Voting theory, data fusion, and explanations of social behavior

The challenge of using communications infrastructure to stabilize other infrastructures is related to research on the collective communications systems in social animals, robots, and human-non-human interaction. In these systems, voting models can explicate patterns of observed behavior or predict collective outcomes. Developing more theoretical deductive explanatory power can increase our knowledge about the interplay of voters and communication that produces collective inferences. This paper suggests that many analyses of voting patterns have not integrated what is known about the predictive properties of voting processes into their analyses. Taking a more deductive approach enables us to think about the strengths and weaknesses of existing explanations and imagine new types of analysis that have implications for engineering communications systems to stabilize other infrastructures.