IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2205.14838.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Most Equitable Voting Rules

Author

Listed:
  • Lirong Xia

Abstract

In social choice theory, anonymity (all agents being treated equally) and neutrality (all alternatives being treated equally) are widely regarded as ``minimal demands'' and ``uncontroversial'' axioms of equity and fairness. However, the ANR impossibility -- there is no voting rule that satisfies anonymity, neutrality, and resolvability (always choosing one winner) -- holds even in the simple setting of two alternatives and two agents. How to design voting rules that optimally satisfy anonymity, neutrality, and resolvability remains an open question. We address the optimal design question for a wide range of preferences and decisions that include ranked lists and committees. Our conceptual contribution is a novel and strong notion of most equitable refinements that optimally preserves anonymity and neutrality for any irresolute rule that satisfies the two axioms. Our technical contributions are twofold. First, we characterize the conditions for the ANR impossibility to hold under general settings, especially when the number of agents is large. Second, we propose the most-favorable-permutation (MFP) tie-breaking to compute a most equitable refinement and design a polynomial-time algorithm to compute MFP when agents' preferences are full rankings.

Suggested Citation

  • Lirong Xia, 2022. "Most Equitable Voting Rules," Papers 2205.14838, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2205.14838
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2205.14838
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michele Gori, 2014. "Selecting anonymous, neutral and reversal symmetric minimal majority rules," Working Papers - Mathematical Economics 2014-04, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    2. Daniela Bubboloni & Michele Gori, 2014. "Anonymous and neutral majority rules," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(2), pages 377-401, August.
    3. Daniela Bubboloni & Michele Gori, 2021. "Breaking ties in collective decision-making," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 44(1), pages 411-457, June.
    4. Ali I. Ozkes & M. Remzi Sanver, 2021. "Anonymous, neutral, and resolute social choice revisited," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(1), pages 97-113, July.
    5. Bubboloni, Daniela & Gori, Michele, 2015. "Symmetric majority rules," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 73-86.
    6. Nathaniel Beck, 1975. "A note on the probability of a tied election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 75-79, September.
    7. Campbell, Donald E. & Kelly, Jerry S., 2015. "The finer structure of resolute, neutral, and anonymous social choice correspondences," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 109-111.
    8. Bubboloni, Daniela & Gori, Michele, 2016. "Resolute refinements of social choice correspondences," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 37-49.
    9. Markus Schulze, 2011. "A new monotonic, clone-independent, reversal symmetric, and condorcet-consistent single-winner election method," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 36(2), pages 267-303, February.
    10. Ali I. Ozkes & M. Remzi Sanver, 2021. "Correction to: Anonymous, neutral, and resolute social choice revisited," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(1), pages 115-115, July.
    11. Noel Campbell & Marcus Witcher, 2015. "Political entrepreneurship: Jefferson, Bayard, and the election of 1800," Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 4(3), pages 298-312, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hiroki Saitoh, 2022. "Characterization of tie-breaking plurality rules," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 59(1), pages 139-173, July.
    2. Onur Doğan & Ayça Ebru Giritligil, 2022. "Anonymous and neutral social choice: a unified framework for existence results, maximal domains and tie-breaking," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 26(3), pages 469-489, September.
    3. Ali I. Ozkes & M. Remzi Sanver, 2021. "Anonymous, neutral, and resolute social choice revisited," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(1), pages 97-113, July.
    4. Daniela Bubboloni & Michele Gori, 2021. "Breaking ties in collective decision-making," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 44(1), pages 411-457, June.
    5. Bubboloni, Daniela & Gori, Michele, 2016. "Resolute refinements of social choice correspondences," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 37-49.
    6. Bubboloni, Daniela & Gori, Michele, 2016. "On the reversal bias of the Minimax social choice correspondence," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 53-61.
    7. Lirong Xia, 2020. "How Likely Are Large Elections Tied?," Papers 2011.03791, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2021.
    8. Daniela Bubboloni & Michele Gori, 2018. "The flow network method," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 51(4), pages 621-656, December.
    9. Ali Ihsan Ozkes & Remzi Sanver, 2017. "Procedural versus Opportunity-Wise Equal Treatment of Alternatives: Neutrality Revisited," Working Papers halshs-01613138, HAL.
    10. Mostapha Diss & Michele Gori, 2022. "Majority properties of positional social preference correspondences," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 92(2), pages 319-347, March.
    11. McMorris, F.R. & Mulder, Henry Martyn & Novick, Beth & Powers, Robert C., 2021. "Majority rule for profiles of arbitrary length, with an emphasis on the consistency axiom," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 164-174.
    12. Gersbach, Hans, 2017. "Flexible Majority Rules in democracyville: A guided tour," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 37-43.
    13. Daniela Bubboloni & Michele Gori & Claudia Meo, 2024. "Symmetric mechanisms for two-sided matching problems," Papers 2404.01404, arXiv.org.
    14. Bubboloni, Daniela & Gori, Michele, 2015. "Symmetric majority rules," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 73-86.
    15. Onur Doğan & Ayça Ebru Giritligil, 2015. "Anonymous and Neutral Social Choice:Existence Results on Resoluteness," Working Papers 201501, Murat Sertel Center for Advanced Economic Studies, Istanbul Bilgi University.
    16. Le Breton, Michel & Lepelley, Dominique & Smaoui, Hatem, 2012. "The Probability of Casting a Decisive Vote: From IC to IAC trhough Ehrhart's Polynomials and Strong Mixing," IDEI Working Papers 722, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    17. Londregan, John & Vindigni, Andrea, 2006. "Voting as a Credible Threat," Papers 10-04-2006, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.
    18. Mulligan, Casey B & Hunter, Charles G, 2003. "The Empirical Frequency of a Pivotal Vote," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 116(1-2), pages 31-54, July.
    19. Harrison-Trainor, Matthew, 2022. "An analysis of random elections with large numbers of voters," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 68-84.
    20. Geoffrey Brennan & Jonathan Pincus, 1987. "Rational Actor Theory in Politics: A Critical Review of John Quiggin," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 63(1), pages 22-32, March.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2205.14838. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.