On the distortion value of the elections with abstention

Abstract

In Spatial Voting Theory, distortion is a measure of how good the winner is. It is proved that no deterministic voting mechanism can guarantee a distortion better than 3, even for simple metrics such as a line. In this study, we wish to answer the following question: how does the distortion value change if we allow less motivated agents to abstain from the election? We consider an election with two candidates and suggest an abstention model, which is a more general form of the abstention model proposed by Kirchgässner (2003). We define the concepts of the expected winner and the expected distortion to evaluate the distortion of an election in our model. Our results fully characterize the distortion value and provide a rather complete picture of the model.