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Young developed a classic axiomatization of the Borda rule almost 50 years ago. He proved it is the only voting rule satisfying the normative properties of decisiveness, neutrality, reinforcement, faithfulness and cancellation. Often overlooked is that the uniqueness of Borda applies only to variable populations. We present a different set of properties which only Borda satisfies when both the set of voters and the set of alternatives can vary. It is also shown Borda is the only scoring rule which will satisfy all of the new properties when the number of voters stays fixed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Representative democracy translates the preferences of the electorate into policy outcomes. Individual voters do not directly vote on policy; rather, their elected representatives create and establish policy. How well do the institutions of representative democracy translate the preferences of the electorate into policy? Is there any systematic bias in a representative democracy system? After formulating a series of computational models it appears that the degree to which legislative districts are ‘gerrymandered’ with respect to preferences about the policy is a source of policy bias. To illustrate the phenomenon, household income is used as a proxy for voters' preferences with respect to redistribution. Even when the majority of voters are in favor of redistribution, if districts are constructed with a sufficient level of conservative gerrymandering, the policy outcome under representative democracy will favor far less redistribution than the policy outcome under direct democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]