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CS106B Voting Power

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It's said that "every vote counts," but does every vote count equally? A block voting system such as the U.S. Electoral College makes for an interesting case study in understanding the relative voting power of a system of variably-sized block votes. In a block voting system, each block has an assigned number of votes, and the votes for one block are cast in unison. In the U.S. electoral system, California has a block of 55 votes while New Mexico has 5. Does this mean that California wields 10 times the influence of New Mexico in affecting the election outcome? Let's explore further! Define a coalition to be a group of blocks that all vote for the same candidate. A set of n voting blocks can form 2n distinct coalitions. Some of those coalitions would win the election, others would lose. One measure of a block's importance or voting "power" is the percentage of coalitions in which that block's vote is critical to winning the election. A critical or swing vote is one that changes the elec

CS106B Voting Power Voting Power Assignment written by Julie Zelenski ## 🖐🏿🖐🏼 November 7th: [Democracy Day](https://democracyday.stanford.edu/) 🖐🏻🖐🏽 Register, research, volunteer ➟ [Stanford Votes](https://www.stanfordvotes.org/) _"It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting"_ -- Tom Stoppard, Jumpers {: .alert-success .alert .text-center} --> Block voting systems It's said that "every vote counts," but does every vote count equally? A block voting system such as the U.S. Electoral College makes for an interesting case study in understanding the relative voting power of a s

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