What is an Irrelevant Alternative?
According to Arrow, an irrelevant alternative is any that does not win. For example, in the following example, 40 A B C 25 B C A 35 C B A If A is declared the winner, then B and C are both Irrelevant Alternatives. Arrow suggested that irrelevant alternatives should not affect the result of the election. So, if A is the winner, A should still have been the winner, even if C did not participate. However, such an election would be 40 A B 60 B A A’s winning is a very counter-intuitive result here. If, however, the method chooses B as the winner in the two-candidate case, then it has been affected by an irrelevant alternative. It should be pointed out that “irrelevant alternative” is a very loaded word, and it is not universally agreed that such candidates are irrelevant.
