[EM] Professorial Office Picking

[Jonathan Lundell]

On Jan 25, 2010, at 6:07 AM, Terry Bouricius wrote:

> Would we agree that voting methods do best when voters give their sincere rankings to avoid GIGO distortion? Since all voting methods can be subject to strategic voting strategies with incomplete, exaggerated or insincere ballot information, might it not be a good idea to select two or more voting methods with different (ideally contrary) inherent strategy options, and then select the vote tabulation algorithm by lot AFTER the ballots are cast? This might give all voters an incentive to give sincere ballot information, since that would be the safest individual strategy.
> 

It's an approach that's occurred to me more than once over the years. At least one question that arises is, which methods? You'd want two or more methods that would give reasonable results given strategy-free ballots, to begin with (no plurality, say). 

I wonder, though, whether voters, being inveterate strategizers, wouldn't be tempted to devise ever more complex meta-strategies (not necessarily good ones). You'd want to be able to make a compelling and understandable argument that sincerity is the best "strategy".