The paradox of multiple elections

In both individual and collective decision making, the space of alternatives from which the agent (or the group of agents) has to choose often has a combinatorial (or multi-attribute) structure. We give an introduction to preference handling in combinatorial domains in the context of collective decision making, and show that the considerable body of work on preference representation and elicitation that AI researchers have been working on for several years is particularly relevant. After giving an overview of languages for compact representation of preferences, we discuss problems in voting in combinatorial domains, and then focus on multiagent resource allocation and fair division. These issues belong to a larger field, known as computational social choice, that brings together ideas from AI and social choice theory, to investigate mechanisms for collective decision making from a computational point of view. We conclude by briefly describing some of the other research topics studied in computational social choice.

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“…Such paradoxes have been studied by a number of authors (Brams, Kilgour, & Zwicker 1998;Benoit & Kornhauser 1999;Lacy & Niou 2000).…”

Section: Multiple Election Paradoxesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preference Handling in Combinatorial Domains: From AI to Social Choice

et al. 2008

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“…They found the winning combination for three environmental propositions on the November 1990 California ballot is only the fourth most popular combination. When Brams, Kilgour, and Zwicker (1998) expanded the analysis to include all 28 statewide propositions from November 1990, they found that none of the voters in Los Angeles County selected the winning combination for the county. 9 Brams Zwicker (1997, 1998) also identified the paradox in the federal election context (President, Senate, House).…”

Section: Paradoxesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3 Brams, Kilgour, and Zwicker (1998) indicate that the strongest form of the paradox occurs when the winning combination is the least popular combination. When the winning combination is not the least popular combination, they characterize the finding as a weaker form of the paradox.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Paradox of Multiple Elections and Divided Government

Lowenthal¹

2006

ARP

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In this paper, I identify a relationship between the paradox of multiple elections (PME) (Brams, Kilgour, and Zwicker 1997, 1998) and divided government. PME occurs when voters who face several elections may not know the results of one election before they vote in another. Often the winning combination (the set of winners of each individual election) is not a combination that most voters prefer. ANES data shows that when elections result in divided government PME emerges; when elections result in one party rule, PME is not present. While the 2000 elections break a pattern found in the 12 previous presidential elections, a new definition explains the anomaly. This study concludes that elections reflect majority preferences when they exist, but otherwise tend to be some-hat arbitrary.

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“…Furthermore, given that the voters voting in the individual primaries, as well as in the general election, are not identical sets of decision-makers, there is ripe possibility for inconsistent social choices even if the individual preferences are consistent and the individual stages unproblematic (cf. Brams, Kilgour and Zwicker 1998;Kurrild-Klitgaard 2013). And this is even without including the potential problems arising from the existence of the Electoral College (Miller 2011;Miller 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trump, Condorcet and Borda: Voting paradoxes in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries

Kurrild-Klitgaard

2018

European Journal of Political Economy

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Abstract. The organization of US presidential elections make them potentially vulnerable to so-called "voting paradoxes", identified by social choice theorists but rarely documented empirically. The presence of a record high number of candidates in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries may have made this possibility particularly latent. Using polling data from the primaries we identify two possible cases: Early in the pre-primary (2015) a cyclical majority may have existed in Republican voters' preferences between Bush, Cruz and Walker-thereby giving a rare example of the Condorcet Paradox. Furthermore, later polling data (March 2016) suggests that while Trump (who achieved less than 50% of the total Republican primary vote) was the Plurality Winner, he could have been beaten in pairwise contests by at least one other candidate-thereby exhibiting a case of the Borda Paradox. The cases confirm the empirical relevance of the theoretical voting paradoxes and the importance of voting procedures.

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The paradox of multiple elections

Cited by 126 publications

References 22 publications

Preference Handling in Combinatorial Domains: From AI to Social Choice

Preference Handling in Combinatorial Domains: From AI to Social Choice

The Paradox of Multiple Elections and Divided Government

Trump, Condorcet and Borda: Voting paradoxes in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries

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