Single-Peaked Electorates in Liquid Democracy
Lukas Felderhoff

Abstract:
Liquid democracy is a voting system that allows citizens to vote directly, or to delegate their votes to a trusted individual. If delegations occur, the preferences of the electorate (set of voters choosing to vote directly) can exhibit different properties than the preferences of the entire society. One well-studied property of particular interest is single-peakedness since it guarantees problem-free aggregation of preferences into a collective choice. We investigate conditions under which delegations generate single-peaked electorates out of non-single-peaked societies. We find that the willingness of voters to delegate is critical for the existence of single-peaked electorates.