Specialized Elections

Scott E. Page

No 1006, Discussion Papers from Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science

Abstract: This paper introduces specialized elections. A specialized election randomly assigns each voter to one election, freeing her of voting responsibilities in other elections. By reducing voters' responsibilities, specialized elections encourage more information acquisition. Specialized elections also make campaigning less costly. A shortcoming of specialized elections is the increase in outcome variance resulting from the sampling effect. Whether or not specialized elections improve democratic outcomes hinges upon the tradeoff between more informed voters and greater outcome variance. Sufficient conditions are derived for the increase in information to generate an outcome nearer to that which would be chosen by a fully informed electorate.

Date: 1992-09
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