# kaal:claim:3782203-009

**Claim.** Condorcet's paradox demonstrates that it is impossible to construct any democratic voting method that will faithfully discover the will of a group, because cyclic preferences can leave no clear winner.

**Type.** failure  **Support.** evidenced

**Holds when.**

- three or more candidates
- any democratic voting system

**Source quote.**

> Condorcet's paradox5 demonstrates it is impossible to construct any method that will faithfully discover the will of a group, with any type of democratic voting system.

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, *A Technical Perspective on Decentralization* (2021), Condorcet’s paradox, page 5

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, A Technical Perspective on Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782203

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `ab8a22d0dbb026a09212a4c85963f3c05787cf80775e8613ae3724e3883e7a56` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20and%20Kaal%20-%202021%20-%20A%20Technical%20Perspective%20on%20Decentralization.pdf

**Failure mode.** preference-cycle  (family: collective-action-and-coordination-failure)

**Topics.** governance-design

**Keywords.** condorcet-paradox, voting-cycles, social-choice, impossibility-results

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.