Exploring the Effects on the Electoral College of National and Regional Popular Vote Interstate Compact: An Electoral Engineering Perspective

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the consequences of the formation of either a Regional Popular Vote Interstate compact or a National Popular Vote Interstate compact on the functioning of the Electoral College. The two versions of interstate Compact which are considered here differ in only one respect: in one case the interstate compact allocates its electoral votes to the regional popular winner while in the other case it allocates these votes to the national popular winner. They both differ from the ongoing National Popular Vote Interstate Compact as it is assumed that the agreement is effective as soon as the members sign it. The decisiveness and welfare analysis are conducted for a simplified symmetric theoretical version of the Electoral College where the malapportionment problems are absent. The three most popular probabilistic models are considered and the study is conducted either from the self-interest perspective of the initiators of the interstate compact or from a general interest perspective. The analysis combines analytical arguments and simulations

Exploring the Effects on the Electoral College of National and Regional Popular Vote Interstate Compact: An Electoral Engineering Perspective

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the consequences of the formation of either a Regional Popular Vote Interstate compact or a National Popular Vote Interstate compact on the functioning of the Electoral College. The two versions of interstate Compact which are considered here differ in only one respect: in one case the interstate compact allocates its electoral votes to the regional popular winner while in the other case it allocates these votes to the national popular winner. They both differ from the ongoing National Popular Vote Interstate Compact as it is assumed that the agreement is effective as soon as the members sign it. The decisiveness and welfare analysis are conducted for a simplified symmetric theoretical version of the Electoral College where the malapportionment problems are absent. The three most popular probabilistic models are considered and the study is conducted either from the self-interest perspective of the initiators of the interstate compact or from a general interest perspective. The analysis combines analytical arguments and simulations

“One Man, One Vote” Part 1: Electoral Justice in the U.S. Electoral College: Banzhaf and Shapley/Shubik versus May

This paper is dedicated to the measurement of (or lack of) electoral justice in the 2010 Electoral College using a methodology based on the expected influence of the vote of each citizen for three probability models. Our first contribution is to revisit and reproduce the results obtained by Owen (1975) for the 1960 and 1970 Electoral College. His work displays an intriguing coincidence between the conclusions drawn respectively from the Banzhaf and Shapley-Shubik’s probability models. Both probability models conclude to a violation of electoral justice at the expense of small states. Our second contribution is to demonstrate that this conclusion is completely flipped upside-down when we use May’s probability model: this model leads instead to a violation of electoral justice at the expense of large states. Besides unifying disparate approaches through a common measurement methodology, one main lesson of the paper is that the conclusions are sensitive to the probability models which are used and in particular to the type and magnitude of correlation between voters that they carry

Weighted simple games and the topology of simplicial complexes

We use simplicial complexes to model weighted voting games where certain coalitions are considered unlikely or impossible. Expressions for Banzhaf and Shapley-Shubik power indices for such games in terms of the topology of simplicial complexes are provided. We calculate the indices in several examples of weighted voting games with unfeasible coalitions, including the U.S. Electoral College and the Parliament of Bosnia-Herzegovina.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures, 4 table

Welfare ordering of voting weight allocations

This paper studies the allocation of voting weights in a committee representing groups of different sizes. We introduce a partial ordering of weight allocations based on stochastic comparison of social welfare. We show that when the number of groups is sufficiently large, this ordering asymptotically coincides with the total ordering induced by the cosine proportionality between the weights and the group sizes. A corollary is that a class of expectation-form objective functions, including expected welfare, the mean majority deficit and the probability of inversions, are asymptotically monotone in the cosine proportionality

The Theoretical Shapley-Shubik Probability of an Election Inversion in a Toy Symmetric Version of the U.S. Presidential Electoral System

International audienceIn this article, we evaluate asymptotically the probability ϕ(n) of an election inversion in a toy symmetric version of the US presidential electoral system. The novelty of this paper, in contrast to all the existing theoretical literature, is to assume that votes are drawn from an IAC (Impartial Anonymous Culture)/Shapley–Shubik probability model. Through the use of numerical methods, it is conjectured, that n−−√ϕ(n) converges to 0.1309 when n (the size of the electorate in one district) tends to infinity. It is also demonstrated that ϕ(n)=o(ln(n)3n−−−−√) and ϕ(n)=Ω(1n√)

Three Risky Decades: A Time for Econophysics?

Our Special Issue we publish at a turning point, which we have not dealt with since World War II. The interconnected long-term global shocks such as the coronavirus pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and catastrophic climate change have imposed significant humanitary, socio-economic, political, and environmental restrictions on the globalization process and all aspects of economic and social life including the existence of individual people. The planet is trapped—the current situation seems to be the prelude to an apocalypse whose long-term effects we will have for decades. Therefore, it urgently requires a concept of the planet's survival to be built—only on this basis can the conditions for its development be created. The Special Issue gives evidence of the state of econophysics before the current situation. Therefore, it can provide excellent econophysics or an inter-and cross-disciplinary starting point of a rational approach to a new era