We study elections where voters are faced with the challenge of expressing preferences over an extreme number of issues under consideration. This is largely motivated by emerging blockchain governance systems, which include voters with different weights and a massive number of community generated proposals. In such scenarios, it is natural to expect that voters will have incomplete preferences, as they may only be able to evaluate or be confident about a very small proportion of the alternatives. As a result, the election outcome may be significantly affected, leading to suboptimal decisions. Our central inquiry revolves around whether delegation of ballots to proxies possessing greater expertise or a more comprehensive understanding of the voters' preferences can lead to outcomes with higher legitimacy and enhanced voters' satisfaction in elections where voters submit incomplete preferences. To explore its aspects, we introduce the following model: potential proxies advertise their ballots over multiple issues, and each voter either delegates to a seemingly attractive proxy or casts a ballot directly. We identify necessary and sufficient conditions that could lead to a socially better outcome by leveraging the participation of proxies. We accompany our theoretical findings with experiments on instances derived from real datasets. Overall, our results enhance the understanding of the power of delegation towards improving election outcomes.

翻译：我们研究选民在面对大量议题时表达偏好的选举问题。这一研究主要受新兴区块链治理系统的启发，其中选民具有不同权重，且社区生成大量提案。在此类场景中，选民可能因仅能评估或确信极小部分备选方案而持有不完全偏好，进而可能显著影响选举结果并导致次优决策。我们的核心探究在于：当选民提交不完全偏好时，将选票委托给具有更高专业知识或更全面理解选民偏好的代理，能否提升选举结果的合法性与选民满意度。为探索其机制，我们引入以下模型：潜在代理预先发布其对多个议题的选票，每位选民可选择委托给看似具有吸引力的代理，或直接提交选票。我们识别了通过代理参与实现更优社会结果所需满足的充要条件。基于真实数据集实例的实验验证了理论发现。总体而言，我们的研究深化了对委托在改善选举结果中作用的理解。