Participation Criterion

The participation criterion is a voting system criterion. It is also known as the "no show paradox". It has been defined as follows:

• In a deterministic framework, the participation criterion says that the addition of a ballot, where candidate A is strictly preferred to candidate B, to an existing tally of votes should not change the winner from candidate A to candidate B.
• In a probabilistic framework, the participation criterion says that the addition of a ballot, where each candidate of the set X is strictly preferred to each other candidate, to an existing tally of votes should not reduce the probability that the winner is chosen from the set X.