disadvantage of free and fair election
Answers
First off, there’s populism. The majority of the population does not have to be correct, they just have to be the majority.
Second, there’s the fact that if everyone acts in their own self interest, that can mean that most people suffer from the outcome.
Take the Pirate Game. There are 5 pirates, Pirate A, Pirate B, Pirate C, Pirate D, and Pirate E. They’ve just found 100 pieces of gold, and are trying to split it up. The captain, Pirate A, gets to draft the plan for how to split the gold up, but the final say comes down to a vote. If half or more of them say yes, the plan passes. If more than half say no, Pirate A gets executed and Pirate B becomes the captain, and drafts a new plan, which is subject to the same rules. Each pirate holds no emotional stake in the other pirates, and in fact thinks that the ship is too crowded anyway, so they will vote no, all other things being equal. Even though these are all pirates, they all also have studied logic extensively, and each will act to ensure their own survival and maximize gold, and know of the logical prowess of their mates. For some reason, no pirate will trust any of the others to make any alliances, but none of them would dare break the aforementioned rules.
Technically, this is a free and fair vote, however, Pirate A does not need to ensure that the outcome is fair.
Hypothetically, if Pirates A, B, and C are all overboard, Pirate D gets to keep all the gold, since Pirate E’s vote is not enough to reject it. Therefore, if we were down to pirates C, D, and E, pirate E would want to avoid this scenario, and would vote yes on any number of gold coins above 0. Therefore, in this scenario, pirate C could keep 99 of the coins, and give one to E, because D’s vote is not needed. Therefore, D wants to avoid this scenario, and will vote yes to any arrangement that gives them a number of gold coins above 0. Therefore, B only has to give 1 gold coin to D, and nothing to C and E, in order to survive. So C and E will accept any arrangements made by A in which they receive any number of coins. So A only has to give one to each, and keep 98 for himself.
They could have split the gold in 4 equal parts, and gotten 20 each, but because each one was concerned with making the most money possible, all but A suffered for it.
That being said, the electoral college system does nothing but make these problems worse.