The effect of handicaps on turnout for large electorates with an application to assessment voting
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: The effect of handicaps on turnout for large electorates with an application to assessment voting
zbMATH Open document ID: 1476.91055
author: Hans Gersbach
author: Akaki Mamageishvili
author: Oriol Tejada
published in: Journal of Economic Theory
publication date: 2021-08-11T00:00:00Z
review text: The authors consider a game-theoretic model of voting, where the voters have to bear some cost when they decide to cast a vote, and one of the two candidates (alternatives) is handicapped in the sense that a handicapped candidate needs to gather some extra votes to win with an opponent. It turns out that for a large handicap (relatively to the cost of voting) the strategy that the voters abstain from voting is in equilibrium (called the no-show equilibrium), while for a small handicap other strategies can be in equilibrium (either coexisting with the no-show equilibrium, or ruling it out). The extensions of the basic model, like introducing partisan voters (no-cost voters), variable cost among voters' preferences and multiple candidates, are shortly addressed as well. As an application of the presented theory the assessment voting is proposed. It is a two-stage voting, where a potentially small assessment group of randomly chosen voters participates in a pre-voting, next the outcome of this pre-voting is made public and finally the whole population of voters (excluding assessment group) is allowed to add their votes to the pre-voting pool of votes. Under suitable assumptions, the outcome of the assessment voting procedure is in agreement with the outcome of the pre-voting. The article includes a thorough discussion of the existing body of literature; current examples from politics are brought to the reader's attention.
reviewed by: Krzysztof Leśniak
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 91B12
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 91A80
zbMATH DE Number: 7380911
zbMATH Keywords: turnout
zbMATH Keywords: referenda
zbMATH Keywords: elections
zbMATH Keywords: pivotal voting
zbMATH Keywords: private value
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: j.jet.2021.105228
OpenAlex ID: W3133384207
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DOI: 10.1016/J.JET.2021.105228
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 7380911