Abstract
This paper introduces a new storable vote mechanism (Storable Votes-Pay as you win, SV-PAYW) where a fixed number of votes is cast among different alternatives, and the votes spent (and redistributed) on each election depend only on the number cast for the winning alternative. The mechanism is expected to deliver more enfranchisement, efficiency and a reduction of uncertainty and strategic behavior with respect to previously known voting systems. To compare the pure storable votes with the SV-PAYW implementations, two key characteristics are monitored: the “enfranchisement gap”, which measures the proportionality between political influence and electoral victories, and the “efficiency ratio”, which assesses the utility derived from the allocation of electoral victories on a scale from random allocation (zero) to the social optimum (one). SV-PAYW consistently outperforms pure storable votes in terms of enfranchisement in all cases. Additionally, as a general rule (there are some exceptions), the “efficiency ratio” tends to be higher for SV-PAYW, hovering around 0.7.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The combination of multiple alternatives and vote buying and redistribution inspired this article; however, we propose a storable votes mechanism instead of a “votes-for-numeraire” one.
That is, the stock of path of past electoral results does not impact the current period utility; only each period election matters for that period utility.
When the one-man one-vote principle is applied the number of people belonging to A and B groups determine political weight; in firms, shares are the unit of political power, etc.
An important notational issue is that \(k_{A}\) determines \(k_{B}\); consequently, it is the same that a given variable or function depends on \(k_{A}\) or on \(k_{B}\) or on both \(k_{A}\) and \(k_{B}\). As a general rule, functions and variables related to a player are indexed on her own vote endowment.
In the general case (multiple alternatives) this pure SV implementation cannot be defined: the number of votes casted is not uniquely defined in a multi-alternative case.
If the winner in case of draw were the player with more votes, when one player hits the zero votes level, the other would win all remaining rounds, leading to an “absorbent state" that distort all the games decisions. We avoid that by awarding the electoral victory in case of draw to the player with less votes.
The straightforward discretization of the Vickrey implementation from the divisible votes case implies that if a player has zero votes, the other player wins the election by simply casting one vote and paying none. To avoid this absorbent state in the discretized version of the Vickrey implementation, if the player with the larger number of votes wins the election, she has to pay the maximum between the number of votes cast by the loser and one.
Given that \(V^{j}(.)\) is a function ranging from {0.. N} to \(\mathbb {R}\), its representation is a vector with N+1 real numbers representing the expected utility of having k votes in the next period.
The binomial distribution is \(Bin(w,s,i)=\left( \begin{array}{c} s\\ i \end{array}\right) w^{i}(1-w)^{s-i}\)
As commented in Sect. 5, utilities are normalized for its use, so the normalized utility vector for Hv is (0.553, 1.66, 5.533), for Lg is (0.7, 1.4, 2.8).
The 120 graphs are included in the replication materials: folder “GRAPHS/CONVERGENCE/INCOM” for the classical (incomplete information) setting, folder “GRAPHS/CONVERGENCE/COM” for the simplified (complete information) setting.
The ratio was inspired by the receiving operational characteristic (ROC) curve used to assess the fit of predictive models for binary outcomes.
The discrepancies between lines summary graph and the boxplots are explained because they present different statistics: the summary graph presents the means while the central trend statistic in the boxplots is the median.
The discrepancies between lines summary graph and the boxplots are explained because they present different statistics: the summary graph presents the means while the central trend statistic in the boxplots is the median.
References
Arrow KJ (1951) Social choice and individual values. Wiley, New York
Axelrod R (1984) The evolution of cooperation. Basic Books, New York
Bischi GI, Lamantia F (2022) Evolutionary oligopoly games with cooperative and aggressive behaviors. J Econ Interact Coordin 17:3–27
Bouveret S, Lemaître M (1999) Relative utilitarianism. Econometrica 67:471–498
Buchanan JM (1962) The calculus of consent. Univ. Mich. Press, Ann Arbor
Casella A (2005) Storable votes. Games Econ Behav 51(2):391–419
Casella A (2017) Democracy for polarized committees: the tale of Blotto’s lieutenants. Games Econ Behav 106:239–259
Casella A, Macé A (2021) Does vote trading improve welfare? Ann Rev Econ 13:57–86
Cox GW (1994) Strategic voting equilibria under the single nontransferable vote. Am Polit Sci Rev 88:608–621
Eguia JX, Immorlica N, Ligett K, Weyl EG, Xefteris D (2019) A new consensus protocol: quadratic voting with multiple alternatives. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3319508orhttps://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3319508
Fudenberg D, Tirole J (1991) Game theory. MIT Press, Cambridge
Hortala-Vallve R (2021) Qualitative voting. J Theor Polit 24(4)
Jackson MO, Sonnenschein HF (2007) Overcoming incentive constraints by linking decisions. Econometrica 75:241–257
Lu Q, Korniss G, Szymanski BK (2009) The naming game in social networks: community formation and consensus engineering. J Econ Interact Coordin 4:221–235
Marengo A, Pasquali C (2011) The construction of choice: a computational voting model. J Econ Interact Coordin 6:139–156
Mathieu P, Delahayeb J-P (2017) New winning strategies for the iterated prisoner’s dilemma. J Artif Soc Social Simul
McKelvey RD, McLennan AM, Turocy TL (2016) Gambit: software tools for game theory. Version 16.0.1. www.gambit-project.org
Myatt DP (2004) On the theory of strategic voting. Rev Econ Stud 74:255–281
Press K (2007) When does defection pay? J Econ Interact Coordin 2:67–84
Thoyer S, Morardet S, Rio P, Simon L, Goodhue R, Rausser G (2001) A bargaining model to simulate negotiations between water users. J Artif Soc Soc Simul
Vickrey W (1961) Counterspeculation, auctions, and competitive sealed tenders. J Finance 16(1):8–37
Acknowledgement
I want to thank the Financial Risk Department of Banco de España for an exceptional intellectual and professional environment. Additionally, I would like to thank my Ph. D directors (Marc Vorsatz and Mariano Matilla Garcia, UNED) for training me on the techniques and research perspectives now applied in a surprisingly different research field. Rene Guerra Millet lent his selfless help to implement the calculations in a virtual machine. I am solely responsible for any errors. The opinions in this article do not necessarily coincide with those of the Banco de España or the Eurosystem.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The author declares that he complies with the conflict of interest policy of this journal.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Replication materials available at: https://osf.io/h98vx link.
Social optimum equation transformation
Social optimum equation transformation
Some terms re-arrangement leaves the following expression:
Then:
The terms without controls are grouped on one side and the terms that include controls are grouped on the other:
And simplifying the last term:
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Macías, A. Storable votes with a “pay as you win” mechanism. J Econ Interact Coord 19, 121–150 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11403-024-00407-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11403-024-00407-1