A characterization of Approval Voting without the approval balloting assumption

Federica Ceron (1, 2) , Stéphane Gonzalez (3, 4)

1 UPEC UP12 - Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12
2 UP1 UFR02 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - École d'économie de la Sorbonne
3 UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne
4 GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne

We provide an axiomatic characterization of Approval Voting without the approval balloting assumption. The dichotomous structure of the informational basis of Approval voting as well as its aggregative rationale are jointly derived from a set of normative conditions on the voting procedure. The first one is the well-known social-theoretic principle of consistency; the second one, ballot richness, requires voters to be able to express a sufficiently rich set of opinions; the last one, dubbed no single-voter overrides, demands that the addition of a voter to an electorate cannot radically change the outcome of the election. Such result is promising insofar it suggests that the informational basis of voting may have a normative relevance that deserves formal treatment.

Mots clés: Informational basis; balloting procedure; Approval voting; Evaluative voting

Domaines: Economies et finances

Federica Ceron, Stéphane Gonzalez. A characterization of Approval Voting without the approval balloting assumption. 2019. ⟨halshs-02440615⟩