Gaming the Vote
At least five U.S. presidential elections have been won by the second most popular candidate, because of "spoilers"--Minor candidates who take enough votes away from the most popular candidate to tip the election. The spoiler effect is a consequence of the "impossibility theorem," discovered by Nobel laureate economist Kenneth Arrow, which asserts that voting is fundamentally unfair--and political strategists are exploiting the mathematical faults of the simple majority vote. This book presents a solution to the spoiler problem: a system called range voting, already widely used on the Internet, which is the fairest voting method of all, according to computer studies. Range voting remains controversial, however, and author Poundstone assesses the obstacles confronting any attempt to change the American electoral system.--From publisher description.
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What Hacker News says
- it doesn't really matter how you define "honest". what matters is how people actually vote. the only really crucial distinction for "honest" versus "strategic" is that "honest" can't consider viability. in the simulations, we just use "approve everyone you like more than average". optimal strategy is to approve everyone you like more than the expected utility of the winner. https://rangevoting.net/RVstrat6
here's lots of detail. you can run the code for yourself. https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegDum.html
here's a slightly different model from the late harvard stats phd, jameson quinn. https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/
don't "trust" anything. look at the data. you could also read the book "gaming the vote" by william poundstone.
- on the contrary, approval voting is specifically beloved by game theory experts for its immense resistance to tactical voting. for instance, NYU professor of political science and *game theory*, steven brams.
bayesian regret and voter satisfaction efficiency calculations show approval voting generally outperforming alternatives such as instant runoff voting ("ranked choice voting") with any mixture of strategic or honest voters.
https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig https://rpubs.com/Jameson-Quinn/VSE5key
part of the reason this happens is that the IRV/RCV tabulation mechanism flat out ignores much of the preference information on the ballot. https://www.rangevoting.org/IrvIgnoreExample.html
approval voting is also just much more resistant to gamesmanship. it satisfies the "favorite betrayal criterion", meaning it can never hurt you to support your favorite candidate with approval voting. for instance, my aunt voted for biden even tho she preferred warren, to try to stop trump. if she had been ranking them in a single IRV/RCV election, she would have analogously ranked biden in 1st even tho she preferred warren. this kind of tactic means electability is still key, and it disadvantages third party and independent candidates.
with approval voting by contrast, she might strategically vote for biden (her 2nd choice) but she would still be free to also approve warren, as that could not possibly cause a worse outcome for her.
the center for election science has a good compilation of the best articles on tactical voting.
https://electionscience.org/library/tactical-voting-basics/
there's also an excellent book on the topic, called "gaming the vote".
https://www.amazon.com/Gaming-Vote-Elections-Arent-About/dp/...
- If electoral systems interest you, I highly recommend William Poundstone's "Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It)". It focuses on the USA, so it's maybe better appreciated by American readers, but I found it highly entertaining and edifying, as I have several of the author's other works.
- Maybe, but as I understand it, within voting system reform there's at least one big practical conflict: the tradeoff between 'the best' vs. the simplest voting system that you can convince people is marginally better. The average voter has no clue what's wrong with the current system.
Proponents of one system over the other worry that voters will get confused, or worse, that established groups that disagree with the reform could attack a new voting system as too complicated.
Personally I think this is part of the reason approval has gotten more traction than score or STAR systems, but who's to say. The Center for Election Science has better PR and web design than https://www.rangevoting.org/, which largely advocates for Score voting.
But it's a multifaceted issue. Academics argue over different methods, and even as a casual observer it seems pretty clear that no system is flawless.
For anyone who hasn't read "Gaming the Vote" by Poundstone, it's a useful introduction that discusses both the academic study and practical use of voting systems.
- > it exacerbates the issue of voting being highly tactical.
No. Approval voting has been extensively studied by game theory experts like NYU political science professor Steven Brams, and found to be one of the most resistant to tactical voting. Computer simulations show it performing exceptionally well even with highly strategic voters.
https://www.rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig.html
https://rpubs.com/Jameson-Quinn/vse7
There's even a mathematical theorem (proof) that, given plausible strategic behavior by voters, approval voting always elects a beats-all "Condorcet winner" when one exists. This is mild (some would say GOOD) reaction to strategy.
https://www.rangevoting.org/AppCW
> Checking approve on someone I believe to be more popular than my favorite candidate lowers the chance my favorite candidate wins.
Yes, this is beneficial not harmful. The alternative is that the voting method must ignore all preference data about the relative support of X vs. Y as long as the voter prefers X to Y. That causes big problems.
https://medium.com/@ClayShentrup/later-no-harm-72c44e145510
It is precisely why ranked voting methods like Instant Runoff Voting are so vulnerable to tactics. If I prefer the Green, my general best strategy is to tactically rank the Democrat in 1st place, thus "burying" the Green and making the mere appearance of un-electability a self-fulfilling prophecy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ
https://www.rangevoting.org/NESD
The major moral of voting theory is to AVOID RANKED VOTING METHODS, favoring RATED voting methods like score voting, STAR voting, and approval voting. Here's a presentation I gave in 2015 to the Colorado League of Women Voters explaining more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyBm_Hcu4DI&t=488
I would also recommend the 2008 book "Gaming the Vote". Full disclosure: I'm in it.
- You might like Gaming the Vote by William Poundstone.
