Equitable Voting Rules

Leeat Yariv, Laurent Bartholdi, Wade Hann-Caruthers, Maya Josyula and Omer Tamuz

No 13316, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: A celebrated result in social choice is May's Theorem (May, 1952), providing the foundation for majority rule. May's crucial assumption of symmetry, often thought of as a procedural equity requirement, is violated by many choice procedures that grant voters identical roles. We show that a modification of May's symmetry assumption allows for a far richer set of rules that still treat voters equally, but have minimal winning coalitions comprising a vanishing fraction of the population. We conclude that procedural fairness can coexist with the empowerment of a small minority of individuals. Methodologically, we introduce techniques from discrete mathematics and illustrate their usefulness for the analysis of social choice questions.

Keywords: Voting rules; May's theorem; Equity; Social choice; Finite groups (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C60 D71 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-des, nep-mic and nep-pol
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Working Paper: Equitable voting rules (2020)
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