[EM] The rationale under the "winning votes" defeat strength measure

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi CLC,

> The major issue for margins is that, with strategic voters, the election
> results become effectively random just like for Borda, and even a
> universally-ranked-last candidate can win. The mailing list calls this DH3 and
> talks about “burial resistance criteria”, but I find this focus on criteria
> instead of specific models of election outcomes kind of silly, so I’ll say it’s
> better explained in Burt Monroe’s turkey-raising paper, where he games out
> Myerson-Satterthwaite-style equilibria.

I think the key commonality between Borda and margins Condorcet is that the
offensive strategy (burial) looks a lot like a defensive strategy, because
truncation is less convincing as a defense. (Borda may not even provide it.)

In my view, the danger of these methods is not that there is going to be a
coordinated strategy to steal an election, it's that many voters independently
may be unwilling to provide an accurate ranking for the worse of two
frontrunners, assessing that it might give away the election, and possibly
assessing that the other side's voters will be thinking the same way. (If other
voters are burying, then for you to do it too is no crime, it's the defense
available to you.)

If margins elections "go wrong" from time to time, it may encourage more
sincerity, though.

Kevin
votingmethods.net