This article compares two mechanisms for measuring preference intensity—Storable Votes (SV) vs. Quadratic Voting (QV)—across four California ballot measures.
The Challenge: Traditional voting systems capture only whether citizens prefer a policy but not how strongly they feel about it.
👉 What We Did: Analyzed survey responses from voters deciding on four California propositions to see which system better reflects voter intensity in the absence of established preferences.
📊 Methods & Findings: Compared SV and QV profiles against actual voting outcomes. Found that while both systems capture more nuanced preference information than standard binary votes, their predictive accuracy varies significantly by proposition type—fiscals vs. social issues.
⚖️ Why It Matters: The results suggest policy designers should consider the specific context when implementing preference measurement mechanisms.
| Democracy and Intensity of Preferences: A Test of Storable Votes and Quadratic Voting on Four California Propositions was authored by Alessandra Casella and Luis Sanchez. It was published by Chicago in JOP in 2022. |
