Komitee Equal Shares: Choosing Together as Voters and as Groups with a Co-designed Virtual Budget Algorithm

2025-10-02

AI Summary

Traditional participatory budgeting treats citizens solely as preference expressers, neglecting their role as policy impact evaluators—resulting in opaque, non-explanatory, and non-learnable outcomes. To address this, we propose a priceable virtual budget allocation framework that institutionalizes citizens’ dual identity through a two-signal mechanism: individual voting (dot voting) and collective impact assessment (co-defined evaluation dimensions). Methodologically, we extend the equal shares algorithm by introducing virtual expenditure tokens and auditable, traceable voting receipts—ensuring proportionality, transparency, and verifiability in fund allocation. Evaluated in the 2025 Kultur Komitee participatory budgeting process in Winterthur, Switzerland, the framework demonstrably enhances fairness, public comprehension, and institutional learning capacity. By integrating normative social choice theory with practical democratic design, it establishes a novel paradigm for participatory budgeting research—one that bridges deliberative evaluation with algorithmic accountability.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Social Choice / Voting
• Humans and AI: Voting
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Preferences

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness, privacy, and diversity in economic environments
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Responsible Web: Algorithmic accountability and transparency on the web

Abstract

Public funding processes demand fairness, learning, and outcomes that participants can understand. We introduce Komitee Equal Shares, a priceable virtual-budget allocation framework that integrates two signals: in voter mode, participants cast point votes; in evaluator mode, small groups assess proposals against collectively defined impact fields. The framework extends the Method of Equal Shares by translating both signals into virtual spending power and producing voting receipts. We deployed the framework in the 2025 Kultur Komitee in Winterthur, Switzerland. Our contributions are: (1) a clear separation of decision modes, addressing a gap in social choice that typically treats participatory budgeting as preference aggregation while citizens also see themselves as evaluators; and (2) the design of voting receipts that operationalise priceability into participant-facing explanations, making proportional allocations legible and traceable. The framework generalises to participatory grant-making and budgeting, offering a model where citizens act as voters and evaluators within one proportional, explainable allocation.

Problem

• Designing fair participatory budgeting with dual voter and evaluator modes
• Translating participant signals into virtual spending power allocations
• Creating explainable voting receipts for transparent proportional funding outcomes

Innovation

• Virtual budget algorithm integrates voter and evaluator modes
• Extends Equal Shares method with dual signal processing
• Voting receipts make proportional allocations traceable