[EM] Burial Detection & Correction

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi Forest,

Le lundi 13 mars 2023 à 14:00:46 UTC−5, Forest Simmons <forest.simmons21 at gmail.com> a écrit :
> Kevin,
> 
> Here's what I had in mind:
> 
> 1.Generate a random ballot profile.
> 
> 2. If it has either a majority faction or a Condorcet cycle, discard it.
> 
> 3. If there is a unilateral order reversal that creates a cycle, do one at random, and
> check to see which Condorcet completion methods reward the reversal.
> 
> increment the counters of success and failure.
> 
> 4. Repeat ...
> 
> Am I being too naïve ?

This is basically what I do measure now, which I would call the "face value" burial
incentive. If you insist on Condorcet and minimize this metric, it will lead you to
Schwartz//IRV, or I guess a method of the sort that Kristofer looks for. And you won't want
to use anything MinMax-like where you get to consider all the pairwise contests.

However, I think it's possible to arrange things so that successful burial depends on
getting lower preference support from voters who aren't that likely to be offering it. This
is based on the theory that voters will naturally end their ranking somewhere between two
frontrunners. So what I was thinking about is whether there could be a metric that
represents this idea.

Essentially you would concede that for some method, given totally random ballots, the
burial incentive looks horrendous. But after accounting for expected voter behavior, burial
mostly seems dangerous.

> How much difference would it make to generate the profiles geometrically? Would it be
> worth the extra trouble?

That I'm not sure.

Kevin
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