[EM] Strategy in the face of various levels of information

[Forest Simmons]

It seems to me that information levels follow a spectrum that goes from
perfect information through partial information through zero information
and then further down below zero to misinformation and disinformation.

I believe that Approval tends to do as well as the best Condorcet methods
in maximizing the fraction of the electorate who find the winner to be
acceptable, at least when operating in the non-negative information zone.

Its robustness leads me to suspect that it will make a good showing in
the negative information setting as well.

The existence of this negative information zone is what makes
manipulability an issue, as far as I'm concerned.

Does anybody have any insights into the relative performance of different
methods (assuming sophiticated voters) in the face of disinformation?

I assume sophisticated voters because all it takes is one respected
sophisticated voter in each faction to effectively convert the election
into a sophisticated voter election.

There are at least two cases that interest me:

(1) The experts base their strategy decisions on the basis of misleading
polls without being aware that the polls are intentionally misleading.

(2) The experts know that the polls are intentionally misleading, and can
make educated guesses about which part of the polls consist of
disinformation.

It seems pretty obvious that the USA 2000 election was in an environment
of disinformation, and that this is what we can expect in most big money
public elections here in the USA.

Another good reason for heeding the idea by which Joe W. has been seized!

Forest

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