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 (ie, 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.

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.