Alternative quadratic voting system can improve budgetary decision making, capture diverse perspectives

Written by Andy Castillo

There are certain budgetary processes within local government that continue to perpetuate not because they’re the best or most efficient methods, but because they’ve always been that way. Voting is one of those areas. An initiative from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) called Rethinking Budgeting seeks to disrupt the status quo within public finance and come up with a better way for committee members to relate their preferences.

“Budget decisions today are often made in an environment of high conflict and low trust. This is not surprising given that conflict is up, and trust is down in the United States, generally. The share of people who think that most other people can be trusted has declined in the U.S. by about one-quarter over the past few decades,” reads the beginning of the latest report in the series, “Seeking Consensus.” The Rethinking Budgeting initiative is parallel to GFOA’s similar Rethinking Revenue project.

According to the Rethinking Budgeting report, trust has been on the decline for the last half century. Four decades ago, 40% of Americans believed most people could be trusted. Today, 30% do. This is notable given America’s traditional ‘majority rule’ system of voting that “forces people to pick a side and discourages them from investigating potential areas of compromise,” allowing only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ votes, the report says. “We propose the use of an alternative voting system called ‘quadratic voting’ (QV). We will show how QV can outperform traditional voting systems and how it can be applied to budgeting decisions.”

Where traditional voting systems give one preferential vote to each participant, quadratic systems allow members to allocate a collection of votes. They can either give all their votes to the same choice or spread them out among numerous selections based on preference. This gives voters the ability to both rank and emphasize partiality.

There are real-world examples and success stories. Last summer, Nashville, Tenn.’s Metropolitan Council Finance Committee tested quadratic voting when reviewing the mayor’s proposed annual budget.

“Traditionally, the council members submitted proposed amendments and then advocated for the items they care about the most. However, the council members could not provide more comprehensive information on their views about the other budget proposals under consideration,” the report says. This time around, “Each council member was able to express their preferences across the 57 final options before the end of the evening using an online quadratic voting tool developed by RadicalxChange (quadraticvote.radicalxchange.org).”

The finance committee’s chair, Burkley Allen, who introduced the system, received the results the same day and shared them with the public.

“Thanks to QV, the council had a much clearer understanding of what members’ priorities were—a crucial aid in what tends to be a lengthy and unsatisfying process,” the report says. Allen submitted her budget recommendations to the mayor’s office based on those results. The committee intends to use QV as a decision making tool in the future.

The example shows the potential QV holds for improving budgetary decisions—by providing a complete picture of participant preferences, accommodating a diverse range of perspectives, and facilitating better decisions, quicker.

“QV will be most useful when there are large numbers of people who need to be part of the decision-making process and where high-quality deliberation about the decision is difficult or impractical,” the report says.