Electing the pope: Elections by repeated ballots

Clara Ponsati and Jan Zapal

CERGE-EI Working Papers from The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague

Abstract: A finite group of voters must elect the pope from a finite set of candidates. They repeatedly cast ballots (possibly for ever) until one candidate attains at least Q votes. A candidate is electable—if enough voters prefer him to a continuous disagreement—as well as stable—if no other candidate is preferred to him by a sufficient number of voters. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a candidate that is both electable and stable. When there are three candidates and voters are willing to compromise somewhat, the condition requires choice by two-thirds supermajority, which coincides with the procedure that the Catholic Church has used to appoint the pope for almost a millennium.

Keywords: repeated ballots; conclave; pope; electable; stable; supermajority (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 D72 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des, nep-mic and nep-pol
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