The basic problem with a relative majority is that, if the election has more than two candidates, the winner may be someone who does not have the support of a majority of voters, points out the professor of mathematics at Wellesley College in Boston. As long as political quantitative literacy is not integrated into the education system and therefore into society, it is difficult that we will have a population capable of effectively and fully participating in democracy, believes Volić (released to Al Jazeera). "The problem of discrimination, which is built into the political system of Bosnia and Herzegovina, unfortunately, goes beyond anything rational, including mathematics. Our constitutional and legislative system must be rearranged in a way that will give everyone the same rights, which will systematically eliminate irrelevant things such as ethnicity and nationality. The electoral law should then, of course, be a reflection of such a real democratic, inclusive system. In that sense, politics should be like mathematics, objective and in function of universal, non-discriminatory principles," says Ismar Volić, professor of mathematics at Wellesley College in Boston. Volić is also one of the founders of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy in the United States of America and the president of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian-American Academy of Arts and Sciences (BHAAAS).
He adds that mathematics appears in politics in several ways, one of which is through statistics, with the help of which we think about politics or politicians. "Economic development, employment, consumer baskets, wages and taxes, demographic picture... are fundamentally mathematical concepts. Politicians care that such information is perceived as favorable, as proof that they are doing the right thing and should therefore be re-elected. This opens up space for the manipulation of statistics, and the fact that we are not used to critically thinking about such things helps politics. Mathematics is a bogeyman; people shy away from it so they don't question it and blindly accept it. As long as political quantitative literacy is not integrated into the education system and therefore into society, it is difficult to have a population that is capable of effectively and fully participating in democracy," the interlocutor points out. According to him, another important manifestation of mathematics in politics is in the democratic processes themselves, such as voting and the allocation of parliamentary seats. "There are mathematical methods behind them, and the problem is that there are better and worse ones. Unfortunately, the public is not even aware that there are various options for executing these processes, nor does it wonder who and why chose the ones that are currently being used. Some methods favor candidates running for re-election, some favor major parties, and some are amenable to strategic voting. It would be ideal if people were sufficiently aware and politically quantitatively literate to choose for themselves the methods that suit them best and that support the values and affections of that society," says Volić.
He particularly referred to the relative majority that is used in most electoral processes, including in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As he argues, the basic problem with a relative majority is that if an election has more than two candidates, the winner may be someone who does not have the support of a majority of voters. "For example, a few months ago in Boston, where I live, the mayoral election was held, and a female candidate won with 33 percent of the vote. So someone who is not the first choice for 67 percent of voters now represents the entire population of Boston. It was similar to the election of Donald Trump as the candidate of the Republican Party in the 2016 US presidential elections. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, we have Šefik Džaferović, who was elected as a member of the Presidency from among the Bosniak people with only 37 percent of the vote. Unfortunately, this happens often and everywhere in the world", states Ismar Volić.
Also, he believes that the relative majority generally favors the big parties and thus suppresses the diversity and diversity of opinions and ideas. "Relative majorities have additional side effects such as vote dispersion where similar candidates split the vote, allowing unpopular or extreme candidates to win, which also happened with Donald Trump and the spoiler effect where candidates who have no chance of winning take enough votes away from one of the main candidates and thus overturn the elections. The best-known example of this in the United States of America is the victory of George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000," explains the interlocutor. He believes that mathematics can and should play a specific role in the selection of voting methods and that the relative majority is a mathematically poor way to choose a winner. "There are better methods that take into account the wishes of the voters in a more complete way. One of them is the so-called preferential voting, in which the voters rank the candidates, so they do not select only their favorite, as is the case in the relative majority, but compare all the candidates against each other. Considering that this kind of voting contains more information, mathematics can decide more comprehensively, through an algorithm consisting of iterative elimination of candidates and the transfer of their votes down the ballots, which candidate is in a certain way the most acceptable to the majority of voters," says Volić. He also emphasizes that the mission of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy is education, research, and spreading awareness about the role of mathematics in politics, and the focus is on political quantitative literacy and mathematical methods in democratic processes. "In the two years we have been in existence, we have grown incredibly. More than 20 students have gone through our research programs, and almost 50 academic workers from all over the world are our collaborators. Several high-quality research papers have already been published under our auspices; we create teaching modules that are used in high schools and colleges; we hold lectures and organize conferences that are fantastically attended. The course 'Mathematics and Politics', which I teach at my faculty, is filled in the first minute after registration opens. Therefore, the need for such an institute and activities that lie at the intersection of mathematics and politics exists, and we manage to fill that space," underlines Ismar Volić. He explains that the role of mathematics in modern society is huge, as demonstrated by the pandemic, because many concepts we encountered, such as infection and mortality rates, flattening the curve, the war of false positive/negative testing, absolute and relative risk, collective immunity, and vaccine effectiveness, are mathematical.
"For them to be useful to society, collective quantitative literacy is needed because this is the only way to convince the public that certain measures are necessary and that their implementation is a matter of life and death. A quantitatively literate person does not accept the politicization of the pandemic and more easily resists the proliferation of misinformation and conspiracy theories. If we could all act like that, this pandemic would end much faster and take far fewer lives. Of course, the role of mathematics does not end with the pandemic. This is the age of technology, information, and the massive amount of data we are forced to deal with every day. Mathematical, quantitative literacy is not only a desirable but also a necessary part of this evolutionary process that we are going through, whether we like it or not. A society that does not actively participate in that process is condemned to a kind of illiteracy and lagging behind the rest of the world, warns the interlocutor. He also apostrophizes that the Bosnian-Herzegovinian-American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an extremely important and large organization that is increasingly recognized as a model for academic work at the world level and principled behavior according to high scientific and research standards. "In the last few years, we have intensified cooperation with scientists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and my goal is to create even better conditions for collaborative work between our experts in the United States of America, Europe, and the rest of the world with colleagues in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I also want us to involve students as much as possible in our activities, to point them to good academic practices, to transfer knowledge that would open their horizons, and to help them network and achieve cooperation outside of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the same time, I do not want to neglect our activities in the United States of America. We were founded as an organization that primarily gathers academic workers, doctors, artists, and professionals in the United States of America, and one of our primary focuses should remain the gathering and networking of these people," says Volić. He notes that he does not have a full picture of the situation of the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina towards science, but as far as he can see from his experience and as much as he understands his colleagues, the support for science could and should be much greater. "And I'm not just talking about financial aid for the research itself, but also about the fact that professors and assistants are overwhelmed with obligations and teach too many subjects while at the same time having to fight with an archaic and unnecessary administration. It is impossible to devote yourself to science and be a productive researcher if you cannot devote considerable time to it. The situation in Sarajevo Canton, which I am most familiar with, seems to be a little better, but it seems that there are still some people in the political world who are trying to invest more in science. I regret that the bill on higher education in Sarajevo Canton was defeated last summer. This could have been a good move for the research profile of Bosnia and Herzegovina," states Volić. He tells young people to resist politics that divides them and to clearly and categorically refuse to point the finger at others as the cause of the problem. "I want young people to understand that the divisions they have been indoctrinated with are artificial, that they have been served political rhetoric that only serves the same politics to survive and get rich. I tell them to educate themselves, to take matters into their own hands, and to build a society based on tolerance, inclusion, and the common goal of economic and cultural progress that will connect us to Europe and the world concludes the interlocutor.
(https://balkans.aljazeera.net/)
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