Jon Snow elected Lord Commander
From Game of Thrones (Season 5, Episode 2)
Categories:
Run time: 1:22
Clip Description: Three candidates stand for Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch and the brothers vote. The scene is a compact illustration of Kenneth Arrow’s impossibility theorem: once there are three or more choices, no voting rule can satisfy every reasonable fairness condition at the same time, so different rules can produce different winners from the same set of preferences.
American Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To: This clip is useful in discussing the concept of political deadlock, compromise in candidate choice, and the power of action and communication in elections.
Possible Uses in Classroom: This clip can show the importance of communication throughout the election process.
Discussion Questions
- Arrow’s theorem says that once there are three or more options, no ranked voting rule can satisfy a short list of conditions that all sound obviously desirable at the same time. Most people’s first reaction is “fine, just pick a rule and live with it.” That may be right — but what exactly does the theorem take away from the sentence “the election showed what the group wanted”? Is the will of a group a thing that exists and is being measured badly, or a thing that different rules construct differently?
- With three candidates, plurality can elect someone a clear majority actively opposed; a runoff, a Borda count, and a ranked ballot can each crown a different winner from the very same set of preferences. Maine and Alaska have both run federal elections under ranked-choice voting, and the arguments made for and against adoption are worth reading. If the rule partly determines the winner, who should get to set it, and when — before anyone knows who is running, or by the same majority that will be voting?
- Pick a real election you cared about that had more than two serious candidates. Would you have supported changing the voting rule if the change had cost your side the win? Answer that honestly before you answer the general question, because the order matters: almost everyone’s principled view about voting rules turns out to have been reverse-engineered from a result they wanted.
Assignment
Construct a preference profile by hand: five voters, three candidates, each voter’s full ranking written out, invented but plausible. Rig it so that plurality, instant-runoff, and a Borda count each produce a different winner, and report whether there is a Condorcet winner — a candidate who beats each of the others head to head — or a cycle. One page of arithmetic, then one page arguing which of your winners has the best claim to the word “legitimate.” The difficulty is that you have forfeited the usual answer, “the one with the most votes,” since three different candidates have it depending on how you count. Say also what a voter in your profile could have gained by ranking dishonestly.
For AP Students
AP Comparative Government and Politics
Unit 4: Party and Electoral Systems and Citizen Organizations
Topics: 4.1 Electoral Systems and Rules; 4.2 Objectives of Election Rules
Skill: Concept Application
Big idea: Democratization
Course countries: United Kingdom, Mexico, Russia
Three candidates, a deadlocked vote, and an outcome settled by a rule about what happens in a tie rather than by who had the most support in the room. Students arrive believing that elections measure preferences. This clip shows the rule doing at least as much work as the voters do, which is the premise the whole unit rests on.
Discussion questions
- With three candidates and no majority, different rules produce different winners. Name two ways of resolving it, and say who each method favors.
- The United Kingdom elects members of Parliament by first past the post: whoever gets the most votes in a district wins, whether or not that is a majority. Explain one consequence of that rule for small parties.
- Election rules are written by whoever holds power at the time. Explain why you should expect rules to favor their authors, and name one way that can backfire on them.
Short activity
Same ballots, three rules (15 minutes). Give the class a small set of voter preference rankings over three candidates. Count the result three ways: straight plurality, then a runoff between the top two, then by eliminating the last-place candidate and recounting. The winner changes. Then one sentence from each student on which rule is fairest, and one more on what their answer reveals about what they think an election is for. The second sentence is the harder one and the one worth collecting.
Clip hosted on Critical Commons.