Working Paper: NBER ID: w25510
Authors: Alessandra Casella; Luis Sanchez
Abstract: Storable Votes and Quadratic Voting are voting systems designed to account for voters’ intensity of preferences. We test their performance in two samples of California residents using data on four initiatives prepared for the 2016 California ballot. We bootstrap the original samples and generate two sets of 10,000 multi-elections simulations. As per design, both systems induce minority victories and result in higher expected welfare relative to majority voting. In our parametrization, quadratic voting induces more minority victories and achieves higher average welfare, but causes more frequent inefficient minority victories. The results are robust to different plausible rules-of-thumb in casting votes.
Keywords: storable votes; quadratic voting; voter preferences; California propositions
JEL Codes: D02; D71; D72
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Storable Votes (SV) (D79) | minority victories (J15) |
| Quadratic Voting (QV) (D72) | minority victories (J15) |
| Storable Votes (SV) (D79) | expected welfare (D69) |
| Quadratic Voting (QV) (D72) | expected welfare (D69) |
| Quadratic Voting (QV) (D72) | average welfare (I30) |
| Storable Votes (SV) (D79) | inefficient minority victories (D72) |
| Quadratic Voting (QV) (D72) | inefficient minority victories (D72) |