Bid Voting

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Brian Langstraat

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May 31, 2017, 11:38:32 AM5/31/17
to The Center for Election Science
Bid Voting (BV) would be a voting method for single-winner and multi-winner elections that uses Range Voting (RV) ballots to have a "Silent Auction".

1. Voters give a score within a range (0-99, blanks=0) to each candidate on the ballot.
2. Scores are summed to calculate the score totals for each candidate.
3. The winning threshold = number of remaining voters * average of top remaining scores (90) / number of remaining winner(s).
[Example: Winning threshold = 1,000 voters * 90 / 5 remaining winners = 18000 score total]
4. If no candidates have score totals that exceed the winning threshold, then the scores are ignored (until a winner is determined) for the candidate with the lowest score total.
5. Steps 2,3, and 4 are repeated until at least one candidate exceeds the winning threshold.
6. The candidate with the highest score total (that exceeds the winning threshold) wins.
7. The winning candidate's highest scores are summed until they exceed the winning threshold, and votes are exhausted that contributed to exceeding the winning threshold (including all equal scores that are used to pass the winning threshold boundary).
8. Steps 2 through 7 are repeated until the winner(s) are determined.

Voters would need to make careful decisions with how to score each candidate.
Each score is contributed toward the score total for a winner, but only the highest scores would have their votes exhausted to exceed the winning threshold.
Voting too high for a favorite candidate could result in an exhausted vote without contributing scores to other preferred candidates.
Additionally, many equal high scores (99) would cause unnecessary votes to be exhausted for like-minded voters, thus a variety of high scores should be used.

Coordinating like-minded voters would be difficult, since voters may try to "low bid" each other to be able to contribute to multiple winning candidates.
However, bidding too low could result in a voter's favorite candidate not being a winner.

Candidates with low score totals at the beginning would have their scores ignored during early counting rounds, but could be winners in later counting rounds.

Bid Voting may not be a great voting method, but I am curious about its implications.
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