Warren Smith wrote:
A preliminary page on this now at
http://rangevoting.org/MarketBasedVoting.html
Insights please...
One possible problem of the market paradigm is this: in a market, there
are buyers and sellers. The market finds a clearing price so that supply
balances demand. While the exchange of money can be emulated on one end
by the voters providing "money", it is not clear for what the candidates
use that money.
To be more clear: some amount of "money" represents a position on the
council. However, unlike a true market, a candidate acquiring more
"money" can't use it. Thus, it's no longer clear why one would want
allocative efficiency in the market sense.
Or take an auction. An auction is a method to pair sellers (who provide
some good) with buyers (who have money) so that the sellers get as much
money as possible for the goods that they sell. The theoretical optimal
auction finds the best such set of pairings. But in a multiwinner
election context, if votes are money, then why should the candidates
want to get as much money as possible? They only need to pass a
threshold to get on the council - any more voting power is simply
wasted, because no candidate can hold more than one seat.
If we use weighted council votes, then I don't think we have to bother
with markets at all: simply give each candidate power proportional to
the number of votes he got. Use Plurality or cumulative. If the weights
have to be rational, use your favorite apportionment method.
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