A new voting procedure for electing committees, called the minimax procedure, is described. Based on approval voting (AV), it chooses the committee that minimizes the maximum "Hamming distance" to all voters (minimax outcome). Such an outcome may be diametrically opposed to the outcome obtained from aggregating votes in the usual manner, which minimizes the sum of the Hamming distances to all voters (minisum outcome). Computer simulation is used to assess how much minimax and minisum outcomes tend to diverge. The manipulability of the minimax procedure is also investigated.
The Hamming distance notion can be used to define specific rules such as minimax approval voting REF , which selects the committee minimizing the maximum Hamming distance for the agents.
A minimax procedure for electing committees
Public Choice
Economics