How to Elect a Representative Committee Using Approval Balloting

Abstract

Approval balloting is applied to the problem of electing a representative committee. We demonstrate several procedures for determining a committee based on approval ballots, paying particular attention to weighting methods that can reduce the influence of voters with extreme views. We show that a general class of voting systems based on approval ballots can be implemented through analysis of appropriate tables. A by-product of this procedure is a clarification of the complexity of these systems.