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In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In 1972 she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, breaking another political barrier.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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 Mathematics portal |
Coombs' method is a ranked voting system. Like instant-runoff (IRV-RCV), Coombs' method is a sequential-loser method, where the last-place finisher according to one method is eliminated in each round. However, unlike in instant-runoff, each round has electors voting against their least-favorite candidate; the candidate ranked last by the most voters is eliminated.[1]
The method fails several voting system criteria, including Condorcet's majority criterion, monotonicity, participation, and clone-independence.[2][3] However, it does satisfy Black's single-peaked median voter criterion.[1]: prop. 2
The method was popularized by Clyde Coombs.[1] It was described by Edward J. Nanson as the "Venetian method"[4] (which should not be confused with the Republic of Venice's use of score voting in elections for the Doge).
Each voter rank-orders all of the candidates on their ballot. If a candidate is ranked first by a majority of voters, that candidate wins. Otherwise, the candidate ranked last by the largest number (plurality) of voters is eliminated, making each individual round equivalent to anti-plurality voting. Conversely, under instant-runoff voting, the candidate ranked first (among non-eliminated candidates) by the fewest voters is eliminated.
In some sources, the elimination proceeds regardless of whether any candidate is ranked first by a majority of voters, and the last candidate to be eliminated is the winner.[5] This variant of the method can result in a different winner than the former one (unlike in instant-runoff voting, where checking to see if any candidate is ranked first by a majority of voters is only a shortcut that does not affect the outcome).
| 42% of voters | 26% of voters | 15% of voters | 17% of voters |
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Suppose Tennessee is holding an election on the location of its capital. The population is split between four cities, and all the voters want the capital to be as close to them as possible. The options are:
Assuming all of the voters vote sincerely (strategic voting is discussed below), the results would be as follows, by percentage:
| City | Round 1 | Round 2 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First | Last | First | Last | |
| Memphis | 42 | 58 | ||
| Nashville | 26 | 0 | ||
| Chattanooga | 15 | 0 | 15 | |
| Knoxville | 17 | 42 | 17 | |
The voting rounds used in the reality television program Survivor could be considered a variation of Coombs' method but with sequential voting rounds. Everyone votes for one candidate they support for elimination each round, and the candidate with a plurality of that vote is eliminated. A strategy difference is that sequential rounds of voting mean the elimination choice is fixed in a ranked ballot Coombs' method until that candidate is eliminated.
Like anti-plurality voting, Coombs' rule is extremely vulnerable to strategic voting. As a result, it is more often used as an example of a pathological voting rule than a serious proposal.[6] The equilibrium position for Coombs' method is extremely sensitive to incomplete ballots and strategic nomination because the vast majority of voters' effects on the election come from how they fill out the bottom of their ballots.[6] As a result, voters have a strong incentive to rate the strongest candidates last to defeat them in earlier rounds.[7]
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Coombs' method is a ranked voting system. Like instant-runoff (IRV-RCV), Coombs' method is a sequential-loser method, where the last-place finisher according to one method is eliminated in each round. However, unlike in instant-runoff, each round has electors voting against their least-favorite candidate; the candidate ranked last by the most voters is eliminated. The method fails several voting system criteria, including Condorcet's majority criterion, monotonicity, participation, and clone-independence. However, it does satisfy Black's single-peaked median voter criterion.
Clyde Hamilton Coombs (July 22, 1912 – February 4, 1988) was an American psychologist specializing in the field of mathematical psychology. He devised a voting system, that was hence named Coombs' method.
The contingent vote electoral system elects a single representative through a two-stage process, in which the winner receives a majority of votes. It uses ranked voting. The voter ranks candidates in order of preference, and when the votes are first counted, only first preferences are counted. If no candidate has a majority (more than half) of the votes cast, then all but the two leading candidates are eliminated and the votes that had been received by the eliminated candidates are transferred to whichever of the two remaining candidates are marked as the next effective preference. The contingent vote can be considered a compressed or "instant" form of the two-round system (runoff system), in which the second "round" is conducted without the need for voters to go to the polls a second time. The contingent vote election system also is similar to other ranked-vote systems. Unlike the contingent vote, other ranked-vote systems – such as single transferable voting (STV), instant-runoff voting (IRV), Coombs' method, and Baldwin's method – allow for many rounds of counting, often eliminating only one candidate, the weakest, each round. IRV is a single-winner election system that is similar to contingent voting except, unlike contingent voting, IRV may elect a candidate other than one of the two who led in the first count.
A first-preference is a voter's most-preferred candidate. In certain ranked systems such as first preference plurality, ranked-choice voting (RCV), and the single transferable vote, first preferences for a candidate are considered most important and prioritized heavily. This incentivizes pandering to the political base or "core support" as a result of the center squeeze effect. Methods like Condorcet voting, rated voting, and the Borda count do not exhibit such effects. Methods like anti-plurality voting and Coombs' method have the opposite effect, being dominated by a voter's bottom rankings and so tending to elect the "least offensive" candidates. First-preference votes are used by psephologists and the print and broadcast media to broadly describe the state of the parties at elections and the swing between elections. The term is much-used in Australian politics, where ranked voting has been universal at federal, state, and local levels since the 1920s.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Joe Louis.
