Suitable Properties for Any Electronic Voting System

Abstract

Numerous countries are heading toward digital infrastructures. In particular this new technology promises to help support methods for elections. However, one should be careful that such an infrastructure does not hinder the voting and representation issues. On the contrary, it should support those issues and help citizens have a clearer picture of the underlying mechanisms. This paper deals with the limits of voting procedures as they are described in classical collective choice theory and reflects on ways to aggregate electronic votes stemming from various individuals that would be at the same time democratic, decisive and rational which is not feasible when candidate rankings alone are taken into account. This paper shows how electronic voting procedures could improve the situation by introducing preference-based votes.