Storable Votes

多数表决无法解释选民偏好的强度，这导致了许多实际问题。 在多数表决成为规则的地方，少数群体可能得不到充分的保护。 此外，当两个选民对不同的问题有强烈的偏好时，存在着明显的互利机会，这不可避免地导致投票交易，损害透明度，惩罚经验较少的局外人。 特别是在国际组织中，认识到不应强迫主权国家接受它们强烈反对的决定，这通常会导致国家否决，从而有可能导致瘫痪，并增加讨价还价的机会。 理想的情况是，这些否决权应该是有代价的，允许成员国表达其偏好的强度，但只需要付出一定的代价。 这个项目研究一个简单的方案，似乎能够协调多数表决的优势与保护更强烈的感受到的利益。考虑一个委员会定期会议，随着时间的推移，采取影响所有成员的决定。 决定以多数票作出。 然而，每个委员会成员在年初都会得到一张选票，但这些选票是他一年中所能支配的所有选票，但他可以在任何一次会议上自由投票。 然后，委员会成员可以选择增加他们对更强烈感受到的决定的权重，代价是减少他们对其他选择的影响力。 当一个决定更有价值时，使用更多资源的想法是很自然的，但可存储的选票在文献中没有先例。 初步结果表明，随着时间的推移，可以存储的选票比不可存储的选票具有更好的福利属性;即使选民不完全理性，也表现良好，对少数群体更公平，并且比可交易的选票更透明，福利上级。 此外，该机制非常简单，不违反任何道德前提，并且可以实际实施。 理论结果已在初步实验中得到证实。 该研究项目将分析可存储选票的理论特性，从简单的，如果合理的例子，以更一般的情况下，并使用实验作为检查的准确性和理论分析的实际相关性。

The inability of majority voting to account for the intensity of voters' preferences leads to many practical problems. Where majority voting is the rule, minorities may be inadequately protected. In addition, the obvious opportunity for mutual gain existing whenever two voters have strong preferences over different issues inevitably results in vote trading, compromising transparency and penalizing less experienced outsiders. In international organizations, in particular, the recognition that sovereign countries should not be forced to accept decisions to which they strongly object, typically leads to national vetoes, risking paralysis and increasing bargaining. Ideally these vetoes should be costly, allowing member countries to express the intensity of their preferences but only at some cost. This project studies a simple scheme that appears potentially able to reconcile the advantages of majority voting with the protection of more intensely felt interests.Consider a committee meeting regularly over time to take decisions that affect all of its members. Decisions are taken by majority vote. However, each committee member is given a stock of votes at the beginning of the year, with the proviso that these are all the votes at his disposal for the year, but he is free to cast any number of them at any one meeting. Committee members can then choose to increase their weight over more strongly felt decisions, at the cost of reducing their influence over other choices. The idea of using more resources, here more votes, when a decision is valued more is very natural, but storable votes have no precedent in the literature. Initial results suggest that votes that can be stored over time have better welfare properties than non-storable votes; perform well even if voters are not fully rational, are fairer to minorities, and are both more transparent and welfare superior to tradable votes. In addition, the mechanism is very simple, does not violate any ethical prior and could realistically be implemented. The theoretical results have been confirmed in initial experiments. The research project will analyze the theoretical properties of storable votes, moving from simple if plausible examples to more general situations, and using experiments as check on the accuracy and practical relevance of the theoretical analysis.