Rigging Road Trip Dinner Elections: The Quest for Taco Bell

From the days of my youth (~10 years ago) I fondly remember long road trips with my mother and three siblings from North Carolina all the way to Maine to visit my grandparents. These trips, filled with long naps, Mattel Classic Football, and not much else, were punctuated by fiery debates over where we would stop for lunch and dinner on the way.

In retrospect, this decision making process functioned like an election with four voters (myself, my older brother Hank, my younger brother Calvin, and my younger sister Roxane) selecting between candidates for dinner using the Coombs method. When it came time to pick where to eat, my mother, who was also the referee in these elections would pose the question: “What do we want for dinner”? Seeking to minimize our whining when the eventual decision was made, she would eliminate the option she perceived as eliciting the most violent negative reaction until we all appeared to come to a quasi-agreement.

While it’s understandable for my mom to choose a rather simple system for this collective decision(she did also have to maintain focus on the road during these deliberations), she selected one that was ripe for manipulation. Had I done a bit more public choice reading in elementary school, I could have easily influenced the outcome through strategic behavior.

My first choice of roadside cuisine was, naturally, Taco Bell. My siblings generally had varying preferences, though two of them found Taco Bell particularly repulsive. Illustrated below are our ranked candidates:

Nate	Hank	Calvin	Roxane
Taco Bell	Wendy's	Burger King	Wendy's
Wendy's	McDonald’s	McDonald’s	McDonald’s
McDonald’s	Burger King	Taco Bell	Burger King
Burger King	Taco Bell	Wendy’s	Taco Bell

In this scenario, through the Coombs method in a well moderated, fair election, Taco Bell was eliminated in the first round, sticking me with an inferior meal. In retrospect, had I proposed two options at a time, I could have eliminated the opposition, one at a time, and used my brother Calvin’s mild affinity for cheap tacos to reach the promised land.

By striking first and proposing a choice between Burger King and McDonald’s I could eliminate my brother Calvin’s first choice of Burger King.

Nate	Hank	Calvin	Roxane
TB	Wendy’s	McD	Wendy’s
Wendy’s	McD	TB	McD
McD	TB	Wendy's	TB

Then, by proposing a choice between Wendy’s and McDonalds, I could similarly eliminate McDonalds from the ballot, leaving the choice between Wendy’s and Taco Bell. At that point, by whining slightly louder than my siblings(falsifying my preferences) I could tip the 50/50 voter split, and take victory.

Nate	Hank	Calvin	Roxane
TB	Wendy's	TB	Wendy's
Wendy's	TB	Wendy's	TB

My mother, in her infinite wisdom, eventually learned to skip this process and take us to a food court.