[EM] The chicken dilemma, median systems, and the pivotal voter

[Warren D. Smith (CRV cofounder, http://RangeVoting.org)]

Seems to me, much (all?) strategic voting  is done by people who are not 
thinking "I will perform this 
strategy and the other voters will do nothing" but more like  "a zillion 
voters like me will perform strategy along with me plus there will be many 
other counter-strategizing voters."

In such a situation, notions of the the (one) "pivotal voter" become pretty 
irrelevant.

Also, in the event there is (with a median-based rating method) "1-sided 
strategy" then what happens is, the first strategizer moves the median, 
then the subsequent voters move it more, etc.   As a result of that synergy
the 456552th strategizer is motivated to exaggerate in his vote even 
though, say, if he had
been the only one, then there would have been zero such motivation.

>What does that mean for the strategic dynamics of the chicken dilemma? It 
> means that, in a very real >sense, those two pivotal voters are the only 
> ones under "strategic pressure".
>

--so, that quote strikes me as absurdly far away from and irrelevant to the 
real world.

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