Antonin Macé
VC Salle A
Centre de la Vieille Charité
2 rue de la Charité
13002 Marseille
Mathieu Faure : mathieu.faure[at]univ-amu.fr
Kenan Huremovic : kenan.huremovic[at]univ-amu.fr
In a polarized committee, majority voting disenfranchises the minority. By allowing voters to spend freely a fixed budget of votes over multiple issues, Storable Votes restores some minority power. We study a model of Storable Votes that highlights the hide-and-seek nature of the strategic game. With communication, the game replicates a classic Colonel Blotto game with asymmetric forces. We call the game without
communication a decentralized Colonel Blotto game. We characterize theoretical results for this case and test both versions of the game in the laboratory. We find that, despite subjects deviating from equilibrium strategies, the minority wins as frequently as theory predicts. Because subjects understand the logic of the game { minority voters must concentrate votes unpredictably { the exact choices are of secondary importance. The result is an endorsement of the robustness of the voting rule.