Efficient democratic decisions via nondeterministic proportional consensus

TL;DR

This paper introduces two nondeterministic voting methods that ensure fair power distribution, promote consensus, and reduce bias, supported by theoretical analysis and simulations showing improved fairness and stability over traditional methods.

Contribution

The paper presents novel nondeterministic voting methods based on bargaining and commitments, addressing fairness, consensus, and bias issues in strategic voting.

Findings

Minorities cannot be suppressed by majorities as in deterministic methods.

The methods promote consensus and prevent blocking by the status quo.

Aggregate welfare is comparable to existing voting methods, with lower randomness.

Abstract

Are there voting methods which (i) give everyone, including minorities, an equal share of effective power even if voters act strategically, (ii) promote consensus rather than polarization and inequality, and (iii) do not favour the status quo or rely too much on chance? We show the answer is yes by describing two nondeterministic voting methods, one based on automatic bargaining over lotteries, the other on conditional commitments to approve compromise options. Our theoretical analysis and agent-based simulation experiments suggest that with these, majorities cannot consistently suppress minorities as with deterministic methods, proponents of the status quo cannot block decisions as in consensus-based approaches, the resulting aggregate welfare is comparable to existing methods, and average randomness is lower than for other nondeterministic methods.