[EM] Manipulability stats for (some) poll methods

[Closed Limelike Curves]

Now I want to make a separate objection: I don't think "you have to Google
some polls" is the main problem of strategic voting at all. It takes me
just a few seconds to find the 538 website, and we're all constantly
inundated with political news anyways. Chances are you already know if your
state is mostly liberal or mostly conservative. And to top it all off, your
vote won't be the tie-breaking ballot, so the actual benefits of all this
research are tiny (assuming what you care about is who wins the election).

The major costs of strategy are mostly because of *insincere* voting, which
can easily create false consensus effects. If your system encourages lesser
evil voting, you can get stuck in a loop where everyone gives a unanimous
favorite a low rank to keep the lesser evil from winning, which makes the
best candidate look hopeless and prevents them from fundraising or getting
into debates.

On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 7:56 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I can't agree at all. IMO the primary goal of a good voting method is to
>> > make voters not regret voting honestly. While it's useful to be able to
>> > use a defensive strategy after analysing expected poll outcomes,
>> > frontrunners etc., the best voting method would be the one that does not
>> > create the need to take these things into the account at all.
>> > Chances of being able to vote honestly, with no strategic burden to
>> > bear. That's what the manipulability numbers are about.
>
> I fully agree with all of this, right up until the last two sentences.
> That's the problem—that's *not* what manipulability numbers are about!
> It's p-values all over again!
>
> From what I can tell, your complaint with strategic voting is it's a pain
> in the ass. You have to conduct polls, read the news, check 538, etc.
> before voting. Better to have a system where you can skip this whole
> rigamarole and just follow a 0-info strategy. If that's what you're
> concerned about, what matters is whether the *expected utility *gained
> by voting  (instead of 0-info) is higher than the *informational and
> computational* cost of voting strategically.
>
> Manipulability doesn't measure that. It just asks whether there is *some*
> strategy (no matter how difficult or implausible) that gives a
> different result than honest voting. "But in the elections where there
> isn't a strategy like that, couldn't you skip that whole rigamarole?" Nope,
> because you need to go through all that to know if you're in one of the
> races where strategy matters!
>
> Picking a method based on low manipulability is like picking Russian
> roulette over regular roulette "because 84% is better odds than 50%". We're
> comparing completely different outcomes! For all I know, that last 10% of
> elections is situations where my vote, personally, will decide whether
> Hitler's reanimated corpse wins the election.
>
> On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 11:31 AM Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
> km_elmet at t-online.de> wrote:
>
>> On 2024-05-15 17:04, Filip Ejlak wrote:
>> > śr., 15 maj 2024, 10:47 użytkownik Michael Ossipoff
>> > <email9648742 at gmail.com <mailto:email9648742 at gmail.com>> napisał:
>> >
>> >>     Yes, then, as you suggest, “manipulability” doesn’t tell us
>> anything
>> >>     of interest. I agree.
>> >
>> >>     Then how much do those manipulability numbers mean, in regards to
>> >>     the strategic merit of the methods. Nothing?
>> >
>> >
>> > I can't agree at all. IMO the primary goal of a good voting method is
>> to
>> > make voters not regret voting honestly. While it's useful to be able to
>> > use a defensive strategy after analysing expected poll outcomes,
>> > frontrunners etc., the best voting method would be the one that does
>> not
>> > create the need to take these things into the account at all.
>> > Chances of being able to vote honestly, with no strategic burden to
>> > bear. That's what the manipulability numbers are about.
>>
>> Thank you for saying that much more succinctly than I did.
>>
>> Although I would say that winner quality given honesty also matters :-)
>> At least to avoid the kind of outcomes that lead people to repeal the
>> method.
>>
>> -km
>> ----
>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>> info
>>
>
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