The Fluid Mechanics of Liquid Democracy

Liquid democracy is the principle of making collective decisions by letting agents transitively delegate their votes. Despite its significant appeal, it has become apparent that a weakness liquid small subset may gain massive influence. To address this, we propose to change current practice allowing specify multiple delegation options instead just one. Much like in nature, where—fluid mechanics teaches us—liquid maintains an equal level connected vessels, seek control flow votes way balances influence as much possible. Specifically, analyze problem choosing delegations approximately minimize maximum number entrusted any agent drawing connections literature on confluent flow. We also introduce random graph model for and use demonstrate benefits our approach both theoretically empirically.