Voting rules that are unbiased but not transitive-symmetric

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Publication:2288166



Abstract: We explore the relation between two natural symmetry properties of voting rules. The first is transitive-symmetry -- the property of invariance to a transitive permutation group -- while the second is the "unbiased" property of every voter having the same influence for all i.i.d. probability measures. We show that these properties are distinct by two constructions -- one probabilistic, one explicit -- of rules that are unbiased but not transitive-symmetric.


This paper provides two different proofs of existence of binary voting rules which are unbiased, in the sense that every voter has the same influence for every independent identically distributed probability distribution, but not transitive-symmetric, in the sense that, for every pair of voters \(u\) and \(v\), there is an automorphism \(\sigma\) such that \(\sigma(u)=v\). First, a probabilistic proof that there exist voting rules that are unbiased and, besides not transitive-symmetric, also totally asymmetric, in the sense of having no nontrivial automorphisms. In a second approach, a class of voting rule is built that is unbiased, but neither transitive-symmetric nor totally asymmetric. The result holds for voting rules \(\Phi\) that are odd, i.e. such that \(\Phi(-x)=-\Phi(x)\), and monotone, i.e. such that \(\Phi(x)>\Phi(x0)\) whenever \(x>x0\) coordinate-wise.











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