Combining the Borda Count with Approval and Disapproval Voting

Abstract In this paper, we extend preference-approval structures to a more general situation, where voters can sort the alternatives in three disjoint classes instead of two (for instance, acceptable, neutral and unacceptable). We propose a parameterized family of voting systems related to the Borda count, where positive (negative) individual scores are assigned to acceptable (unacceptable) alternatives in a decreasing way from best to worst, while neutral alternatives obtain null scores. We analyze the role of parameters and provide some properties that satisfy the proposed voting systems.