Who should cast the casting vote? Using sequential voting to amalgamate information

Who should cast the casting vote? Using sequential voting to amalgamate information

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Article ID: iaor20173205
Volume: 83
Issue: 2
Start Page Number: 259
End Page Number: 282
Publication Date: Aug 2017
Journal: Theory and Decision
Authors:
Keywords: behaviour, decision theory
Abstract:

In this study, we are concerned with how agents can best amalgamate their private information about a binary state of Nature. The agents are heterogeneous in their ‘ability’, the quality of their private information. The agents cannot directly communicate their private information but instead can only vote between the two states (say ‘Innocent’ or ‘Guilty’ on a criminal jury). We first describe possible methods of sequential majority voting, and then we analyze a particular one: the first n 1 equ1 jurors vote simultaneously and, in the case of a tie, the remaining juror has the casting vote. We prove that when n = 3 equ2 (a common situation for a tribunal of three judges), the probability of a correct verdict is maximized when the agent of median ability has the casting vote.

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