Voting is at the heart of every democracy. When voters make their crosses, some have known for a long time where they will make their mark. Others are undecided until the last minute. They like the ideas of several candidates or prefer the outsider and fear that their vote will not be represented in the end due to certain electoral hurdles.
The fact that you have to choose a single party and a single candidate also has another effect: those who are loudest and polarise opinion the most often have an advantage. Nobel Prize winner Eric Maskin from Harvard University has shown in his research that there are better ways to take everyone's vote into account fairly – and with mathematics at that. At the Schumpeter Lectures at the University of Graz, he explained his "Theory of Voting".
Favoriten
And what exactly does that look like? "Instead of a cross, voters can put their favourites in a ranking. They vote for their favourite candidate, then their second choice and so on," explains Maskin. If their personal number one doesn't get enough votes, there is still a second choice that reflects the voter's opinion. This process is repeated until one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the votes. "This way, every vote counts," says Maskin, describing the advantage of the ranking.
Although the Schumpeter lectures focused heavily on electoral mathematics, Maskin's "Theory of Voting" is more than just theory. In the US state of Alaska, which has a republican constitution, voters were not satisfied with the results. Due to the winner-takes-all logic, candidates who were not popular with the majority of the population won. A citizens' initiative then campaigned to introduce a ranking system. It started in 2022 and was so successful that citizens voted to keep it in a 2024 referendum.
The will of the voters
"This system reflects the will of the voters much better," explains Maskin. Most people are politically centrist. Only a small minority are extremely left or right. Nevertheless, extremist candidates often do well in current voting systems. One example is the 2014 Republican primaries. Donald Trump won despite the majority voting for other candidates because the votes were split among many opponents. "Trump never got more than half of the votes in the 2014 primaries," explains the Nobel Prize winner. "If rankings had existed back then, Trump would probably not have become president at all."
But politicians have little interest in changing existing electoral law because they benefit from it, says Maskin. Change must come from the population – as it did in Alaska. Maskin hopes that this example will set a precedent and that more and more states in the US will change their electoral systems.
"Nevertheless, the fact remains that the US currently has a president who is endangering democracy," the Harvard professor points out. But he takes a pragmatic view. “America is strong enough to survive Trump. And the same applies to the EU.” Considering the US government's threatening gestures with tariffs, Maskin advises greater independence. "Europe must stand on its own two feet. There are other trade partners besides the US." A stronger commitment on the part of politics and business would pay off now. “The more independent the EU becomes from the US, the less it can be affected by such threats,” the Nobel Prize winner in economics concludes.
If you are interested in the economic and political foundations of coexistence, you can study Economics at the University of Graz!