# Designing Digital Voting Systems for Citizens: Achieving Fairness and Legitimacy in Participatory Budgeting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.03501 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03501/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 5 Oct 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Voting or Consensus? Decision-Making in Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19130/) (2025)
- [Generative AI voting: fair collective choice is resilient to LLM biases and inconsistencies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11871/) (2024)
- [CrowdLLM: Building LLM-Based Digital Populations Augmented with Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07890/) (2025)
- [Bridging Voting and Deliberation with Algorithms: Field Insights from vTaiwan and Kultur Komitee](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05017/) (2025)
- [Upgrading Democracies with Fairer Voting Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14349/) (2025)
- [Fair Voting Methods as a Catalyst for Democratic Resilience: A Trilogy on Legitimacy, Impact and AI Safeguarding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17461/) (2025)
- [DAO-enabled decentralized physical AI: A new paradigm for human-machine collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.04522/) (2026)
- [Efficient Portfolio Selection through Preference Aggregation with Quicksort and the Bradley--Terry Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16093/) (2025)
- [Algorithmic Shortlisting in Participatory Budgeting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06577/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Participatory Budgeting (PB) has evolved into a key democratic instrument for resource allocation in cities. Enabled by digital platforms, cities now have the opportunity to let citizens directly propose and vote on urban projects, using different voting input and aggregation rules. However, the choices cities make in terms of the rules of their PB have often not been informed by academic studies on voter behaviour and preferences. Therefore, this work presents the results of behavioural experiments where participants were asked to vote in a fictional PB setting. We identified approaches to designing PB voting that minimise cognitive load and enhance the perceived fairness and legitimacy of the digital process from the citizens' perspective. In our study, participants preferred voting input formats that are more expressive (like rankings and distributing points) over simpler formats (like approval voting). Participants also indicated a desire for the budget to be fairly distributed across city districts and project categories. Participants found the Method of Equal Shares voting rule to be fairer than the conventional Greedy voting rule. These findings offer actionable insights for digital governance, contributing to the development of fairer and more transparent digital systems and collective decision-making processes for citizens.