# The Distortion of Binomial Voting Defies Expectation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.15657 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15657/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Jun 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Proportional Participatory Budgeting with Additive Utilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.13276/) (2020)
- [Distortion in Social Choice Problems: The First 15 Years and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00911/) (2021)
- [Optimized Distortion and Proportional Fairness in Voting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15760/) (2022)
- [Resolving the Optimal Metric Distortion Conjecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07447/) (2020)
- [Neutralizing Self-Selection Bias in Sampling for Sortition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10498/) (2020)
- [Plurality Veto: A Simple Voting Rule Achieving Optimal Metric Distortion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07098/) (2022)
- [Randomized Social Choice Functions Under Metric Preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.07590/) (2015)
- [A Mathematical Model for Optimal Decisions in a Representative Democracy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06157/) (2018)
- [The Best of Both Worlds: Asymptotically Efficient Mechanisms with a Guarantee on the Expected Gains-From-Trade](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.08023/) (2018)
- [Of the People: Voting Is More Effective with Representative Candidates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.01736/) (2017)
- [On the Distortion of Voting with Multiple Representative Candidates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07600/) (2017)
- [On the Distortion Value of the Elections with Abstention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.09851/) (2018)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In computational social choice, the distortion of a voting rule quantifies the degree to which the rule overcomes limited preference information to select a socially desirable outcome. This concept has been investigated extensively, but only through a worst-case lens. Instead, we study the expected distortion of voting rules with respect to an underlying distribution over voter utilities. Our main contribution is the design and analysis of a novel and intuitive rule, binomial voting, which provides strong distribution-independent guarantees for both expected distortion and expected welfare.