The Evaluation of Weighted Voting Schemes for the United Nations General Assembly

Weighted voting has been suggested as one possible solution to the problem of representation in the UN General Assembly. Previous studies of alternative weighting formulas have failed to acknowledge that the distribution of actual voting power and the distribution of votes are seldom proportional under conditions of weighted voting. This research operationalizes the concept of voting power and applies it to the bloc distribution of General Assembly votes under 14 voting formulas which deviate from the current one state-one vote procedure. Weighted voting is shown to be a highly problematic method for adjusting the representational structure of a voting body such as the UN General Assembly.