Definition Borda Score and Borda Rule
definition formalized

Borda Score and Borda Rule

The Borda score is the positional scoring vector that awards $m - 1$ points to a voter's top alternative and one fewer for each rank down. As a rank-indexed vector (rank $0$ is the top, $m = |A|$), $$ \mathrm{bordaScore}(m, r) = m - 1 - r, $$ so under preference $P_i$ an alternative $a$ earns the count of alternatives ranked strictly below it, $\#\{c \in A \mid a \succ_{P_i} c\}$.

The total Borda score of $a$ across the profile sums the per-voter scores, $B(P, a) = \sum_{i \in N} \mathrm{bordaScore}$ — in Lean this is the generic scoreCandidate P aggregator applied to the Borda vector.

The Borda rule selects the alternatives maximising total Borda score, with ties kept: $$ \mathrm{borda}(P) = \arg\max_{a \in A}\ B(P, a). $$

In Lean: SocialChoice.Voting.bordaScore (the score vector), SocialChoice.Voting.scoreCandidate (the total-score aggregator), and SocialChoice.Voting.borda (the rule, scoringRule bordaScore, a set-valued VotingRule). These are noncomputable because aggregating a bare-Prop strict preference uses classical decidability, and ties are kept in the winner set.

Properties (informal)

  • Borda is monotonic, anonymous, and neutral.
  • Borda is not a Condorcet method ([[social_choice.voting.condorcet_winner]]): the Borda winner may differ from the Condorcet winner when both exist.
  • Borda is strategy-manipulable ([[social_choice.voting.strategyproof]] fails) — already follows from Gibbard–Satterthwaite for $|A| \ge 3$.

References

  • [AGT Chapter 10] Nisan, Roughgarden, Tardos, and Vazirani, Algorithmic Game Theory. Positional scoring rules.

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