Episode Five - Steven Brams

Thoughts and Feels

This year, the whole world watches as Americans will choose a new president. In order to do so, the political preferences of millions of Americans must be aggregated in order to decide a single winner, the next President. This is known as a social choice and there are many ways to accomplish the task. However, many of these ways are dramatically flawed, including the ones that are the most widespread. For example, plurality voting in a multi-candidate election may choose a minority candidate such as Donald Trump in the recent Republican primary election who is not widely approved of by many voters in the election. My guest today is Steven Brams, Professor of Politics at New York University. Prof. Brams is credited with the discovery of an alternative form of making a social choice known as Approval Voting.

Learn More:

• Steven Brams The Merits of Approval Voting
• Steven Brams Lessons from Brexit: Offer More Voting Options
• Joseph T. Ornstein and Robert Z. Norman Frequency of monotonicity failure under Instant Runoff Voting: estimates based on a spatial model of elections
• Steven Brams Mathematics and Democracy: Designing Better Voting and Fair-Division Procedures