly flawed for the example I gave above. If you have 5 options which are similar to each other and one that is significantly different from the rest. The similar ones will eat into each other's votes, thereby ensuring that the one which is unique will almost always win.
This is by the way how the United States' elects their leaders...
Ever wondered why the US is a de facto 2 party state? Well, because of this. It's a district-based PTA system. A smaller third party doesn't get 'a small part' of the eventual elective power, it gets. nothing, zit, nada. If you have 20% in all the districts, you get nothing in the end. You actually need to win districts, and with how much you win seldom matters. In most cases districts can choose how to allocate the electorial power they have but most choose to allocate it all to the winner who may have won by only 1%. Obviously this leads to the fact that smaller parties have no shot of even capturing any public attention, there's no way to break out of the status-quo with a smaller party. You will simply get no electoral power even if you get a respectable 20% of the votes on your first try. The big two with about 40% each will still take it all.
It's even worse, trying to break the status-quo with a new party is suicide. Ever heard of the Ralph Nader effect? The "other reason" why Al Gore lost the election except Judicial Activism supposedly? Nader ran as third candidate and was slightly closer to Gore than to Bush. He stole away votes from Gore, but not from Bush. And that's what happens if you try to break the status quo. You will always be a bit more like one of the two, and you will primarily steal votes away from the lessser evil, ensuring that the greater evil will win. So it won't only never work to break the status quo, trying it goes against your interests, if you're half successful you just ensured the victory of your greater enemy.
A lot of countries in the world use a different system, non distrcited, non tiered proportional representation. 10% of the votes means 10% of the seats in parliament, God it's easy. A majority of all parties has to be reached for any decision to go through. In NL we have a total of 12 parties currently in parliament, each of which has overlapping policies with others. We have the Christian right, the Christian left, the christian far right, the socialists, the democrats, the greens, the animal party, the labour party, the pseudo-fascist anti Islaam "freedom" party, the libertarian party. These can't really be placed on a simple axis. The Greens agree a lot with the libertarians about personal freedom, but the greens again agree with the socialists and the Christian left about the welfare state. The libertarians agree with the Christian right and the fascists about the free market but they don't see eye to eye as much on personal liberties and freedom of the press with them and so it goes ona nd on. It gives you a bit more to choose from.
...and this is how the TLMC's and many things in StarCraft work
Okay, so one thing we all noted that was different about the Red Bull TLMC and the TLMC before it is that at the Red Bull TLMC, despite everyone saying it wouldn't happen, a new and innovative map actually won, and at the TMLC 2 it didn't and the most standard map won. Gee, why would that be?
The obvious reason is of course because TMLC2's finalists included 7 maps which were new and innovative and only 3 standard maps. Which were the top 3 I might add. Whereas the red bull TLMC included in its finalists mostly standard maps, some maps having a couple of gimmicks and then Polaris Rhapsody which had one huge gimmick that was never done before and was completely out there. It won because all the other maps were eating into each other's votes. If you wanted a non standard map, you had no choice but Polars Rhapsody. It's why Lordi won the Eurovision Song Contest back in the day. Be different enough from all the other choices in a PTA election and you are sure to win.
This also gives a very interesting power to completely cheat the system as the people who elect the finalists. I'm not saying they did, but I'm saying they could have, who knows? Maybe they realized it and decide to put one weird map and 9 pretty normal maps into the finals to ensure that the weird map would win. Devious and calculated, I like it. Entirely antidemoctratic but if they did that one has to respect the foresight.
So how do we solve it?
As it stands, there are various systems that have been developed to solve this obvious glitch in PTA. The simplest one is not letting people pick one, but tell them to rank them from highest to lowest. You will then see that as much as people often voted Polaris as their pick, a lot of people will also rank them the lowest. You will simply if there are 10 choices award 10 points for the highest rank and 1 for the lowest, add them at the end and boom you have your score. It's super simple and fairly effective.
