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68 Vand. L. Rev. 441 (2015)
Voting Squared: Quadratic Voting in Democratic Politics

handle is hein.journals/vanlr68 and id is 455 raw text is: Voting Squared: Quadratic Voting in Democratic Politics Eric A. Posner* E. Glen Weyl** Conventional democratic institutions aggregate preferences poorly. The norm of one-person-one-vote with majority rule treats people fairly by giving everyone an equal chance to influence outcomes but fails to give proportional weight to people whose interests in a social outcome are stronger than those of other people. This problem leads to the familiar phenomenon of tyranny of the majority. Various institutions that have been tried or proposed over the years to correct this problem-including supermajority rule, weighted voting, cumulative voting, mixed constitutions, executive discretion, and judicially protected rights-all badly misfire in various ways, for example, by creating gridlock or corruption. This Article proposes a new form of political decisionmaking based on the theory of quadratic voting. It explains how quadratic voting solves the preference-aggregation problem by giving proper weight to preferences of varying intensity, how it can be incorporated into political institutions, and why it should improve equity. I. INTRODUCTION .............................. ...... 442 II. THE PROBLEM OF INTENSE PREFERENCES IN DEMOCRACY ........................................ 447 A. Ancient Times ................................ 447 B. The Modern Period..................... ...... 451 1. The Attractions of Supermajority Rule........ 451 * Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor and Arthur and Esther Kane Research Chair, University of Chicago Law School. ** Researcher, Microsoft Research and Assistant Professor of Economics and Law, University of Chicago. The authors are also the cofounders of Collective Decision Engines, a startup venture that seeks to commercialize quadratic voting. Thanks to Fabrizio Cariani, Jordan Ellenberg, Ben Laurence, Daryl Levinson, Jonathan Masur, Philip Pettit, Sparsha Saha, Adrian Vermeule, and participants at workshops at the University of Chicago Law School and St. John's Law School for helpful comments, and to Matthew Brincks, Siobhan Fabio, John Moynihan, Michael Olijnyk, Paul Rogerson, Tim Rudnicki, and Robert Sandoval for research assistance. 441

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