Does everyone have equal voting power?

Abstract

Banzhaf (Rutgers Law Rev 19:317-343, 1965) shows by citing a few examples that distortion in the bargaining power of the legislators may exist in the legislative body under weighted voting rules. Such a distortion leads to the incidence of unequal voting power of the citizens. In this paper, we investigate whether the distortion in the bargaining power is confined to a few weighted voting rules or is a general phenomenon. We show if the number of dominant political views (parties) present in a country is at most four, then there exists no weighted voting rule such that the distortion in the bargaining power can be avoided.