The Effect of Approval Balloting on Strategic Voting under Alternative Decision Rules

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 509-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Merrill ◽  
Jack Nagel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Rules ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Plurality Rule ◽  
Voting Systems ◽  
Approval Voting ◽  
Sincere Voting ◽  
Alternative Decision ◽  
Approval Balloting

Voting systems combine balloting methods with decision rules or procedures. Most analyses of approval voting (a balloting method) assume it will be combined with plurality rule but advocates often urge its use with more complex procedures. Because much of the case for approval balloting hinges on its encouragement of sincere voting, we ask whether it retains this advantage when combined with multistage procedures. After distinguishing five forms of sincere and insincere approval voting, we find that certain elements of multistage procedures promote departures from purely sincere strategies, including, in some instances, strictly insincere voting. However, most strategic approval voting involves truncating the approved list, including bullet-voting, which is especially likely under certain threshold rules. Coalitions also increase members' incentive to truncate. We conclude that approval balloting with plurality rule remains preferable to conventional single-vote plurality, but we urge caution and further research regarding combining approval balloting with multistage rules.

scholarly journals Approval voting without ballot restrictions

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 759-775
Author(s):  
Federica Ceron ◽  
Stéphane Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Axiomatic Characterization ◽  
Plurality Rule ◽  
Social Outcome ◽  
Approval Voting ◽  
Voting Rules ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Informational Basis ◽  
Approval Balloting

We axiomatically study voting rules without making any assumption on the ballots that voters are allowed to cast. In this setting, we characterize the family of “endorsement rules,” which includes approval voting and the plurality rule, via the imposition of three normative conditions. The first condition is the well known social‐theoretic principle of consistency; the second one, unbiasedness, roughly requires social outcomes not to be biased toward particular candidates or voters; the last one, dubbed no single voter overrides, demands that the addition of a voter to an electorate cannot radically change the social outcome. Building on this result, we provide the first axiomatic characterization of approval voting without the approval balloting assumption. The informational basis of approval voting as well as its aggregative rationale are jointly derived from a set of conditions that can be defined on most of the ballot spaces studied in the literature.

Imperfect Knowledge and Stable Governance in Democracies: An Agent-Based Model

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 568-582
Author(s):  
Carlos M. Fernández-Márquez ◽  
Francisco J. Vázquez ◽  
Luis Fernando Medina
Keyword(s):  
Decision Rules ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Agent Based Model ◽  
Government Formation ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Ideological Position ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
Perfect Knowledge ◽  
Imperfect Knowledge ◽  
Aggregate Effect

In this paper, we introduce an agent-based model of elections and government formation where voters do not have perfect knowledge about the parties’ ideological position. Although voters are boundedly rational, they are forward-looking in that they try to assess the likely impact of the different parties over the resulting government. Thus, their decision rules combine sincere and strategic voting: they form preferences about the different parties but deem some of them as inadmissible and try to block them from office. We find that the most stable and durable coalition governments emerge at intermediate levels of informational ambiguity. When voters have very poor information about the parties, their votes are scattered too widely, preventing the emergence of robust majorities. But also, voters with highly precise perceptions about the parties will cluster around tiny electoral niches with a similar aggregate effect.

scholarly journals Approval Voting

1995 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J Weber
Keyword(s):  
Median Voter ◽  
Plurality Rule ◽  
Approval Voting ◽  
History Of ◽  
Candidate Positioning

Under approval voting, a voter may cast single votes for each of any number of candidates. In this paper, the history of approval voting and some of its properties are reviewed. When voters vote sincerely, approval voting compares favorably with both the plurality rule and Borda's rule in yielding outcomes reflective of the electorate's will. When voters vote strategically, perverse outcomes possible under other rules cannot arise at equilibrium under approval voting. Well-known ‘median voter’ results in two-candidate positioning games generalize to multicandidate settings under approval voting but not under the plurality rule.

scholarly journals A Theory of Voting Equilibria

1993 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger B. Myerson ◽  
Robert J. Weber
Keyword(s):  
Plurality Rule ◽  
Approval Voting ◽  
Election Result ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Voting System ◽  
Candidate Positioning

A voting equilibrium arises when the voters in an electorate, acting in accordance with both their preferences for the candidates and their perceptions of the relative chances of various pairs of candidates being in contention for victory, generate an election result that justifies their perceptions. Voting equilibria always exist, and the set of equilibria can vary substantially with the choice of voting system. We compare equilibria under the plurality rule, approval voting, and the Borda system. We consider a candidate-positioning game and find that the plurality rule imposes little restriction on the position of the winning candidate in three-candidate races, while approval voting leads to a winner positioned at the median of the voter distribution. We contrast campaign activities intended to influence voter preferences with activities meant to influence only perceptions of candidate viability.

Strategic Voting Versus Sincere Voting

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damien Bol ◽  
Tom Verthé
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Electoral Outcome ◽  
Representation Systems ◽  
The Government ◽  
Sincere Voting

People do not always vote for the party that they like the most. Sometimes, they choose to vote for another one because they want to maximize their influence on the outcome of the election. This behavior driven by strategic considerations is often labeled as “strategic voting.” It is opposed to “sincere voting,” which refers to the act of voting for one’s favorite party. Strategic voting can take different forms. It can consist in deserting a small party for a bigger one that has more chances of forming the government, or to the contrary, deserting a big party for a smaller one in order to send a signal to the political class. More importantly the strategies employed by voters differ across electoral systems. The presence of frequent government coalitions in proportional representation systems gives different opportunities, or ways, for people to influence the electoral outcome with their vote. In total, the literature identifies four main forms of strategic voting. Some of them are specific to some electoral systems; others apply to all.

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