[EM] Manipulability stats for (some) poll methods

Sun Apr 28 12:37:56 PDT 2024

On Sun, Apr 28, 2024 at 12:18 Michael Garman <michael.garman at rankthevote.us>
wrote:

> The Big Lie is used to refer to the justification for the Holocaust.
>

Incorrect. No one has a monopoly on big lies.

“Rob Richie was mean to me at a conference in 2019.”
>

I’ve never been to a conference with Rob Richie. :-)

> You lie about candidates’ favorability.
>

I reported the results of a currently ongoing poll at CIVS (google:
Condorcet Internet Voting Service) poll titled “2024 presidential election.”

…& no, I didn’t lie about the results.

Michael G. says he has polls showing Trump with 45% approval. 1/3 is the
estimate that I’ve often heard. Without wading into a thorough search, I’ll
just say that maybe Michael G’s poll is more accurate than the estimates
that I’ve heard.

Michael G. says that his polls ask people to compare Trump & Biden to the
“3rd-party” candidates. Fine. I’ve just never been asked such a
poll-question, or encountered one in the mass media, or distributed by
email, or asked on the web, to people who haven’t intentionally visited a
polling website. Nor have I ever encountered a poll anywhere in which that
question was asked without the Republican finishing last…losing to everyone
else.

But, hey, maybe Michael G. has discovered a better & more accurate poll
that is widely publicly distributed & asked, but I’ve just never
encountered it.

Anything’s possible, right?

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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