Voters whose yes-or-no decision never makes a difference to the outcome in a simple voting game are known as “null players”. Luxembourg’s role in the Council of Ministers during the first period of the European Economic Community (EEC) is often cited as a real-world case. The paper...

Weighted committees allow shareholders, party leaders, etc. to wield different numbers of votes or voting weights as they decide between multiple candidates by a given social choice method. We consider committees that apply scoring methods such as plurality, Borda, or antiplurality rule. Many...

Voters whose yes-or-no decision never makes a difference to the outcome in a simple voting game are known as 'null players'. Luxembourg's role in the Council of Ministers during the first period of the European Economic Community (EEC) is often cited as a real-world case. The paper contrasts the...

Players in a committee, council, or electoral college often wield asymmetric numbers of votes. Binary decision environments are then conventionally modeled as weighted voting games. We introduce weighted committee games in order to describe decisions on three or more alternatives in similarly...

Weighted committees allow shareholders, party leaders, etc. to wield different numbers of votes or voting weights as they decide between multiple candidates by a given social choice method. We consider committees that apply scoring methods such as plurality, Borda, or antiplurality rule. Many...

This thesis deals with the measurement of voting power in different decision environments. After a short introduction in Chapter 1, several established concepts for power analysis are reviewed and applied in Chapters 2 and 3. Chapters 4 and 5 step on new ground by introducing a power index for a...