We propose six axioms concerning when one candidate should defeat another in a democratic election involving two or more candidates. Five of the axioms are widely satisfied by known voting procedures. The sixth axiom is a weakening of Kenneth Arrow's famous condition of the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA). We call this weakening Coherent IIA. We prove that the five axioms plus Coherent IIA single out a method of determining defeats studied in our recent work: Split Cycle. In particular, Split Cycle provides the most resolute definition of defeat among any satisfying the six axioms for democratic defeat. In addition, we analyze how Split Cycle escapes Arrow's Impossibility Theorem and related impossibility results.

翻译：我们提出了六条关于民主选举（涉及两名及以上候选人）中候选人应如何击败对手的公理。其中五条公理已被已知投票程序普遍满足，第六条公理是对肯尼斯·阿罗著名的无关选项独立性条件（IIA）的弱化版本，我们称之为"一致性IIA"。我们证明：五条公理与一致性IIA共同唯一确定了我们近期研究中提出的判定败选方法——分裂循环。特别地，分裂循环在所有满足六条民主败选公理的方法中提供了最高确定性的败选定义。此外，我们分析了分裂循环如何规避阿罗不可能定理及相关不可能性结果。