key: 2022-sidestepping-arrow-impossibility
type: unpublished
title: "Overcoming Arrow's impossibility: Honeybee sidestep"
authors:
  - Ben Smyth
year: 2022
description: >-
  'Equality—impossible,' cry social choice theorists. This note reviews seminal results by Borda,
  Condorcet, Arrow. Walks through the impossibility theorem, teaches ranked voting unfair. Concludes
  by sidestepping impossibility, with inspiration from honeybees.
keywords: social choice theory, fairness, voting, Borda election system, electronic voting, e-voting
abstract: >-
  "Equality—impossible," cry social choice theorists. First-past-the-post plagued by vote splitting.
  Borda dismissing, championing ranked voting. "Bound to lead to error," muses Condorcet. Arrow
  discovering far more sinister defects. This note reviews their seminal results. Walks through
  Arrow's impossibility theorem—teaching ranked voting is fallible. And concludes with Smith
  sidestepping Arrow, guided by dancing honeybees, proclaiming range/score voting to be "a larger
  improvement in 'democracy' than the entire invention of democracy."
links:
  - file: Smyth22-sidestepping-arrow-impossibility.pdf
    text: Draft