Participatory Budgeting with Cumulative Votes

Abstract: In participatory budgeting we are given a set of projects---each with a cost, an available budget, and a set of voters who in some form express their preferences over the projects. The goal is to select---based on voter preferences---a subset of projects whose total cost does not exceed the budget. We propose several aggregation methods based on the idea of cumulative votes, e.g., for the setting when each voter is given one coin and she specifies how this coin should be split among the projects. We compare our aggregation methods based on (1) axiomatic properties, and (2) computer simulations. We identify one method, Minimal Transfers over Costs, that demonstrates particularly desirable behavior. In particular, it significantly improves on existing methods, satisfies a strong notion of proportionality, and, thus, is promising to be used in practice.