An experimental study of storable votes

Alessandra Casella (), Andrew Gelman () and Thomas R. Palfrey ()
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Andrew Gelman: Columbia University - Department of Statistics and Department of Political Science
Thomas R. Palfrey: California Institute of Technology - Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences

No 0304-01, Discussion Papers from Columbia University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The storable votes mechanism is a method of voting for committees that meet periodically to consider a series of binary decisions. Each member is allocated a fixed budget of votes to be cast as desired over the multiple decisions. Voters are induced to spend more votes on those decisions that matter to them most, shifting the ex ante probability of winning away from decisions they value less and towards decisions they value more, typically generating welfare gains over standard majority voting with non-storable votes. The equilibrium strategies have a very intuitive featurehe number of votes cast must be monotonic in the vote intensity of preferencesut are otherwise difficult to calculate, raising questions of practical implementation. In our experiments, realized efficiency levels were remarkably close to theoretical equilibrium predictions, while subjects adopted monotonic but off-equilibrium strategies. We are lead to conclude that concerns about the complexity of the game may have limited practical relevance.

Date: 2003
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Related works:
Working Paper: An Experimental Study of Storable Votes (2003)
Working Paper: An Experimental Study of Storable Votes (2003)
Working Paper: An Experimental Study of Storable Votes (2003)
Journal Article: An experimental study of storable votes (2006)
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