Paper #987

Title:

On the justice of voting systems

Authors:

Jose Apesteguia, Miguel A. Ballester and Rosa Ferrer

Date:

November 2006

Abstract:

What are the best voting systems in terms of utilitarianism? Or in terms of maximin, or maximax? We study these questions for the case of three alternatives and a class of structurally equivalent voting rules. We show that plurality, arguably the most widely used voting system, performs very poorly in terms of remarkable ideals of justice, such as utilitarianism or maximin, and yet is optimal in terms of maximax. Utilitarianism is best approached by a voting system converging to the Borda count, while the best way to achieve maximin is by means of a voting system converging to negative voting. We study the robustness of our results across different social cultures, measures of performance, and population sizes.

Keywords:

Voting, Scoring Rules, Utilitarianism, Maximin, Maximax, Impartial Culture Condition

JEL codes:

D00, D63, D71, D72

Area of Research:

Microeconomics

Download the paper in PDF format