Here's an interesting piece on elections: How to Vote? Let Us Count the Ways
Of course, the main problem with the following is what does "fair" or "will of the people" mean?
Some scholars would go so far as to question whether any system of choosing a winner by way of a vote can truly be fair, at least when more than two candidates are concerned.Kenneth J. Arrow, a Stanford University economist, won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1972, in part for his work in the late 1940's and early 1950's for developing what came to be known as Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. It provided proof that there is no way to arrange an electoral system to perfectly reflect the will of the people when it comes to choosing a winner from more than two candidates.
Part of the issue is that voters make choices for more than one reason (i.e,. votes are not always cast for the purpose of aiding a victory):
Consider the last presidential election results from Florida. If you accept the final, much-disputed tally, it showed that George W. Bush got slightly more votes than Al Gore, and both men trounced Ralph Nader. So Mr. Bush won the state, and the presidency. But most people in Florida voted for someone other than Mr. Bush. And since most Nader voters would presumably have preferred Mr. Gore to Mr. Bush, it follows that Mr. Gore would have been a more acceptable choice to most Floridians than Mr. Bush. But second choices do not count in the American system.
This is all quite true, but ignores the fact that the Nader-voters had a choice to make, and they willfully chose to vote for Nader over Gore. Given the parameters of the electoral rules one could argue that that choice was an irrational one, if the goal was to reflect true preferences in the context of who would actually be elected President. However, it could be argued to be a rational choice if it was more important to the Nader-voter to express their true choice with their vote, rather than to help elect their second choice (i.e., Gore).
And this is absolutely the case:
the choice of election system can actually determine the outcome of the election.
It is one of the main reasons why some countries have multi-party systems and others do not. (The article's example of choosing the best Bond well illustrates this issue).