Quadratic allocation

Quadratic allocation approach for per decision points allocation approaches

Overview

A quadratic allocation approach means that the cost of allocating more points to a single proposal increases quadratically. Voters could allocate their points on one proposal or across multiple proposals. This approach can be effective for encouraging people to spread their points across multiple proposals whilst also not forcing them to do so.

High accuracy & expressiveness (Score - 4)

Voters are still able to express their exact preferences when allocating their points across multiple proposals. The voter is encouraged to spread their votes across numerous proposals due to the fact that they will diminish their own voting power if they consolidate points on a single proposal. This approach can be effective for encouraging people to not consolidate their points to just one or a few proposals; however it does so by punishing the voters that do consolidate their allocated points. This could be problematic for certain voting behaviours where a voter only has the time and capacity to vote on a few proposals or when they don’t necessarily agree with the other proposals. A benefit of this approach is it encourages voters to compare proposals to allocate points between them which can help with increasing the accuracy of the result as a larger proportion of voters might choose to allocate their points across more proposals.

High voter complexity (Score - 2)

The voter needs to consider how they allocate their points and how much of their voting power they are willing to lose if they want to consolidate any of their allocated points across any of their preferred proposals. If voters don’t want to lose their voting power they would need to allocate their points evenly across many proposals. This could make voting more complex as the voter would need to identify a number of proposals they can equally support which might not exist in that decision. In those situations a voter is forced to dilute their voting power by consolidating their points across fewer proposals that they do approve of. The concern for loss of voting power would be a constant complexity that a voter needs to take into account with every voting decision.

Low time required (Score - 4)

Voters can allocate their points however they like however due to the loss of points from using a quadratic allocation approach the voters would likely need to spend more time considering how they spread their points across their preferred proposals to improve their usage of their voting power in the decision.

High game theory risks (Score - 2)

If a bad actor has enough voting power to influence a decision by consolidating their vote on a single proposal they could still do that however with quadratic allocations this is not very likely due to the increasing loss of voting power from consolidating points. One incentive that a quadratic approach creates for bad actors is to create as many proposals as needed to then allocate their points across them. Increasing the number of proposals to match the amount of points they need to allocate would maximise the impact of their allocated points. If normal voting behaviour had a number of voters that partially or fully consolidated their points across a small number of proposals the bad actors could be given an advantage as their usage of points could be more effective at influencing an outcome as their points could be spread across multiple proposals they submitted. If voters were instead spreading their points across a wide range of proposals this could give bad actors another reason to ensure they have a large number of proposals submitted as they might be allocated some of these points from normal voting behaviour. Voters that feel encouraged to vote in this way to maximise the usage of their voting power may be doing so even though they don’t have enough capacity or interest in reading all of the submitted proposals in enough depth. This behaviour could be another positive outcome for bad actors as they could receive more points due to this. Voters that spread their points out too thin across many proposals could create an opportunity for bad actors to slightly consolidate their points to improve those proposals chances of succeeding.

Total score = 12 / 20