My mathematician friend J tells me that voting theory is mind-bogglingly complicated (I paraphrase). A list of ten candidates could yield well over three million possible results.* Before I had a chance to scoff or wonder, the point was driven home for me by the critters you see above. This wooden puzzle I delivered from my parents to my delighted younger nephew was soon solved in the obvious way, but then we started exploring other options - older nephew is particularly intrigued. You see here the set we call mog, frouse, crish, hee, fick, tab, bedgehog and churtle. One could in fact array the upper halves in the eight slots on this board in over forty-thousand different ways, but there are (phew!) only sixty-four possible animals (including my favorites, the pair crish and fab). Now suppose these critters were all running for president, but might also end up as another's running mate...?*In fact, what J was telling me was more mind-boggling still, and more disturbing. With ten candidates and a group of voters with fixed preferences, different ways of tabulating the votes could produce upwards of three million different outcomes: "everyone votes one way and yet depending on how you tally it up, you can get almost any ranking (not quite all 10! but a large chunk of them)."
