[EM] Some chance for consensus (was: Buying Votes)

[Raph Frank]

On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 1:43 PM, Jobst Heitzig <heitzig-j at web.de> wrote:
> Situation I:
> Voter 1: A favourite, C also approved
> Voter 2: B favourite, C also approved
>
> If we interpret the approval information as an indication that the voters
> like C better than tossing a coin between A and B, we would be tempted to
> let the method match these voters and transfer both their winning
> probabilities from their favourites to C. So C will win with certainty.
>
> But if we want monotonicity also, C must still win with certainty in the
> following situation:
>
> Situation II:
> Voter 1: C favourite, A also approved
> Voter 2: B favourite, C also approved
>
> But in this situation, a matching algorithm would *not* match the voters
> since voter 2 obviously does not seem to profit from such a transfer.

I wonder if you could do something like a blind auction.  In effect,
your winning probability is assigned based only on agreement.

For example,

Randomly pair up the voters with a randomly assigned compromise.

Each voter offers to switch pair for a compromise that is better than
current pair

This causes a reassignment of the pairs

The process is repeated until stable

This means that a voter doesn't have to say who is their favourite.
Ofc, offers near the start would likely use their favourite as
compromise and slowly backtrack if it isn't accepted.