The Borda Count and its real-world alternatives: Comparing scoring rules in Nauru and Slovenia

This article examines strategic elements of voter behaviour in parliamentary elections where the voting method is a scoring rule other than plurality: the Borda Count, which is used for the election of ethnic minorities in Slovenia, and the Dowdall rule, which is used in the Pacific island state of Nauru in multi-seat districts. After first examining the general properties of scoring rules, and generating theoretical differences between the two rules, we look at empirical evidence from Nauru and Slovenia. This casts a doubt on predictions based simply on a voting rule's mathematical properties and on the accuracy of assumptions of sincere rank ordering.