Voting on American Idol

The Impact of Cumulative Voting on Elections

Feb 24, 2008 James Hutchinson

How American Idol uses cumulative voting and how it effects the outcome of elections.

Cumulative voting can be used for selecting a candidate in a political election or selecting a business option. It is even used on the wildly popular television show, American Idol, though most fans may not realize it.

Definition of Cumulative Voting

When multiple positions are open in an election, or there are multiple options in any situation, there are three methods of designing the voting process:

The positions can be broken down into individual races, and candidates compete against each other for a particular slot. Most political races are done this way.
Another option is to have the candidates all compete against each other, and the voter receives as many votes as there are offices. Many school board elections are done this way.
Cumulative voting is similar to the second option, with the difference that a voter can use multiple votes on one candidate.

An Example of Cumulative Voting

In an election for five seats, there may be ten candidates. With cumulative voting, a person could vote for five different candidates, or combine all five votes for one candidate, in order to give that person the best chance of winning.

This was proposed for United States elections, in order to give more power to minority candidates, who might not be able to garner enough votes to win any individual election. Being able to combine votes on one candidate might provide representation for a minority group.

Voting on American Idol

American Idol uses cumulative voting from the viewing audience. Viewers can vote for multiple contestants, or combine their votes for one singer as many times as they can while votes are being counted, which is for at least two hours after the performance show has ended.

The singers getting the least votes are eliminated. If the viewer has a favorite contestant, they are free to vote as often as they can for that person. Alternatively, if there is a least favorite singer, they can vote for all the other candidates but that one, effectively splitting the vote.

In this way a candidate that is very popular with a small voting block (for instance, Sanjaya) can survive against contestants that are only mildly popular with many voters. This can carry a contestant very far, until there are too few choices.

Unlike other elections, the number of votes is limited only by time (and the cost of text messaging if using that method.)

Other Uses of Cumulative Voting

In business, cumulative voting can be used to select an option after a brainstorming session. Raffles can be conducted using a type of cumulative voting, where participants can place all their money or tickets for one prize or several.

The copyright of the article Voting on American Idol in Reality TV is owned by James Hutchinson. Permission to republish Voting on American Idol in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.