Plurality Page 4

Example of the Pizza Ballot

Here's an example:


A	S	P	P
S	P	S	M
M	M	M	S
P	A	A	A

Remember, the first column means that 7 people ranked the toppings in the order A, S, M, P. This works similarly for the other columns.

How can we use the above table of individual preferences to decide which topping should go on which pizza?

The method most people are familiar with is the one used in most political elections such as for senator or governor. (We can't include the presidential election because of the strange idiosyncrasies of the electoral college method.) In this method, called the plurality method, the candidate with the most first place votes wins.

In our example, the number of first place votes would be

A:	7 votes
S:	5 votes
P:	6 votes
M:	0 votes

Since the third and fourth columns both list P as the number one choice, P gets 4 + 2 = 6 votes.

A few more thoughts on plurality ...