Steven J. Brams and M. Remzi Sanver (NYU).
The sovereignty of voters has not been considered a criterion in the evaluation of voting systems. Rather, the usual criteria have to do with the quality of outcomes--is the social choice a Condorcet winner, Pareto-optimal, etc.? This paper offers a radical critique of this framework and suggests an alternative framework for judging whether election outcomes are satisfactory.

Voters are sovereign to the degree that they can express their approval for any set of candidates and, by so doing, help elect or prevent the election of candidates. While voter sovereignty is maximized under approval voting (AV), AV can lead to - a plethora of outcomes, depending on where voters draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable candidates; and - Condorcet losers and other lesser candidates, even in equilibrium. But we argue that voters' judgments about candidate acceptability should take precedence over standard social-choice criteria. Among other things, we show that - sincere outcomes under all voting systems considered are AV outcomes, but not vice versa; - a Condorcet winner's election under AV is always a strong Nash-equilibrium outcome but not under other systems, including those that guarantee the election of Condorcet winners if voters are sincere. The recent experience of major professional societies with AV, as well as its prospects for adoption in public elections, will also be discussed.