Abstract
Situations are considered for which voters have preferences on candidates that contain some level of indifference between candidates, so that voting rules like Borda Rule cannot be directly implemented. The Forced Ranking Option, which simply resolves this issue by requiring voters to arbitrarily break indifference ties and report a complete ranking on the candidates, is shown to be a very poor solution to this problem. The implementation of an Extended Borda Rule that modifies Borda Rule to accommodate the existence of such indifference is found to dominate the Forced Ranking Option. Approval Voting is also an attractive option to use when voter indifference exists, but it is found that Approval Voting will never have superior performance when it is compared to Extended Borda Rule on the basis of Condorcet Efficiency.
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Gehrlein, W.V., Lepelley, D. (2017). The Impact of Voter Indifference. In: Elections, Voting Rules and Paradoxical Outcomes. Studies in Choice and Welfare. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64659-6_6
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