Some literature on ranked choice voting

Dropping these here as a convenient place to keep them.

The issue of ranked choice voting versus first-past-the-post voting is a hot one in Canada right now -- its profile has been raised by former prime minister Justin Trudeau, who appears remorseful about not having done anything to move the country in the ranked direction. Here is some literature on the controversy.

Martin Horak (2021)

Adopting Ranked-Choice Voting in London, Ontario.

Michael Cowan (2025), “Ranking Bad: The Chemistry of Ranked‑Choice Voting.” ResPublica: Undergraduate Journal of Political Science.

Rivard & Lockhart (2022), “Government Preferences, Vote Choice and Strategic Voting in Canada.” Canadian Journal of Political Science.

Examines how voters use expectations about government formation to guide their choices.
Highly relevant because strategic voting is one of the main behaviors RCV aims to reduce.

Donovan, Todd, Caroline Tolbert & Kellen Gracey (2019). “Self‑Reported Understanding of Ranked‑Choice Voting.” Social Science Quarterly.

Finds that voters quickly learn RCV and report high satisfaction with the system.
Supports the argument that Canadians could adopt RCV without major voter confusion.

Christian List & Marcus Pivato (2014). “Emergent Democracy.” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 42(3), 207–236.

Explores how relaxing Arrow‑type assumptions can allow for democratic aggregation that avoids impossibility results.
Offers one of the most sophisticated “escape routes” from Arrow in contemporary political theory.

Mass Polarization in Canada: What’s Causing It? Why Should We Care? — Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy

Comments

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...

The Lyrics of "Live Like You Were Dying"

Back in 2004 Tim McGraw recorded the song "Live Like You were Dying." As a way of marking the one-decade anniversary of this song, I'd like to admit that a couple of the lines have confused me for years. I could use your help understanding them. In the first couple of verses, the song seems easy to follow. Two men are talking, and one tells the other about his diagnosis. The doctors have (recently? or a long time ago and mistakenly? that isn't clear) given him the news that he would die soon. "I spent most of the next days/Looking at the X-rays." Then we get a couple of lines about a man crossing items off of his bucket list. "I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing, I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu." Then the speaker -- presumably still the old man -- shifts to the more characterological consequences of the news. As he was doing those things, he found he was loving deeper and speaking sweeter, and givin...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog