I am very interested in what may be called alternative voting systems. These interests cover proportional representation, direct democracy, referenda, technological advances in voting systems, etc. Does anyone else have interests in these areas or have any information they can share with me such as publications in these areas, academics working in these areas?
There are a number of people working in the area of Alternative Voting and Proportional representation. A good source would be the Electoral Reform Society, which has a website in the UK. They have been pushing very hard for Proportional Representation going back to the time of Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). I think there is also a branch in Scotland. Ken Ritchie was running it a few years ago, but I think somebody else took over. Ritchie and Gardini presented a very nice paper at a LSE workshop a few years ago in France that defends using Alternative Voting. It is in an edited volume from the conference by Dan Felsenthal and Moshe Machover (Electoral Systems: Paradoxes, Assumptions and Procedures, Springer Publishing, 2012). Another area that gets a lot of new attention is Range Voting, and there is an organization that is dedicated to promoting it, with a website. There is also Approval Voting that is primarily promoted by Steve Brams these days, since Peter Fishburn retired. Approval voting is getting a lot of attention, with an edited volume "Handbook of Approval Voting" that was recently put out by Lean-Francois Laslier and Remzi Sanver.
Thank you William. I will look for the sources you suggest. After this I will post a more detailed reply.
You will find some relevant publications under my name - here on ResearchGate and more widely on the web.
Just for the record - the Electoral Reform Society is a UK-wide organisation, with members throughout the UK and further afield. Its HQ is in London, but it has offices with permanent staff in both Scotland and Wales.
James Gilmour
Dear Paul, I also worked with co-authors on the properties of approval voting. We find that it performs very well, almost as well as if a fully informed benevolent dictator was to make the decision, actually. You will find two such papers on Laurent Bouton's website (his is more up-to-date than mine):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz2volNj-oH7d1RkLVRHclQ2dG8/edit?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz2volNj-oH7S2dFMEFYemRtdm8/edit?usp=sharing
Very best,
Micael
Yes, i am interested and hope that we can produce some relevant papers on this subject asap because we are now witnessing one of the greatest threats to voting rights in the history of this country! Bob starks
One of the specific threats is the online voting machines that many scholars and researchers have said are subject to manipulation and sabotage.
But what about the paper voting cards that saw Jed Bush elected when he polled less votes? I am not supporting electronic voting systems but surely all systems are open to manipulation?
A student in one of my classes is doing a paper on e-voting in Estonia. There are a lot of neat extensions from the voter ID swipe mechanism (costs $7 and plugs into your computer) in banking and other secure transactions. One article he cites is: Tsahkna, A. (2013). E-voting: Lessons from estonia. European View, 12(1), 59-66. doi:10.1007/s12290-013-0261-7
I am, cfr. my fundamental contribution, Democracy with sequential choice and fund voting, and other contributions presented on ResearchGate.
Perhaps we should mention Majoriity Judgement system as well. It has been discussed in extenso by its main proponent Michel Balinski and Rida Laraki in their book published in 2010 by MIT Press.
Your question is broad an open-ended, so I take the liberty of posting an answer somewhat different from those proposed already. For mechanisms facilitating direct democracy, applying reasoning inspired by Nobel prize winner James Buchanan, the following paper may be of interest. It shows how citizens elect and vote in a more direct sense. The extensive reference list (since you request publications) provides further examples:
1. Hausken, K. and Knutsen, J.F. (2010), “An Enabling Mechanism for the Creation, Adjustment, and Dissolution of States and Governmental Units,” Economics: The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, Vol. 4, 2010-32. doi:10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2010-32, http://dx.doi.org/10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2010-32.
You don't specify whether your focus is elections as operating in the Western World or e.g. the third world. The next three papers, and the references therein, throw some light on the nature of elections in Africa.
2. Hausken, K. and Ncube, M. (2014), “Determinants of Election Outcomes: New evidence from Africa,” African Development Review 26, 4, 610-630.
3. Hausken, K. and Ncube, M. (2015), “Production, Economic Growth and Conflict in Risky Elections,” Journal of African Elections 14, 2, 34-49.
4. Hausken, K. and Ncube, M. (2016), “How Elections are Impacted by Production, Economic Growth and Conflict,” International Game Theory Review 18, 1, 1550015, 29 pages, DOI: 10.1142/S0219198915500152.
Article An Enabling Mechanism for the Creation, Adjustment, and Diss...
Article Determinants of Election Outcomes: New Evidence from Africa
Article How Elections are Impacted by Production, Economic Growth and Conflict
Article Production, Economic Growth and Conflict in Risky Elections
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