Imagine you and your friends have to pick a restaurant to go to for dinner, but everyone has a different favorite cuisine. How do you decide where to go?
The Condorcet method is a way to help groups make decisions when there are multiple options and opinions.
First, you make a chart that lists all the options and pair them up against each other. For example, if your options are Italian, Mexican, and Chinese, you would pair Italian against Mexican, Italian against Chinese, and Mexican against Chinese.
Next, everyone in the group votes on each pairing by choosing their preferred option. For example, if you prefer Italian over Mexican, you would vote for Italian in the Italian vs. Mexican pairing.
After everyone has voted, you count up the number of times one option beats another in a pairing. So if Italian received 3 votes in the Italian vs. Mexican pairing and also 3 votes in the Italian vs. Chinese pairing, it would be considered the winner.
This method is called the Condorcet method after a French mathematician named Nicolas de Condorcet who first proposed it in the late 1700s. It's a way to help groups make decisions that reflect the majority opinion, even if nobody's first choice option gets chosen.