Will the Election Be Fair?

I don't expect the American people to simply bend to my will like sheep. But is it too much to ask that the election be conducted in a fair way, with a voting process that allows differences of opinion to be expressed and weighed appropriately?

Apparently so.

According to Kenneth Arrow, a 1972 Nobel Prize-winning economist, it is mathematically impossible to construct a voting system by which five basic standards of "fairness" are satisfied. The standards:

-- Non-dictatorship. The system should allow for multiple opinions, not simply reflecting the opinion of one voter.

-- Universality. The election should result in a single, unique ordering of the choices every time the individual choices are expressed the same way.

-- Independence. Two choices should always finish in the same order no matter what other choices are offered. (Think Ross Perot '92 or Ralph Nader '00.)

-- Positive Association. Getting a higher ranking from an individual voter should always result in a higher overall ranking. (No "tactical voting.")

-- Sovereignty. Every candidate on the ballot should be able to finish in any possible order.

According to Arrow's Theorem, if there are at least two voters, and each voter has at least three choices, at least one standard of "fairness" will be violated. Whether it's the Electoral College, the BCS, the NCAA tournament selection process, or simply drawing names out of a hat, there will always be something to criticize.

So could our election system be better-run? Almost certainly. But will it ever be "fair?" Not in a million years.