HW 30: Citizen Symposium

On Tuesday, November 6 I attended a session at the Keene State College Citizenship Symposium, called "Voting Theory and the Questions of Fairness", which was presented by a mathematics professor at KSC, Vincent Ferlini. He spoke of the different kinds of voting methods, presenting them through a power point, with vivid description and visuals. These voting methods that best describe the will of the people, were for the most part free of flaws regarding fairness and unfairness, and have tend to work well. These different methods included the Plurality Method, the Jean-Charles de Borda, Plurality with Elimanation Method (also known as Instant Runoff Voting) and Method of Pairwise Comparisons. The different methods produced different results and each method exhibits characteristics associated with the fairness and unfairness of a voting method. Each slide presented a model diagram of the voting method described by the number of voters as well as the 1rst, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th choices that were elected. One thing I found interesting was when Vincent Ferlini spoke of the Keene Mayoral Election. He described how there are two rounds of voting, which can create problems since it is expensive and time consuming, yet the outcome may be more prominent. In the first round each voter votes for his or her first choice of mayor, yet no candidate wins in this round. In the second and last round, the top two finishers in the first round compete in the second round to finalize the winner. In one of Vincent Ferlini's first slides he explained a term, "ostraka", which was also gone over again in the end of the session. “A voter would use a broken pot called an ostraka to record a vote, which is the root of the modern world ostracize" (Vincent Ferlini). The setting of the session seemed like a rather small audience for such a large auditorium, and he made a few connections to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. He wrapped up the session on voting theories and the questions of fairness by encouraging everyone to vote and to not assume that these new methods are stupid, but instead to be open to new things.