[EM] Markus & Manipulability

[Joe Weinstein]

As a citizen and voter, I don't want the election method to give gratuitous 
incentive to CAMPAIGN strategies which aim to confuse and entrap voters, 
e.g. thru introduction of incontestable fallacious poll data or of extra 
clones (pro or maybe con a given position).

But I do have a VOTING strategy.  My strategy has me vote (or abstain) so as 
to maximize my expected overall satisfaction - call it 'utility'.  
Ingredients which enter into this utility include:  how, apparently, my vote 
would most likely (or thereafter profitably) make a difference in picking 
the winner (instrumental effect);  how my vote would most likely (or 
profitably) bear weight as an expression of sentiment;  my costs in time and 
money to go and cast the vote; my regret and losses in self- or others' 
respect from not voting or from voting 'insincerely'; etc.

I not only have a VOTING strategy:  I am in fact ENTITLED to conceive and 
have and use such a strategy.  Indeed I DEMAND that the election method give 
me scope for effective strategy.  (A decent respect for democracy requires 
me to concede the same rights to other voters too.)

As Mike pointed out, most of us - including me - have been energized into 
election reform because we resent being often forced to trade off two quite 
reasonable strategic goals: defensive - to defeat the worst alternative; and 
affirmative - to support our favorite.  We know that this tragic trade-off 
is largely avoidable, through use of another method such as Approval in 
place of the prevalent Lone-Mark.

It's bad enough being hobbled in the kind of strategy I can use.  What's 
worse, though, is to be berated for - or prevented from - effectively 
strategizing at all.

A totally non-'manipulable' (by me as voter) election - e.g., one where my 
choice has minimal effect (whether on account of someone else's prior 
choices, or gratuitous randomization, or a combination) - is of course of no 
civic interest or benefit to me.

I must heartily second what Forest wrote so eloquently earlier today:

'... Nurmi and Bartholdi are worried about voters "manipulating" the system 
to increase their expected utilities, i.e. to vote in their own best 
interest, as though voters' utilities had nothing to do with social utility.

'It is the prerogative of the voter to maximize their own utilities,
whether anybody else thinks they have social value or not. That's
democracy. We don't try to use voting methods to protect the public
against the public will. We use voting methods to ascertain the public
will.

'A more realistic worry is pollsters and pundits manipulating the voters by 
fooling them into voting against their own best interest. The more 
complicated the strategy and the more sensitive good strategy is to
information ...the easier the "experts" can manipulate the vote of the
gullible voter.'

Joe Weinstein
Long Beach, CA USA








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