Good Rationalizations of Voting Rules

The concept of distance rationalizability allows one to define new voting rules or "rationalize" existing ones via a consensus class of elections and a distance. A consensus class consists of elections in which there is a consensus in the society who should win. A distance measures the deviation of the actual election from consensus elections. Together, a consensus class and a distance define a voting rule: a candidate is declared an election winner if she is the consensus candidate in one of the nearest consensus elections. It is known that many classic voting rules are defined in this way or can be represented via a consensus class and a distance, i.e., distance-rationalized. In this paper, we focus on the power and the limits of the distance rationalizability approach. We first show that if we do not place any restrictions on the class of possible distances then essentially all voting rules are distance-rationalizable. Thus, to make the concept of distance ratioanalizabil...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: AAAI
• Authors: Edith Elkind, Piotr Faliszewski, Arkadii M. Slinko
• Keywords: AAAI 2010, Consensus Class, Consensus Elections, Intelligent Agents, Voting Rules