Balanced Voting
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Author / Producer
Date
2015-01
Publication Type
Working Paper
ETH Bibliography
yes
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Abstract
We introduce ‘Balanced Voting’, a new voting scheme that is particularly suitable for making fundamental societal decisions. Such decisions typically involve subgroups that are strongly in favor of, or against, a new fundamental direction, and others that care much less. In a two-stage procedure, Balanced Voting works as follows: Citizens may abstain from voting on a fundamental direction in a first stage. In a second voting stage, this guarantees them a voting right on the variations of the fundamental direction chosen in the first. All losers from the first stage also obtain voting rights in the second stage, while winners do not. We develop a model with two fundamental directions for which stakes are high for some individuals and with private information about preferences among voters. We demonstrate that Balanced Voting is superior to simple majority voting, Storable Votes and Minority Voting with regard to utilitarian welfare if the voting body is sufficiently large. Moreover,the outcome under Balanced Voting is Pareto-dominant to the outcome under simple majority voting and Minority Voting. We discuss several aspects that need to be considered when Balanced Voting is applied in practice. We also suggest how Balanced Voting could be applied to elections.
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Publication status
published
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Book title
Journal / series
Economics Working Paper Series
Volume
15/209
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
CER-ETH – Center of Economic Research at ETH Zurich
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Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
Balanced Voting; Minority protection; Fundamental decision; Tyranny of majority; Minority protection
Organisational unit
03729 - Gersbach, Hans (emeritus) / Gersbach, Hans (emeritus)
02045 - Dep. Geistes-, Sozial- u. Staatswiss. / Dep. of Humanities, Social and Pol.Sc.