Journal Articles

Storable votes and judicial nominations in the US Senate

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We model a procedural reform aimed at restoring a proper role for the minority in the
confirmation process of judicial nominations in the US Senate. We propose that nominations to
the same level court be collected in periodic lists and voted upon individually with storable
votes, allowing each senator to allocate freely across the list a fixed number of total votes.
Although each nomination is decided by simple majority, storable votes make it possible for the
minority to win occasionally, but only when the relative importance its members assign to a
nomination is higher than the relative importance assigned by the majority. Numerical
simulations approximate the composition of the 113th and 114th Senates. Under plausible
assumptions motivated by a game theoretic model, we find that a minority of 45 senators would
be able to win about 20 percent of confirmation battles when the majority party controls the
presidency, and between 40 and 60 percent when the president identifies with the minority party.
For most parameter values, the possibility of minority victories increases aggregate welfare.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Journal of Theoretical Politics

Call Number

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Publisher

Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications., 2017

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0951-6298

Classification

NONE

Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Volume 29, Issue 2, April 2017; pp. 243–272

Subject(s)

filibuster
storable votes
minority representation

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

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