Italian mathematical physicist Gavriel Segre suggests that a similar
trick could prevent voting deadlock without having to install a
dictator. He says he became interested in the subject in the summer of
2008, when he read an interview of his compatriot Odifreddi in the
newspaper La Stampa. Citing Arrow's theorem, Odifreddi asserted
that representative democracy was obsolescent. “I didn't agree with this
fact, and I began to think of a way to overcome the Arrow theorem,”
Segre says.
Segre argues that quantum physics enriches the possibilities of voting. Like Schrödinger's cat, a citizen can be of two minds, voting both yes and no—a so-called superposition. When aggregated, votes can either add up or negate one another. They can become entangled with one another, representing a kind of pact among citizens to vote in a coordinated way, like the binding contract in the quantum Prisoner's Dilemma. In this case, unlike the classical one Arrow considered, the will of the people can be perfectly consistent.
Unfortunately, Segre's proof is very abstract, and several experts on voting theory consulted for this article doubt whether it is correct, let alone whether it could be written into a 21st-century constitution. Yet physicist Artur Ekert of the University of Oxford and the Center for Quantum Technologies in Singapore says that Segre may be on to something. Because quantum physics is probabilistic, a quantum voting system may avoid inconsistencies without an absolute dictator—just a ruler whose say-so carries the day on average and can be overruled from time to time. “We will have a dictator but a much weaker one,” Ekert says.
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Segre argues that quantum physics enriches the possibilities of voting. Like Schrödinger's cat, a citizen can be of two minds, voting both yes and no—a so-called superposition. When aggregated, votes can either add up or negate one another. They can become entangled with one another, representing a kind of pact among citizens to vote in a coordinated way, like the binding contract in the quantum Prisoner's Dilemma. In this case, unlike the classical one Arrow considered, the will of the people can be perfectly consistent.
Unfortunately, Segre's proof is very abstract, and several experts on voting theory consulted for this article doubt whether it is correct, let alone whether it could be written into a 21st-century constitution. Yet physicist Artur Ekert of the University of Oxford and the Center for Quantum Technologies in Singapore says that Segre may be on to something. Because quantum physics is probabilistic, a quantum voting system may avoid inconsistencies without an absolute dictator—just a ruler whose say-so carries the day on average and can be overruled from time to time. “We will have a dictator but a much weaker one,” Ekert says.
- More Here
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