Iterative Elimination of Borda Losers: Axiomatizations of the Baldwin and Nanson Rules

Abstract

The Baldwin and Nanson rules are two voting rules proposed to identify the Condorcet winner whenever one exists. Both rules operate as recursive Borda elimination procedures: the Baldwin rule successively eliminates the alternatives with the lowest Borda score, whereas the Nanson rule eliminates all alternatives whose Borda scores do not exceed the mean. This paper investigates the axiomatic properties of the Baldwin and Nanson rules and provides unified axiomatic characterizations. In particular, our axioms are closely comparable to Young's (1974) characterization of the Borda rule.