A threshold for majority in the context of aggregating partial order relations

Abstract

We consider a voting problem where voters have expressed their preferences on a single set of objects. These preferences take the shape of strict partial order relations. In order to allow extraction of a unique strict partial order relation corresponding to a social set of preferences, we determine the minimum number of votes a pairwise preference should receive in order to qualify as a social pairwise preference. Transitive closure of the social pairwise preferences will result in the social set of preferences. At the same time, the social set of preferences needs to be cycle-free, and the minimum number of votes should be determined with this constraint in mind. We provide an example application