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.

The Two-party System and Duverger's Law: An Essay on the History of Political Science

1982 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 753-766 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Riker
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Party System ◽  
The Body ◽  
Plurality Rule ◽  
Science Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Belles Lettres ◽  
Duverger's Law

Science involves the accumulation of knowledge, which means not only the formulation of new sentences about discoveries but also the reformulation of empirically falsified or theoretically discredited old sentences. Science has therefore a history that is mainly a chronicle and interpretation of a series of reformulations. It is often asserted that political science has no history. Although this assertion is perhaps motivated by a desire to identify politics with belles lettres, it may also have a reasonable foundation, in that political institutions may change faster than knowledge can be accumulated. To investigate whether propositions about evanescent institutions can be scientifically falsified and reformulated, I examine in this essay the history of the recent and not wholly accepted revisions of the propositions collectively called Duverger's law: that the plurality rule for selecting the winner of elections favors the two-party system. The body of the essay presents the discovery, revision, testing, and reformulation of sentences in this series in order to demonstrate that in at least one instance in political science, knowledge has been accumulated and a history exists.

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.

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.

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