Storable Votes and Quadratic Voting. An Experiment on Four California Propositions

Storable Votes and Quadratic Voting are voting systems designed to account for voters' intensity of preferences. We test their performance in two samples of California residents using data on four initiatives prepared for the 2016 California ballot. We bootstrap the original samples and generate two sets of 10,000 multi-elections simulations. As per design, both systems induce minority victories and result in higher expected welfare relative to majority voting. In our parametrization, quadratic voting induces more minority victories and achieves higher average welfare, but causes more frequent inefficient minority victories. The results are robust to different plausible rules-of-thumb in casting votes. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at "http://www.nber.org/papers/w25510"