Working Paper: NBER ID: w11674
Authors: Alessandra Casella; Thomas Palfrey; Raymond Riezman
Abstract: The paper studies a simple voting system that has the potential to increase the power of minorities without sacrificing aggregate efficiency. Storable votes grant each voter a stock of votes to spend as desidered over a series of binary decisions. By cumulating votes on issues that it deems most important, the minority can win occasionally. But because the majority typically can outvote it, the minority wins only of its strength of preferences is high and the majority's strength of preferences is low. The result is that aggregate efficiency either falls little or in fact rises. The theoretical predictions are confirmed by a series of experiments: the frequency of minority victories, the relative payoff of the minority versus the majority, and the aggregate payoffs all match the theory.
Keywords: Voting; Minorities; Storable Votes; Democracy; Aggregate Efficiency
JEL Codes: C9; D7; H1; K19
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Storable votes (D72) | minority victories (J15) |
| minority preference intensity high and majority preference intensity low (J15) | minority victories (J15) |
| Storable votes (D72) | improved minority representation (J15) |
| Storable votes (D72) | aggregate efficiency (E10) |
| minority victories (J15) | frequency of minority victories aligns with theoretical predictions (D79) |
| Storable votes (D72) | shifts decision-making towards issues that matter more to the minority (D72) |