Submitted by Pedro Barros (pedro.silvabarros@ufpe.br) on 2018-08-09T20:32:53Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) DISSERTAÇÃO Mirella Quintans Lyra.pdf: 1546154 bytes, checksum: 9285d8ea6de65dd0910d698c94c27891 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Alice Araujo (alice.caraujo@ufpe.br) on 2018-08-15T22:12:01Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) DISSERTAÇÃO Mirella Quintans Lyra.pdf: 1546154 bytes, checksum: 9285d8ea6de65dd0910d698c94c27891 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-15T22:12:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) DISSERTAÇÃO Mirella Quintans Lyra.pdf: 1546154 bytes, checksum: 9285d8ea6de65dd0910d698c94c27891 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-04-19 / CAPES / O orçamento participativo (OP) é uma iniciativa que vem ganhando cada vez mais notoriedade ao redor do mundo. Desde a sua experiência mais famosa, em Porto Alegre – RS, o mundo tem voltado a atenção para essa política que se mostra tão positiva, quando bem executada, aproximando governo e sociedade. Resultados positivos, porém, somente são alcançados por meio de uma estrutura consolidada para execução do OP. Assim, este trabalho propõe um modelo para seleção de alternativas de obras e ações a serem realizadas pelo OP do estado da Paraíba. Para delinear este modelo utilizou-se o método de estruturação de problemas Soft System Methodology, conhecido como SSM, com o intuito de elucidar as necessidades locais a população. Em seguida, usou-se o método de votação approval voting, cuja metodologia dá maior poder de expressão aos votantes, permitindo-lhes demonstrar, através de seu voto, se aprovam ou não cada uma das alternativas consideradas. Por fim, trabalhou-se com o método multicritério de apoio a decisão PROMETHEE V para auxiliar na seleção do portfolio ideal de alternativas de obras com base em restrições como disponibilidade orçamentária e investimentos governamentais feitos nos anos anteriores. Para melhor esboçar a aplicação do modelo é apresentada, ao final do trabalho, uma ilustração deste o com os dados obtidos por meio do OP em funcionamento no estado da Paraíba. / The Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a initiative that gains, every day, more and more notority around the world. Since its most famous experience, in Porto Alegre – RS, the world has been paying atention to this politic, that reveals itself so positivaly regarding its results. The PB, if well executed, can approach citizens and government towards working together. However, positive results are only achieved if the PB’s structure is strong and solid. That being said, this paper proposes a model for a selection among alternatives of works and actions to be done with the PB’s resources of Paraiba, a brazilian state. To design this model, we used the problems’ structure method Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), through which is possible to clarify the population’s needs. After that, the election procedure approval voting was used. This procedure allow the voters to expose their approval, or disapproval, to each one of the considered alternatives. Finally, it was applied a multicriteria decision-aid, the PROMETHEE V, to support the selection of the ideal portfolio of alternatives considering restrictions such as budget limits and past goverment investiments. To a better comprehension of the model, it is also presented an ilustration of its application with the data of Paraiba’s 2016 PB.

Le travail de thèse s’articule autour de trois chapitres.Le premier chapitre « Electoral Institutions and Political Polarization: An Experiment on Approval Voting in Benin » s’intéresse au rôle des institutions politiques dans la division des sociétés africaines. L’idée principale étant que les institutions politiques pourraient influencer la formation des groupes à l’intérieur des sociétés. Certains systèmes de vote (pluralité, système majoritaire) par leur règle tendent à forcer les électeurs à choisir un camp et pourraient potentiellement conduire à des divisions sociales, ethniques ou religieuses. Les autres règles de vote qui permettent aux électeurs de voter plusieurs candidats à la fois, devraient en théorie éviter ces inconvénients, et ainsi aboutir à une moins grande polarisation politique. Ce chapitre fournit des preuves expérimentales de cette théorie. Nos données proviennent d'une expérience sur le vote d'approbation qui a eu lieu lors de l'élection présidentielle de 2011 au Bénin, un pays démocratique d’Afrique occidentale, multi-ethnique avec un paysage politique caractérisé par une forte fracture nord-sud au niveau sociale et politique. En parallèle au vote officiel (scrutin majoritaire), nous avons proposé le vote par approbation aux électeurs, dont règle leur permet de voter pour plusieurs candidats à la fois. Les résultats montrent que ce système de vote augmente le score de plusieurs candidats consensuels. Nous avons également trouvé que le vote ethnique ne disparait pas et pourrait même augmenter. Dans le chapitre 2 « L’impact du clientélisme électoral: Analyse d’une expérience de laboratoire », nous nous intéressons au clientélisme, son lien avec la modernisation et son impact sur les résultats des élections. Nous avons effectués des expériences de laboratoires dans deux endroits différents (France et Burkina Faso). Les résultats obtenus montrent un effet significatif des campagnes d’achat de vote et de promesses électorales sur le score des candidats dans les deux pays. Mais les campagnes clientélistes sont plus efficaces en Afrique car ils permettent l’élection du candidat clientéliste. Le troisième et dernier chapitre « Quels sont les facteurs qui influencent le consentement à l’impôt en Afrique du Sud Sahara : Une analyse empirique avec des données d’enquêtes d’opinion», fournit une analyse des facteurs déterminant le consentement à payer la taxe des citoyens en Afrique du sud Sahara. En utilisant les données de 29 pays, nous avons montré que la qualité des services publiques, le milieu de résidence, le niveau d’éducation, la confiance aux institutions, la transparence du système fiscal sont des facteurs important dans les décisions des citoyens de consentir à payer la taxe. Nous avions également montré que la présence de ressources naturelle dans un pays, ainsi que le nombre d’habitant dans un pays jouent un rôle dans le consentement à payer la taxes des citoyens. Aussi l’importance accordé aux facteurs déterminant est différent selon la particularité des pays (peuplé ou pas, possédant ou pas des ressources naturelles). / This work is organized in three (3) chapters. the first chapter, « Electoral Institutions and Political Polarization: An Experiment on Approval Voting in Benin » coauthored with J-F Laslier, K.Van Der Straten and L. Wantchekon, focus on the institutions ‘s goal in the division of societies. The main idea is that political institutions can shape political preferences and influence the formation of groups within societies. Some system such Simple plurality and runoff majoritarian voting systems tend to force voters to “choose sides,” potentially exacerbating political, social, ethnic, or religious divisions. Voting rules that allow voters to simultaneously select several candidates should, in theory, avoid these drawbacks, and might thus lead to less polarized political outcomes. This chapter provides experimental evidence in support of this insight. Our data originates from an experiment on Approval Voting that took place during the 2011 presidential election in Benin, a democratic, multi-ethnic country in western Africa, with a political landscape characterized by a strong social and political north-south divide. In contrast to the official runoff rule used in Benin for this presidential election, we proposed Approval Voting to voters, whereby they can vote simultaneously for several candidates. We find that this electoral institution leads to an increase in the overall support for more consensual candidates. We also find that, under Approval Voting, like under Proportional Representation systems, ethnic voting does not disappear, and might even increase. The second chapter continue in the logic of voting motivation by doing some laboratory experiment about electoral clientelism. We focus on the vote buying and electoral promises. We wanted to show the impact on electoral clientelism on the election outcome in one way and in the second way, see if there is a link between modernization and clientelism. We did experiment in two different places (Burkina Faso and France) show that the impact of electoral clientelism is more relevant in Africa countries than in developed countries. The third chapter investigates on tax compliance in Africa by using data from about 29 African countries. The goal is to analyze the citizens’s behaviors when they have to contribute to public funding by paying tax. We want to know which factors may motivate people have a compliance attitude with tax. The main contribution of this research is the effect of country population and the existence of natural resources. We found that citizens living in countries with natural resources are less willing to pay taxes than citizens living in countries without natural resources. Also, we showed that the population matters. Indeed, in the most populated countries, fraud is higher than less popular countries. We then establish for each group of countries the factors for which they should act to have a tax compliance of their citizens. This can help countries to have a great public finance and become more independent from foreign aid.

<p>Diss. Stockholm :  Stockholm School of Economics, 2012. Introduction together with 6 papers</p>

Στην εργασία αυτή ασχολούμαστε με θέματα κοινωνικής επιλογής και πιο συγκεκριμένα με συμβιβαστικές ψηφοφορίες στις οποίες κάθε ψηφοφόρος ψηφίζει ένα (πιθανόν κενό) σύνολο υποψηφίων και το αποτέλεσμα είναι ένα σύνολο υποψηφίων πλήθους k, για δεδομένο k (π.χ. εκλογή επιτροπής). Εξετάζουμε τον κανόνα minimax σε συμβιβαστικές ψηφοφορίες, στις οποίες το αποτέλεσμα αντιπροσωπεύει ένα συμβιβασμό μεταξύ των προτιμήσεων των ψηφοφόρων, με την έννοια ότι η μέγιστη απόσταση μεταξύ των προτιμήσεων οποιουδήποτε ψηφοφόρου και του αποτελέσματος είναι όσο το δυνατό μικρότερη. Αυτός ο κανόνας έχει δύο μειονεκτήματα. Πρώτον, ο υπολογισμός του αποτελέσματος που ελαχιστοποιεί τη μέγιστη απόσταση από κάθε ψηφοφόρο είναι ένα υπολογιστικά δύσκολο πρόβλημα και δεύτερον, οποιοσδήποτε αλγόριθμος που πάντα επιστρέφει ένα τέτοιο αποτέλεσμα, δίνει στους ψηφοφόρους κίνητρο να πουν ψέματα για την πραγματική τους προτίμηση, με σκοπό να βελτιώσουν την απόσταση τους από το τελικό αποτέλεσμα. Για να ξεπεράσουμε αυτά τα μειονεκτήματα χρησιμοποιούμε προσεγγιστικούς αλγορίθμους, δηλαδή αλγορίθμους που παράγουν αποτέλεσμα που αποδεδειγμένα προσεγγίζει την minimax απόσταση για κάθε δοσμένο στιγμιότυπο. Τέτοιοι αλγόριθμοι μπορούν να χρησιμοποιηθούν σαν εναλλακτικοί κανόνες ψηφοφορίας. Παρουσιάζουμε ένα 2-προσεγγιστικό αλγόριθμο πολυωνυμικού χρόνου, ο οποίος υπολογίζει το αποτέλεσμα στρογγυλοποιώντας ντετερμινιστικά τη λύση του χαλαρωμένου γραμμικού προγράμματος μέσω του οποίου εκφράζουμε το πρόβλημά μας. Ο καλύτερος προηγούμενος προσεγγιστικός αλγόριθμος επιτύγχανε λόγο απόδοσης 3 και συνεπώς το παραπάνω αποτέλεσμα αποτελεί σημαντική βελτίωση. Επιπλέον ασχολούμαστε με προσεγγιστικούς αλγορίθμους που είναι ανθεκτικοί σε χειραγώγηση είτε από μεμονωμένους ψηφοφόρους είτε από ομάδες ψηφοφόρων. Τέτοιοι αλγόριθμοι δεν προσφέρουν κίνητρο στους ψηφοφόρους να δηλώσουν ψευδώς τις προτιμήσεις τους με σκοπό να βελτιώσουν την απόστασή τους από το τελικό αποτέλεσμα. Μια τέτοια μελέτη εντάσσεται στα πλαίσια της έρευνας που γίνεται τα τελευταία χρόνια πάνω στο σχεδιασμό προσεγγιστικών αλγοριθμικών μηχανισμών χωρίς χρήματα. Συμπληρώνουμε προηγούμενα αποτελέσματα με νέα πάνω και κάτω φράγματα για strategyproof και group-strategyproof αλγορίθμους. / We consider approval voting elections in which each voter votes for a (possibly empty) set of candidates and the outcome consists of a set of k candidates for some fixed k, e.g., committee elections. We are interested in the minimax approval voting rule in which the outcome represents a compromise among the preferences of the voters, in the sense that the maximum distance between the preference of any voter and the outcome is as small as possible. This voting rule has two main drawbacks. First, computing an outcome that minimizes the maximum distance is computationally hard. Furthermore, any algorithm that always returns such an outcome provides incentives to voters to misreport their true preferences. In order to circumvent these drawbacks, we consider approximation algorithms, i.e., algorithms that produce an outcome that approximates the minimax distance for any given instance. Such algorithms can be considered as alternative voting rules. We present a polynomial-time 2-approximation algorithm that uses a natural linear programming relaxation for the underlying optimization problem and deterministically rounds the fractional solution in order to compute the outcome; this result improves upon the previously best known algorithm that has an approximation ratio of 3. We are furthermore interested in approximation algorithms that are resistant to manipulation by (coalitions of) voters, i.e., algorithms that do not motivate voters to misreport their true preferences in order to improve their distance from the outcome. This study falls within the recently initiated line of research on approximate mechanism design without money. We complement previous results in the literature with new upper and lower bounds on strategyproof and group-strategyproof algorithms.

My thesis contains essays on voting theory, market structures and fiscal federalism: (i) One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation, (ii) Runoff Elections and the Condorcet Loser, (iii) On the Influence of Rankings when Product Quality Depends on Buyer Characteristics, and (iv) Redistributing Income under Fiscal Vertical Imbalance. (i) One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation (joint with Micael Castanheira) In elections, majority divisions pave the way to focal manipulations and coordination failures, which can lead to the victory of the wrong candidate. This paper shows how this flaw can be addressed if voter preferences over candidates are sensitive to information. We consider two potential sources of divisions: majority voters may have similar preferences but opposite information about the candidates, or opposite preferences. We show that when information is the source of majority divisions, Approval Voting features a unique equilibrium with full information and coordination equivalence. That is, it produces the same outcome as if both information and coordination problems could be resolved. Other electoral systems, such as Plurality and Two-Round elections, do not satisfy this equivalence. The second source of division is opposite preferences. Whenever the fraction of voters with such preferences is not too large, Approval Voting still satisfies full information and coordination equivalence. (ii) Runoff Elections and the Condorcet Loser A crucial component of Runoff electoral systems is the threshold fraction of votes above which a candidate wins outright in the first round. I analyze the influence of this threshold on the voting equilibria in three-candidate Runoff elections. I demonstrate the existence of an Ortega Effect which may unduly favor dominated candidates and thus lead to the election of the Condorcet Loser in equilibrium. The reason is that, contrarily to commonly held beliefs, lowering the threshold for first-round victory may actually induce voters to express their preferences excessively. I also extend Duverger's Law to Runoff elections with any threshold below, equal or above 50%. Therefore, Runoff elections are plagued with inferior equilibria that induce either too high or too low expression of preferences. (iii) On the Influence of Rankings when Product Quality Depends on Buyer Characteristics Information on product quality is crucial for buyers to make sound choices. For "experience products", this information is not available at the time of the purchase: it is only acquired through consumption. For much experience products, there exist institutions that provide buyers with information about quality. It is commonly believed that such institutions help consumers to make better choices and are thus welfare improving. The quality of various experience products depends on the characteristics of buyers. For instance, conversely to the quality of cars, business school quality depends on buyers (i.e. students) characteristics. Indeed, one of the main inputs of a business school is enrolled students. The choice of buyers for such products has then some features of a coordination problem: ceteris paribus, a buyer prefers to buy a product consumed by buyers with "good" characteristics. This coordination dimension leads to inefficiencies when buyers coordinate on products of lower "intrinsic" quality. When the quality of products depends on buyer characteristics, information about product quality can reinforce such a coordination problem. Indeed, even though information of high quality need not mean high intrinsic quality, rational buyers pay attention to this information because they prefer high quality products, no matter the reason of the high quality. Information about product quality may then induce buyers to coordinate on products of low intrinsic quality. In this paper, I show that, for experience products which quality depends on the characteristics of buyers, more information is not necessarily better. More precisely, I prove that more information about product quality may lead to a Pareto deterioration, i.e. all buyers may be worse off due. (iv) Redistributing Income under Fiscal Vertical Imbalance (joint with Marjorie Gassner and Vincenzo Verardi) From the literature on decentralization, it appears that the fiscal vertical imbalance (i.e. the dependence of subnational governments on national government revenues to support their expenditures) is somehow inherent to multi-level governments. Using a stylized model we show that this leads to a reduction of the extent of redistributive fiscal policies if the maximal size of government has been reached. To test for this empirically, we use some high quality data from the LIS dataset on individual incomes. The results are highly significant and point in the direction of our theoretical predictions.

Cette thèse porte sur les fondations de la théorie des préférences et de l'utilité utilisée dans les domaines du choix social et de la théorie de la décision. Le premier chapitre est l'introduction. Le second chapitre est composé d'une revue de la littérature et des résultats existants, d'une discussion des motivations pour envisager un nouveau cadre théorique permettant de combiner différentes approches de l'agrégation des préférences individuelles, et d'une proposition d'un modèle hybride appelé modèle de préférence-approbation. Le troisième chapitre pose la question du sens que l'on peut donner au consensus dans un tel cadre théorique. Pour y répondre, ce travail fournit une approche basée sur la notion de distance, c'est-à-dire d'une métrique définie sur le domaine des préférence-approbations, et examine différentes façons de mesurer l'homogénéité au sein d'un ensemble d'opinions individuelles. Dans cette nouvelle modélisation des opinions, les individus s'expriment à la fois à travers un classement défini sur l'ensemble des alternatives et par un niveau de seuil, permettant de distinguer dans ce classement les alternatives "approuvées" de celles qui sont "désapprouvées". Le quatrième chapitre comporte une analyse de la manipulabilité des règles d'agrégation définies sur un profil de votes composés de classements et d'évaluations binaires. En introduisant une nouvelle notion de non-manipulabilité, cette étude offre un résultat de possibilité, ainsi que certaines caractérisations d'impossibilités. La conclusion permet de discuter plusieurs questions de recherche future sur la manière de définir de nouveaux systèmes d'élections et mécanismes de votes, ainsi que leurs impacts potentiels sur la société.

My thesis contains essays on voting theory, market structures and fiscal federalism: (i) One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation, (ii) Runoff Elections and the Condorcet Loser, (iii) On the Influence of Rankings when Product Quality Depends on Buyer Characteristics, and (iv) Redistributing Income under Fiscal Vertical Imbalance.<p><p>(i) One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation (joint with Micael Castanheira)<p>In elections, majority divisions pave the way to focal manipulations and coordination failures, which can lead to the victory of the wrong candidate. This paper shows how this flaw can be addressed if voter preferences over candidates are sensitive to information. We consider two potential sources of divisions: majority voters may have similar preferences but opposite information about the candidates, or opposite preferences. We show that when information is the source of majority divisions, Approval Voting features a unique equilibrium with full information and coordination equivalence. That is, it produces the same outcome as if both information and coordination problems could be resolved. Other electoral systems, such as Plurality and Two-Round elections, do not satisfy this equivalence. The second source of division is opposite preferences. Whenever the fraction of voters with such preferences is not too large, Approval Voting still satisfies full information and coordination equivalence.<p><p>(ii) Runoff Elections and the Condorcet Loser<p>A crucial component of Runoff electoral systems is the threshold fraction of votes above which a candidate wins outright in the first round. I analyze the influence of this threshold on the voting equilibria in three-candidate Runoff elections. I demonstrate the existence of an Ortega Effect which may unduly favor dominated candidates and thus lead to the election of the Condorcet Loser in equilibrium. The reason is that, contrarily to commonly held beliefs, lowering the threshold for first-round victory may actually induce voters to express their preferences excessively. I also extend Duverger's Law to Runoff elections with any threshold below, equal or above 50%. Therefore, Runoff elections are plagued with inferior equilibria that induce either too high or too low expression of preferences.<p><p>(iii) On the Influence of Rankings when Product Quality Depends on Buyer Characteristics<p>Information on product quality is crucial for buyers to make sound choices. For "experience products", this information is not available at the time of the purchase: it is only acquired through consumption. For much experience products, there exist institutions that provide buyers with information about quality. It is commonly believed that such institutions help consumers to make better choices and are thus welfare improving.<p>The quality of various experience products depends on the characteristics of buyers. For instance, conversely to the quality of cars, business school quality depends on buyers (i.e. students) characteristics. Indeed, one of the main inputs of a business school is enrolled students. The choice of buyers for such products has then some features of a coordination problem: ceteris paribus, a buyer prefers to buy a product consumed by buyers with "good" characteristics. This coordination dimension leads to inefficiencies when buyers coordinate on products of lower "intrinsic" quality. When the quality of products depends on buyer characteristics, information about product quality can reinforce such a coordination problem. Indeed, even though information of high quality need not mean high intrinsic quality, rational buyers pay attention to this information because they prefer high quality products, no matter the reason of the high quality. Information about product quality may then induce buyers to coordinate on products of low intrinsic quality.<p>In this paper, I show that, for experience products which quality depends on the characteristics of buyers, more information is not necessarily better. More precisely, I prove that more information about product quality may lead to a Pareto deterioration, i.e. all buyers may be worse off due.<p><p>(iv) Redistributing Income under Fiscal Vertical Imbalance (joint with Marjorie Gassner and Vincenzo Verardi)<p>From the literature on decentralization, it appears that the fiscal vertical imbalance (i.e. the dependence of subnational governments on national government revenues to support their expenditures) is somehow inherent to multi-level governments. Using a stylized model we show that this leads to a reduction of the extent of redistributive fiscal policies if the maximal size of government has been reached. To test for this empirically, we use some high quality data from the LIS dataset on individual incomes. The results are highly significant and point in the direction of our theoretical predictions.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

L'objet de cette thèse est l'étude des aspects algorithmiques du vote par approbation. Il s'agit principalement d'une étude théorique des enjeux computationnels soulevés par le vote par approbation dans des contextes de décisions variés. Cependant, j'étudie aussi des questions plus proches de la théorie classique du choix social et je conduis de brèves études expérimentales.Dans un premier temps, l'étude se porte sur une famille générale de règles de vote pour les élections de comités et les référendums multiples à l'aide du vote par approbation. Dans un second temps, je porte mon attention sur un contexte plus général, le vote par approbation sur domaines combinatoires en se basant sur des préférences conditionnelles. Finalement, je me place dans le cadre du vote avec préférences incomplètes pour étudier les problèmes de vainqueurs possibles et nécessaires dans le vote par approbation. / The subject of this thesis is the study of computational aspects of approval voting. Most of the works are theoretical results about computational issues raised by approval voting, in many different settings. However, I also study some questions that are more related to classical choice theory, and some problems are investigated through experimental analysis.Firstly, I study a general family of rules for approval voting in the context of committee elections and multiple referenda. Secondly, I focus on a more general setting, approval voting in combinatorial domains, based on conditional preferences. Finally, I consider approval voting in the context of incomplete preferences, to study the possible and necessary winner problems.

Le système électoral fait de plus en plus objet de débats et de discussions au Canada et ailleurs dans le monde. Bien qu’il existe de nombreuses études sur les avantages et les inconvénients des différents systèmes électoraux, très peu d’entre elles examinent les préférences des citoyens concernant les modes de scrutin et plus particulièrement la façon dont les individus expriment leur choix sur le bulletin de vote. Dans le cadre de ce mémoire, je m’attarde aux questions suivantes : quelle façon de voter les citoyens préfèrent-ils et pourquoi ? Afin de répondre à ces questions, j'ai mené une expérience en laboratoire avec près de 200 participants dans le cadre des élections fédérales canadiennes de 2019. Les participants furent invités à voter dans une série d'élections en utilisant chacune des trois façons de voter suivantes en ordre aléatoire : scrutin à vote unique, vote par approbation et vote par rangement. Après chaque vote, les participants furent informés du résultat électoral dans leur groupe et interrogés sur leur niveau de satisfaction à l'égard de chaque façon de voter. Les résultats démontrent que les citoyens préfèrent avoir la possibilité de classer les partis plutôt que d'utiliser un scrutin à vote unique ou un vote par approbation. Les individus sont également plus susceptibles d’aimer un mode scrutin lorsqu'ils sont satisfaits des résultats de l’élection. / Debates over which electoral system would best serve the general public are on the rise in Canada and in other democratic countries. Although there exists a rich literature on the benefits and shortcomings of different electoral systems, very few studies examine citizens’ preferences regarding voting rules and the ways in which individuals can cast their vote. In this paper, I address the following questions: What voting rules do citizens prefer and why? To address these questions, I conducted a within-subject laboratory experiment with nearly 200 participants in the run up to the 2019 Canadian federal election. Participants were asked to vote in a set of elections using each of the three following types of ballots in random order: one-mark ballot, approval voting and ranked voting. After each vote, participants were informed of the election results and asked about their level of satisfaction with each voting system. The results show that citizens prefer having the option to rank order the parties rather than using a one-mark ballot or approval voting. Individuals are also more likely to favour voting rules when they are satisfied with the results of the election.