# Upgrading Democracies with Fairer Voting Methods

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.14349 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14349/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 64 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Proportional Participatory Budgeting with Additive Utilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.13276/) (2020)
- [BASED-XAI: Breaking Ablation Studies Down for Explainable Artificial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05566/) (2022)
- [Participatory Budgeting: Data, Tools, and Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11035/) (2023)
- [Knapsack Voting for Participatory Budgeting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.06856/) (2020)
- [Proof of Witness Presence: Blockchain Consensus for Augmented Democracy in Smart Cities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.00498/) (2019)
- [Designing Digital Voting Systems for Citizens: Achieving Fairness and Legitimacy in Participatory Budgeting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03501/) (2023)
- [Generative AI voting: fair collective choice is resilient to LLM biases and inconsistencies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11871/) (2024)
- [Participatory Budgeting with Cumulative Votes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.02690/) (2020)
- [Understanding Political Divisiveness using Online Participation data from the 2022 French and Brazilian Presidential Elections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.04577/) (2022)
- [Optimal incentives for collective intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.03899/) (2016)
- [Fair and Inclusive Participatory Budgeting: Voter Experience with Cumulative and Quadratic Voting Interfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04345/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Fair Voting Methods as a Catalyst for Democratic Resilience: A Trilogy on Legitimacy, Impact and AI Safeguarding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17461/) (2025)
- [Democracy in the Era of Artificial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.13026/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Voting methods are instrumental design elements of democracies. Citizens use them to express and aggregate their preferences to reach a collective decision. However, voting outcomes can be as sensitive to voting rules as they are to people's voting choices. Despite significance and interdisciplinary scientific progress, several democracies keep relying on outdated voting methods that do not fit modern, pluralistic societies well, while lacking social innovation. Here, we demonstrate how one can upgrade real-world democracies, namely by using alternative preferential voting methods such as cumulative voting and the method of equal shares designed for a proportional representation of voters' preferences. We rigorously evaluate the striking voting outcomes of these fair voting methods in a new participatory budgeting approach applied in the city of Aarau, Switzerland, including past and follow-up evidence. Results show more winning projects with the same budget. They also show broader geographic and preference representation of citizens by the elected projects, in particular for voters who used to be under-represented. We provide causal evidence showing that citizens prefer proportional voting methods, which possess strong legitimacy without the need of very specialized technical explanations. We also reveal strong underlying democratic values exhibited by citizens who support fair voting methods such as altruism and compromise. These findings come with the momentum to unleash a new and long-awaited participation blueprint of how to upgrade democracies globally.