EXAMPLE 2 Paradoxical Behavior Under the Democratic Delegate Selection Rules

Suppose that the Democratic Delegate Selection Rules are used to allocate five delegates in a district for vote totals given in Table 12.3. The application of the rules results in Jones, Umberto, and Viktor receiving 4, 1, and 0 delegates, respectively. If the election official forgets to drop Viktor for receiving less than 15% of the vote and instead uses Steps 3 to 5 on the original/non-adjusted data, then the outcome changes, as given in Table 12.4: Jones now receives 3 delegates and Umberto receives 2. Viktor still fails to receive a single delegate. But how the five delegates are split between Jones and Umberto changes depends on whether or not Viktor’s votes are discarded or not! By eliminating Viktor from consideration by the 15% rule, Umberto’s delegate count decreases from 2 to 1.