[EM] Range Voting "unbeatable"?

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Jameson Quinn wrote:

> 3) Create (by hand or using genetic programming) and test "strategy 
> heuristics", by which a given voter can use the polling (and knowledge 
> of the underlying probabilistic models) to estimate the expected value 
> of various strategic options, assuming all similar voters use the given 
> strategy, and assuming no counterstrategy or defensive strategy.

Could your third point be done, for very small electorates, by use of 
minimax game tree algorithms like the one used in computer chess? The 
objective for each voter would be to get his own candidate to win (and 
for rated methods, to have the winner maximize his individual utility). 
Minimax requires perfect information, so that's a flaw, but it should 
give a bound, as it were, because the voters can't know more than 
perfect information, only less.

A variant to model differing capacities of strategy may have different 
voters consider the opponents' moves with differing horizons - very good 
strategists consider "A's move to B's move to my move", whereas not so 
good strategists consider only "B's move to my move". It might turn out 
that in a minimax case with equal horizon for everyone, the method 
becomes some kind of DSV and thus doesn't do bad at all - whereas in the 
real world, not all strategists are equal.