Online Social Choice and Welfare Seminar: Antoinette Baujard, Tuesday 31 March
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Marcus Pivato
Mar 25, 2026, 3:47:39 PMMar 25
to social-choice-a...@googlegroups.com, com...@duke.edu
[with apologies for cross-posting]
Dear all,
The next presentation in the Online Social Choice and Welfare Seminar will be next Tuesday (31 March). Here are the details.
Time: 5PM GMT (10AM Vancouver, 1PM Toronto/Montréal, 2PM Rio de Janeiro, 6PM London, 7PM Saint Etienne, 8PM Istanbul, 10:30PM New Delhi)
Speaker: Antoinette Baujard (GATE, Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne)
Title: "How people understand novel voting rules: approval voting, evaluative voting and majority judgment"
Abstract. A primary condition of individuals' empowerment in their selection or use of a voting rule is that they understand it. Two papers analyze people's understanding of three voting rules: approval voting, evaluative voting and majority judgment. We draw on results from two data sets, first a lab experiment on incentivized voting where participants are exogenously assigned single-peaked preferences (first paper) and, second, a survey based on two representative samples of 1000 French voters, organized during the first round of the French presidential election (second paper). We distinguish three components of understanding of voting rules: how to fill in the ballot; how votes are aggregated; and how to vote strategically. We scrutinize each component by observing the respondents' voting behaviors and their answers to comprehension questions on the rules. First, from both data sets, we find that most participants understand how to fill in the ballot with the three novel voting rules. Second, in the lab experiment, participants' understanding of vote aggregation under majority judgment is lower and, crucially, more heterogeneous than with evaluative voting and approval voting. The fact that majority judgment is poorly understood is particularly striking in the representative survey. Third, participants' voting behavior is oddly similar between evaluative voting and majority judgment. Data from the lab experiment confirm the theoretical prediction that under evaluative voting there will be a high incidence of strategic voting through the use of extreme grades, but contradict the prediction that under majority judgment voters will vote less strategically. We also find that with majority judgment, the better voters understand how votes are aggregated, the more they use extreme grades. Fourth, the responses from the representative survey revealed genuine confusion among participants testing majority judgment, who conflated its vote aggregation process with the one used in evaluative voting. These results complement social choice theory by enabling an analysis of the properties of voting rules in practice.
(Joint work with Roberto Brunetti and Isabelle Lebon)
Reminder: On the seminar website you can find the video recordings, slides and supplementary materials for all past presentations, as well as information about future presentations.
Dear all,
The next presentation in the Online Social Choice and Welfare Seminar will be next Tuesday (31 March). Here are the details.
Time: 5PM GMT (10AM Vancouver, 1PM Toronto/Montréal, 2PM Rio de Janeiro, 6PM London, 7PM Saint Etienne, 8PM Istanbul, 10:30PM New Delhi)
Speaker: Antoinette Baujard (GATE, Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne)
Title: "How people understand novel voting rules: approval voting, evaluative voting and majority judgment"
Abstract. A primary condition of individuals' empowerment in their selection or use of a voting rule is that they understand it. Two papers analyze people's understanding of three voting rules: approval voting, evaluative voting and majority judgment. We draw on results from two data sets, first a lab experiment on incentivized voting where participants are exogenously assigned single-peaked preferences (first paper) and, second, a survey based on two representative samples of 1000 French voters, organized during the first round of the French presidential election (second paper). We distinguish three components of understanding of voting rules: how to fill in the ballot; how votes are aggregated; and how to vote strategically. We scrutinize each component by observing the respondents' voting behaviors and their answers to comprehension questions on the rules. First, from both data sets, we find that most participants understand how to fill in the ballot with the three novel voting rules. Second, in the lab experiment, participants' understanding of vote aggregation under majority judgment is lower and, crucially, more heterogeneous than with evaluative voting and approval voting. The fact that majority judgment is poorly understood is particularly striking in the representative survey. Third, participants' voting behavior is oddly similar between evaluative voting and majority judgment. Data from the lab experiment confirm the theoretical prediction that under evaluative voting there will be a high incidence of strategic voting through the use of extreme grades, but contradict the prediction that under majority judgment voters will vote less strategically. We also find that with majority judgment, the better voters understand how votes are aggregated, the more they use extreme grades. Fourth, the responses from the representative survey revealed genuine confusion among participants testing majority judgment, who conflated its vote aggregation process with the one used in evaluative voting. These results complement social choice theory by enabling an analysis of the properties of voting rules in practice.
(Joint work with Roberto Brunetti and Isabelle Lebon)
To obtain the Zoom link, please subscribe to the Seminar Mailing List, or contact one of the organisers.
Reminder: On the seminar website you can find the video recordings, slides and supplementary materials for all past presentations, as well as information about future presentations.
--
Marcus Pivato
Centre d'Économie de la Sorbonne
Centre d'Économie de la Sorbonne
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
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