Majority voting rules with quorums and status-quo bias

Abstract

In this article, we investigate majority voting rules and majority voting rules with quorums which take no social abstention decision and characterize these voting rules in the framework of May(Econometrica 20:680-684,1952). Standard voting schemes allow society, confronting two alternatives, to choose abstention (namely social indifference between the two). However, in actual politics, a resolute decision between the two has to be made. In this regard, we define alternative majority voting rules which take no abstention decision. - we call them "pseudo majority voting rules". Also, in actual politics, to obviate the case where an alternative is elected with very poor support, quorums are sometimes required of standard voting schemes. Regarding the problem of social abstention and quorums, we define "majority voting rules with quorums and status-quo bias" which which are similar to majority voting rules with quorums by Houy(Theory and decision 67(3):295-301, 2009) but which are biased in favor of the status-quo.