HW 30: Citizenship Symposium: Is Voting Always Fair?

The citizenship symposium as Keene State College is an all week affair that includes many informational lectures. So far, I have only attended one symposium. The title of this session was “Voting Theory and the Questions of Fairness”. The name of the speaker was Vincent Ferlini. Ferlini is the associate professor of mathematics at Keene State College. The talk of the lecture over all was about voting, and the different methods of voting, and which types were the best to use in certain situations. Also, the main topic was about fair voting, and the question of fairness. One of the main topics was about sample voting methods, discussion of fairness, and Kenneth Arrow’s mathematical theorem which all boils down to different methods which produce different results. Each method exhibits characteristics associated with the fairness and unfairness of voting methods. The Central question is: When it comes to the voting system what is fair? And what is the clear, precise definition of what fair means.
There were a couple interesting things I learned during this symposium. One interesting thing I learned was that when there was a tie during a vote between two specific candidates, there would be a coin flip to determine the winner.
A sentence to prove that I was there is that he voted Brittany Spears as his first choice to be sent into exile for 10 or more years. Following her was Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, and Kevin Federline.
A few quotes I wrote down from what Ferlini said was, “We tend to vote majority rules, but sometimes it doesn’t always work that way”. Another quote I wrote down was, “A voter used a broken pot called an ostraka to record a vote, this is the root of the modern world ostracize” Over all it was a very informative symposium, and I look forward to attending two more.