Majority decisions based on difference of votes

Abstract

In this paper a class of voting procedures, located between simple and unanimous majorities, is introduced and characterized. Given two alternatives, the winning alternative is the one with a number of votes exceeding that obtained by the other in a previously fixed quantity. Moreover, a subclass of these voting procedures has been considered, by demanding additionally a number of votes greater than a previously fixed threshold. The main results of this paper are characterizations of these voting procedures through aggregation functions of fuzzy preferences associated with quasiarithmetic means and OWA operators.