23 May 2022, Computational Social Choice Seminar, Marie Schmidtlein

Abstract

In voting theory, we usually develop voting procedures, i.e., how to determine the winner(s) of an election given the voters' preferences, and then analyze their behavior in terms of "axioms". These are desirable properties or normative principles guaranteeing, for instance, fairness or efficiency of the procedure. Recently, a branch of social choice theory has emerged that investigates how axioms themselves can justify choosing a certain outcome in a given situation. So instead of assessing the behavior of a given rule, axioms can actually induce a voting procedure.

In this talk, I present a framework making this idea precise by constructing a voting rule that bases its decisions on preselected axioms. Besides motivating and introducing "Voting by Axioms", I discuss the question in which cases this procedure is well-defined and when the resulting voting rule has good properties. Further, I talk about possible extensions and applications of the model.

For more information on the Computational Social Choice Seminar, please consult https://staff.science.uva.nl/u.endriss/seminar/.