 A complete analysis of this question would incorporate a number of different issues ranging from central topics in political philosophy about the nature of democracy and the “will of the people” to the psychology of decision making. In this article, I focus on one aspect of this question: the formal analysis of algorithms that aggregate  the  opinions of a group  of  voters (i.e., voting methods).  Consult, for  example, Riker 1982, Mackie 2003, and Christiano 2008 for a more comprehensive  analysis of the above question, incorporating many of the issues raised in  this article. 