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1997 Turkey MO (2nd round)

Part of Turkey MO (2nd round)

Subcontests

(3)
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Turkey NMO 1997 Problem 3

Let nn and kk be positive integers, where n>1n > 1 is odd. Suppose nn voters are to elect one of the kk cadidates from a set AA according to the rule of "majoritarian compromise" described below. After each voter ranks the candidates in a column according to his/her preferences, these columns are concatenated to form a kk x nn voting matrix. We denote the number of ccurences of aAa \in A in the ii-th row of the voting matrix by aia_{i} . Let lal_{a} stand for the minimum integer ll for which i=1lai>n2\sum^{l}_{i=1}{a_{i}}> \frac{n}{2}. Setting l=min{laaA}l'= min \{l_{a} | a \in A\}, we will regard the voting matrices which make the set {aAla=l}\{a \in A | l_{a} = l' \} as admissible. For each such matrix, the single candidate in this set will get elected according to majoritarian compromise. Moreover, if w_{1} \geq w_{2} \geq ... \geq  w_{k} \geq 0 are given, for each admissible voting matrix, i=1kwiai\sum^{k}_{i=1}{w_{i}a_{i}} is called the total weighted score of aAa \in A. We will say that the system (w1,w2,...,wk)(w_{1},w_{2}, . . . , w_{k}) of weights represents majoritarian compromise if the total score of the elected candidate is maximum among the scores of all candidates. (a) Determine whether there is a system of weights representing majoritarian compromise if k=3k = 3. (b) Show that such a system of weights does not exist for k>3k > 3.
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