[EM] Voting-System Choice for Polls (Just one more thing I want to say)

[Juho Laatu]

> On 18 Dec 2016, at 20:31, Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com> wrote:

>> As I've said, I haven't noticed any sign (top-cycles for 1st place) of strategy in polls.
> 
> Has somebody sometimes noticed a strategically generated top-cycle or any other cycle in any elections or polls?
> 
> No, but in one EM poll, the other co-conductor of the poll told me that someone had requested permission to vote anonymously, suggesting an intention to use burial strategy.
> 
> At CIVS (Condorcet Internet Voting-Service) I've never noticed a top-cycle for 1st place. But for lower-place, later-finishers, there are often cycles, when there are lots of candidates, probably because of short rankings, or people guessing about their lower choices.

Ok, no sincere top cycles, nor strategic ones. Only the possibility that someone might have sometimes voted strategically (without achieving anything). What are we worried about? See also comment on irrational strategic voting below (maybe no major fears there either).

> This is a sidetrack, but I must note that I'm not a believer in Smith set. My opinion is that it tries to force linearity to group opinions. You can expect that (linear opinions) from individual voters, but in groups there's no need to assume that all the Smith set members would be better than the other candidates (with sincere votes). You can as well think than losses to other candidates are a bad thing, irrespective of whether they occur in cycles or not. Losses within a cycle could be considered worse than losses outside of that cycle.
> 
> When offensive strategy is used against the CWs, s/he'll be in the voted Smith-set. That's a good reason to elect from the voted Smith-set, so that the CWs can maybe be rescued.

In theory that might save the CWs in some very rare cases. Note that electing outside the Smith set may sometimes also help us, e.g. by making strategic plans void by not electing the (possibly strongly top-looped) favourite of the strategists.

If you accept the claim that the best winner (when there is no CWs) can sometimes be found outside the Smith set, then use of Smith set means that sometimes one does not elect the best winner with sincere votes. That is also not very common, but it would be nice to always elect the best candidate. One should aim at that, unless there is a strong need to modify the system (= make it worse from sincere votes point of view) in order to defend the system against strategic voting (that is expected to lead to even worse consequences than not electing the best candidate with sincere votes).

> I mean for example that I have not seen any good general guidance (to regular voters with no exact knowledge on how other voters are going to vote) on how to vote strategically in some very basic Condorcet elections. My best guess is that even if EM list would vote on which single winner election method is the best, using Condorcet, I would not expect people to identify any good strategy that they could use to (effectively, intentionally) manipulate the results and change the winner from the sincere winner to some alternative that they like better.
> 
> Well, the feeling to want to do burial might be natural. Likewise truncation, which might not even be strategically-intended. Llikewise chicken-dilemma defection. People at EM would be the most familiar with those strategies, but anyone could feel the incentive for them.
> 
> Most especially if you're polling, on some topic, a group of people who have strongly-preferred  favorites among the alternatives

Now we are talking about irrational strategies and uneducated voters. The best defence against that might be trustworthy neutral experts that tell people that their interests are best served by voting sincerely, or at least not by using any clearly irrational strategies. I'm sure there will always be some irrational behaviour, but that might be just general noise, and would not influence the election. If some large grouping will use some irrational strategy, and as a result will make the outcome of the election worse from their point of view, maybe they will learn and will vote rationally (sincerely or strategically) in the next election.

One more observation on how I would approach the problem of finding a Condorcet method that is sufficiently strategy proof. I would pick first the Condorcet method that produces best possible results with sincere votes. Then I'd let EM members watch one episode of some soap opera, and then vote on who was the best actor. That would be the first poll. Then they would watch another episode, and vote again in the second poll. Then they would watch one more episode, and cast their final vote. People would be allowed to discuss about their preferences, so that similar minded people would find each others, and they could plan strategies for the final election (and why not also for the polls). People would also be encouraged to publish strategic advice to others. People could also attach information on how they voted strategically in their ballot (note, not after the election but only in the ballot when voting). This whole process would be repeated few times. If there would be some clear symptoms of the used method failing under pressure of strategic voting, one could test some modified method using the same process (hoping to get rid of the identified strategy problems). If no strategic failures are obvious, I'd keep the original method. I have great trust on the skills of people on this mailing list, but so far I have not seen any good strategic guidance for voters or parties in real life Condorcet elections. Maybe there are reasons for that. Maybe people don't have any good advices to give :-). Maybe already basic Condorcet methods are strategy proof enough for typical large scale competitive elections and polls. Note that my approach is very practical. When talking about real life elections, I don't try to identify exact criteria to meet, but methods that are sufficiently tolerant (not necessarily 100% tolerant) to all the relevant threat scenarios.

BR, Juho


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