I voted today. We have a primary election, in which one party has basically one candidate for the highest office while the other party has many candidates. I am not only a member of a local community and a state, but I am also a member of a nation. The smallest collective I am a member of is a two-person marriage.
I wrote my dissertation for my doctorate about using a simulation of typical issues that arise for a school principal. The simulation was envisioned as a pencil and paper exercise that described a problem and there were multiple responses the "principal" could choose from. While reading about choice, social choice theory and the mathematics involved in selecting a course of action from given alternatives, I learned about Arrow's impossibility theorem.
One of many sources about Arrow's work is this section of Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem
I have a strong feeling that just about all the readers of this blog will be uninterested in the fine print and the mathematical and formal logic shown and explained in the article. It has been 50 years since I was wading through some of it and I am not interested myself.
However, just understanding that the logic of elections and of choice is such that voting systems must always leave something to be desired. Even in a little two person group such as a marriage, it doesn't take much experience before one or both members of the little country of that marriage find that the direction it is moving is not what is desired by at least one member of the electorate.
Arrow's work focuses on situations where there are more than two choices. I suspect that if we had enough patience to hold an election between just the candidate with the last name that comes first in the alphabet and the candidate with the second name alphabetically and then ran the winner against the third name, and so ran through them all, we might satisfy mathematical principles. Of course, many of us are too old to last through such a voting regime and most of us would throw up our hands in disgust.
Even "within" a single person, such as me, desires and plans can contradict. I desire to vote for the most beautiful candidate and the smartest candidate but find that looks and brains are found in different people. I might want action A only to decide after getting it, that I don't want it. I am not enamored of the politicians, but I respect the impossibility of their task, not even considering the unknown, unprecedented and perplexing events that occur during their period of responsibility.
