Asset voting
Asset voting is used to refer to a voting system in which votes are considered as "assets" given to candidates. If no candidate gets more than the winning threshold (i.e., a majority, in the single winner case), then the candidates can redistribute "their" votes to other candidates until a winner exists. Variations exist with different constraints on transfers - for example, the candidate with the fewest votes might be forced to redistribute their votes first.
Asset voting was invented in 1874 by Lewis Caroll (Charles Dodgson), and independently reinvented and named by Forest Simmons and Warren Smith.[1][2]
If used as a multi-winner voting method, it obeys most proportionality criteria, if the requisite assumptions about coalitions are extended to include candidates as well as voters. In such use, it is similar to delegable proxy systems except that, unlike such systems, it has public elections only at regularly scheduled intervals (proxies are not "revocable") and elects a fixed number of representatives with equal power.
Asset always picks a winner or winner set that is in the Smith Set of negotiators' preferences if the negotiators are given enough time to negotiate,[dubious ] meaning that if the negotiators have discussed every relevant permutation of winners or winner sets, Asset will always produce an outcome that can earn more votes during the negotiations than any other possible outcome, unless certain outcomes earn more votes than each other in a Condorcet cycle. In the single-winner case, if the negotiators are honest, strictly follow voter preferences, and have enough time to negotiate, then Asset becomes a Smith-efficient Condorcet method, and in the multiwinner case, resembles Condorcet PR methods such as CPO-STV and Schulze STV.