Voting, Fairness, and Political Representation
W e want our political system to represent the voters and treat them fairly. At the simplest procedural level, this means givinga vote to all citizens and deciding elections based on majority or plurality rule. In practice, however, we are not all represented equally by the government, and as longas there is political disagreement there willbe some dissatisfaction. It would be appealing to have a mathematical definition of the amount that citizens are "represented." Unfortunately, different measures of representation can clash with each other, as we discuss with examples from national elections in the United States.