# Binary Voting with Delegable Proxy: An Analysis of Liquid Democracy

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.08741 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.08741/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 27 Jul 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Unravelling multi-agent ranked delegations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13145/) (2021)
- [When Can Liquid Democracy Unveil the Truth?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.01828/) (2021)
- [The Optimal Size of an Epistemic Congress](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.01042/) (2021)
- [Measuring a Priori Voting Power -- Taking Delegations Seriously](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.02462/) (2023)
- [When Does Delegation Beat Majority? A Delegation-Based Aggregator for Multi-Sample LLM Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08098/) (2026)
- [Computation and Bribery of Voting Power in Delegative Simple Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03692/) (2021)
- [Liquid Democracy for Low-Cost Ensemble Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17443/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The paper provides an analysis of the voting method known as delegable proxy voting, or liquid democracy. The analysis first positions liquid democracy within the theory of binary aggregation. It then focuses on two issues of the system: the occurrence of delegation cycles; and the effect of delegations on individual rationality when voting on logically interdependent propositions. It finally points to proposals on how the system may be modified in order to address the above issues.