[EM] Manipulability stats for (some) poll methods

[Michael Ossipoff]

FairVote’s intentional consistent lying about IRV’s properties was familiar
& widely known & discussed in the single-winner reform community, long
before Trump ran for president.

In a recent discussion about FairVote’s big lie, Michael G. went through
the most hilarious contortions to try to explain & justify the lie.

It isn’t necessary to repeat that discussion. It’s in the archives, & most
of us were here at the time.

On Sun, Apr 28, 2024 at 12:07 Michael Garman <michael.garman at rankthevote.us>
wrote:

> Unsubstantiated allegations of “fraud” and “lies”? Sounds like someone’s
> been hitting the “Trump-blogs” again :D
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 28, 2024 at 9:02 PM Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Of course I’m just guessing, but my guess is that “decapitation” is
>> Closed’s new name for favorite-burial.
>>
>> Closed sometimes in invents new names without define them.
>>
>> IRV indeed shares Plurality’s need for favorite-burial
>> defensive-strategy. I don’t like that, & wouldn’t propose IRV. There are a
>> number of places where IRV is (the only electoral reform) up for enactment
>> this year, In spite of that very  unlikeable strategy-need, I wanted to
>> help campaign for its enactment, in the hope that the voters who’ve enacted
>> it didn’t do so because they intend to bury their favorite, & so so won’t
>> do so.
>>
>> But, because IRV is being fraudulently sold to them, with intentional
>> lies, we can’t count on how people will vote when they find out about what
>> they’ve enacted…when they find out about the lie.
>>
>> Therefore, regrettably, we shouldn’t support “RCV”.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 28, 2024 at 11:15 Chris Benham <cbenhamau at yahoo.com.au>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Limelike,
>>>
>>> Can you please define and explain the "decapitation" strategy?   I
>>> haven't heard of it.
>>>
>>> And can you elaborate a bit on this? :
>>>
>>> IRV is a good example of this. It's *usually* not susceptible to
>>> strategy (in the IAC model), but I think of it as one of the most
>>> strategy-afflicted methods on this list. It's vulnerable to some
>>> particularly-egregious strategies (decapitation), ones that are complex or
>>> difficult to explain (pushover), and many strategies [that?] don't have a
>>> simple defensive counterstrategy available (like truncation).
>>>
>>>
>>> Chris B.
>>>
>>> On 29/04/2024 2:31 am, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Kris, thanks for the results! They're definitely interesting.
>>>
>>> That said, I'm not sure how useful a metric raw probabilities provide; I
>>> don't think they provide a very strong measure of how *severely* each
>>> system is affected by strategy. Missing are:
>>> 1. How much do voters have to distort their ballots? Is it just
>>> truncation, compression (as with tied-at-the-top), or full decapitation?
>>> 2. How hard is it to think of the strategy? Counterintuitive strategies
>>> (e.g. randomized strategies or pushover) require large, organized parties
>>> to educate their supporters about how to pull it off. This could be good or
>>> bad depending on if you like institutionalized parties. Good: sometimes
>>> people can't pull it off. Bad: this creates an incentive for strong parties
>>> and partisanship. See the Alaska 2022 Senate race, where Democrats pulled
>>> off a favorite-betrayal in support of Murkowski to avoid a center-squeeze.
>>> 3. Is a counterstrategy available?
>>> 4. How feasible is the strategy (does it involve many or few voters)?
>>> 5. How bad would the effects of the strategy be? Borda is bad not just
>>> because it's often susceptible to strategy, but because it gives turkeys a
>>> solid chance of winning.
>>>
>>> IRV is a good example of this. It's *usually* not susceptible to
>>> strategy (in the IAC model), but I think of it as one of the most
>>> strategy-afflicted methods on this list. It's vulnerable to some
>>> particularly-egregious strategies (decapitation), ones that are complex or
>>> difficult to explain (pushover), and many strategies don't have a simple
>>> defensive counterstrategy available (like truncation).
>>>
>>> A low-probability but occasionally high-impact strategy might be the
>>> worst of both worlds; voters get lulled into a false sense of security by a
>>> few elections where strategy doesn't matter, then suddenly find a candidate
>>> they dislike elected because they failed to execute the appropriate
>>> defensive strategy.
>>>
>>> ----
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>>>
>>> ----
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>>
>
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