Originated by Aanund Hylland and Richard Zeckhauser (A Mechanism for Selecting Public Goods When Preferences Must Be Elicited, 1980) and developed by E. Glen Weyl (Quadratic Vote Buying, 2012), with Steven P. Lalley (2018) and Eric A. Posner (Radical Markets, 2018).
Gives each voter a budget of credits to spread across issues, where casting several votes on one issue costs the square of their number, so strength of preference counts.
When to reach for it
Groups setting priorities across many items, where simple majority voting would drown out the people who care most about a few of them.
How it runs
- Give every voter the same budget of credits.
- List the items to be decided.
- Let voters cast votes for or against each item.
- Charge the square of the votes cast on each item.
- Total the votes per item and rank the results.
Where it sits in SOLVE eX
Go to the source
- A Mechanism for Selecting Public Goods When Preferences Must Be Elicited, Kennedy School of Government discussion paper, 1980
- Quadratic Vote Buying, working paper, 2012
- Quadratic Voting: How Mechanism Design Can Radicalize Democracy, AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2018
- Radical Markets, 2018