Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 6, 2006

A ballot for a simple plurality voting system

A voting system is a process that allows a group of people to express their desires about a number of options, and selects one or more of those options as the winner based on the votes. Voting is best known for its use in democratic elections, in which case the options are candidates for public office, and the preferences of the citizens determine who gets to hold those offices. Specifically, a voting system is a well-defined method (an algorithm) that determines a winning result given a set of votes. The process must be formally defined to be considered a voting system; the rules that specify how the votes will be counted must be known beforehand. This can be contrasted with consensus decision making, another process for selecting an option based on people's preferences which, unlike a voting system, does not specify a precise way to determine the winning option. Most voting systems are based on the concept of majority rule, or the principle that a group of more than half of the voters should be able to get the outcome they want. Given the simplicity of majority rule, those who are unfamiliar with voting theory are often surprised that such a variety of voting systems exists.

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