Citation

Discussion Paper Details

Please find the details for DP12672 in an easy to copy and paste format below:

Full Details   |   Bibliographic Reference

Full Details

Title: Balanced Voting

Author(s): Hans Gersbach and Kamali Wickramage

Publication Date: February 2018

Keyword(s): Balanced Voting, fundamental decision, minority protection and tyranny of majority

Programme Area(s): Public Economics

Abstract: We introduce 'Balanced Voting', a voting scheme tailored to fundamental societal decisions. It works as follows: Citizens may abstain from voting on a fundamental direction in a first stage. This guarantees the voting right in a second voting stage on the variants 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 and variants of these directions. Information about the preferences is private. We identify circumstances under which Balanced Voting performs well with regard to utilitarian welfare and Pareto dominance. We discuss the robustness of the results, procedural rules to implement the voting scheme, and extensions. Moreover, we provide several examples, such as the US presidential election, for which the scheme could be applied.

For full details and related downloads, please visit: https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=12672

Bibliographic Reference

Gersbach, H and Wickramage, K. 2018. 'Balanced Voting'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=12672