[EM] Rethinking Burial Detection Runoff

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 6/15/23 07:47, Forest Simmons wrote:
> Chris,
> 
> I like your new Condorcet method, and consider it to be a much more 
> practical suggestion than any of my sincere CW finder ideas currently in 
> progress.
> 
> The ballot profile you provided to illustrate your LV Sorted Margins 
> burial resistant method, ended up electing A, which we considered to be 
> better than electing B, because we thought that with some positive 
> probability the ballot profile might be a result of the B faction's 
> insincere order reversal .... changing sincere 44 B>A to 44 B>C, i.e. 
> the B faction burying A under C ... so that electing B, like just about 
> every other method under the sun, would encourage bad behavior.
> 
> Is it insulting to voters to build in safe guards that make insincere 
> truncations or burials less likely to pay?
> 
> Is it insulting to lock your front door when leaving town for a few dsys?

> Going outside the strict Universal Domain by allowing truncations, equal 
> rankings, approval cutoffs, or other levers, offer additional 
> expressiveness that can reduce incentives for burial, compromise, etc.

James Green-Armytage has another suggestion for deterring burial: 
https://www.jamesgreenarmytage.com/dodgson.pdf

I haven't read it in detail, so perhaps the devil's in the details about 
"plausible assumptions about how candidate decide". But what do you 
think of that method?

> 
> I've been experimenting with how far we can get with two sets of ballots 
> ... one possibly strategic set, for the purpose of determing the 
> finalists and runoff order ... and the other set dedicated solely to the 
> kind of runoff that elects the sincere CW whenever there is one.

This is still an interesting venue, of course. I've updated the 
Electowiki page about Condorcet loser to include information that a 
manual runoff method always passes honest Condorcet loser (assuming no 
drop in turnout).

At some point I would like to do a minimum strategy evaluation of 
methods with two rounds, but I've currently been occupied with cleaning 
up some other code in my election simulator quadelect so that I can 
automatically check for clone failures, monotonicity, etc. the same way 
I can check for strategy failures; and so that I can classify strategy 
failures as burial, compromise, or other.

Maybe, eventually!

-km