"Foundations for Liquid Democracy"

Abstract :
Liquid democracy is a proxy voting method where proxies are delegable : individual A may delegate her vote to B, who in turn may delegate it to C and so on. Ultimately, an individual’s vote carries the weight given by the number of other individuals who (directly or indirectly) entrusted her as proxy. The method has been used and popularised by a number of parties (e.g, Piratenpartei, Germany) and grassroots initiatives for democratic reforms (e.g., MakeYourLaws, US).
In this talk I will present recent work aiming at providing theoretical foundations for this novel voting method from the perspective of binary (judgment) aggregation, network theory, and game theory. The talk presents joint work with Zoé Christoff (Bayreuth), Daan Bloembergen (CWI Amsterdam) and Martin Lackner (TU Wien).