[EM] Manipulability stats for (some) poll methods

[Michael Garman]

The Big Lie is used to refer to the justification for the Holocaust. It’s
absolutely despicable of you to apply the same term to an electoral reform
organization — especially one against whom your case boils down to “Rob
Richie was mean to me at a conference in 2019.”

You lie about candidates’ favorability to make your points about approval.
You’re a liar. You’re no better than what you claim without evidence Rob
Richie did at that mystical conference.

On Sun, Apr 28, 2024 at 9:15 PM Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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.
>>>>
>>>> ----
>>>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info
>>>>
>>>> ----
>>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>>> info
>>>
>>
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