[EM] [CES #3387] SODA strategy

[Warren Smith]

well, I feel intuitively that Jameson is probably right about SODA
being pretty unstrategic
in practice, but there is the annoying problem that there are various
example elections in which dishonest SODA strategic voting is called
for.  So, Jameson asks how we can
define some rigorous sense in which SODA is strategy-free or mostly so, somehow.

Well... good question.  I don't know the answer.   Perhaps the answer
is some computer simulation study, but that isn't so easy nor will it
necessarily be so clear (people will
complain: "why didn't your study include voting method X?").

About PR, I was initially hoping/thinking the plain 1-winner version of SODA
would just automatically be a PR multiwinner voting method without
doing anything more.  But that hope is false.   But that does not prevent a
PR multiwinner version from being designed.



On 8/9/11, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com> wrote:
> SODA is not strategy free. Even if you make the assumption that candidate
> preferences are honest because dishonesty will be detected and punished by
> voters -- an assumption which puts the system beyond the reach of the
> Gibbard-Satterthwaite proof -- the fact remains that you can construct
> strategic scenarios.
>
> However, it seems to me that SODA is not just a less-strategic system than
> most others, but radically so. Unlike Approval, semi-honest approval
> strategy is not something voters must deal with at least implicitly. But
> like approval, non-semi-honest strategy is relegated to a tiny minority of
> voters in a tiny minority of cases. The system can deal with all the
> commonly-discussed strategic problems, including chicken, center squeeze,
> and honest cycle. I honestly suspect that strategy under SODA would be
> favored less than half as often as any other good deterministic system I
> know of, including Approval, Asset, Condorcet (various), IRV, Median, and
> Range.
>
> So, how would you set out to make this idea demonstrable or falsifiable?
> What rigorous statement about strategy and SODA could I make that would be
> testable, preferably using simulated elections or mathematical
> demonstration/counterexamples? What voter model could capture enough of the
> sophisticated strategic thinking of which humans are capable?
>
> How about "SODA requires no self-reinforcing or defensive strategy"?
>
> These are honest, not rhetorical questions. I appreciate good responses,
> good research questions, from anyone, whatever you expect that the results
> of that research would be.
>
> Thanks,
> JQ
>


-- 
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org  <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)
and
math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html