On one-sided strategy
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Before today, I thought one-sided strategy was impossible. It seems bizarre to imagine a situation where only one of the two parties is able to work out the correct solution.
Today I came across a video explaining how to vote strategically in Schulze. It said that, if you really want to make your vote count, you should put your favorite at the top; then, you should truncate your ballot below the candidates you think are unacceptable. This is great, right? Clean and concise explanation of a minimal defense.
Except I lied. The video was talking about IRV. This video—produced by a large, well-funded San Francisco advocacy group—was trying to "educate" everyone into using the exact opposite of the correct strategy for IRV!
This strategy is both highly ineffective and socially disastrous. It dramatically increases the risk of a center-squeeze. It would create even stronger polarization and more extremism than in our current system of FPP-with-primaries, where at least primary voters know to vote for electable candidates.
That's not to say strategy can't be done. Alaska Democrats pulled it off in the 2022 Senate race, where they managed to get everyone to rank Murkowski first. Except... Republicans didn't manage the same for Begich. That's a huge problem.
I don't know if the video I saw was stupidity or intentional disinformation. Either way, it shows a big problem with IRV and Condorcet-IRV hybrids: their complexity makes them very vulnerable to one-sided strategy. We can't expect both parties, or all voters, will be able to work out the best strategy and use it. It's completely possible that only one party will understand runoffs well enough to exploit them.
I don't think you can expect voters to consistently execute any strategy more complex than thresholding, in a way that cancels out across parties and candidates.
An unusual strength of cardinal methods is the strategy is so clearly, blatantly obvious that nobody is disadvantaged. In this sense, unlike IRV, score and approval seem remarkably resistant to one-sided strategy.
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@lime yes, either Dunning-Kruger or a literal anti-reform effort, we can’t tell lol. I’ve started to lean toward score, just because it gives the illusion of ordered preferences while basically turning into approval voting.
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@lime said in On one-sided strategy:
This video—produced by a large, well-funded San Francisco advocacy group—was trying to "educate" everyone into using the exact opposite of the correct strategy for IRV!
This strategy is both highly ineffective and socially disastrous. It dramatically increases the risk of a center-squeeze. It would create even stronger polarization and more extremism than in our current system of FPP-with-primaries, where at least primary voters know to vote for electable candidates.This is quite interesting. Where can we find the video?
BTW It appears Top Four blanket primaries with an IRV runoff will be on the November ballot in Colorado.
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@lime Could you give a more fleshed-out example of what might happen in IRV with one-sided strategy? And under Condorcet (whichever versions you think might be illustrative).
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@lime said in On one-sided strategy:
I don't think you can expect voters to consistently execute any strategy more complex than thresholding, in a way that cancels out across parties and candidates.
So my favorite Score strategy is off the table?
Give your favorites the top score and your most hated the bottom score. If you have a compromise candidate, and if you are convinced that your favorites are very unpopular or unknown, exaggerate the score of the compromise candidate almost up to the next higher candidates, but not quite up to them.
If the granularity is too coarse, use probability for the equivalent.
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@toby-pereira said in On one-sided strategy:
@lime Could you give a more fleshed-out example of what might happen in IRV with one-sided strategy? And under Condorcet (whichever versions you think might be illustrative).
In Condorcet-IRV methods, I think one-sided strategy becomes plausible whenever you have a center squeeze. If Democrats buried Begich in Alaska to create a cycle, this would have left Begich with the fewest first-place votes (despite being the sincere Condorcet winner). Given Republicans didn't do favorite-betrayal to elect Begich in the actual race, I suspect they wouldn't have in Benham either.
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@jack-waugh said in On one-sided strategy:
Give your favorites the top score and your most hated the bottom score. If you have a compromise candidate, and if you are convinced that your favorites are very unpopular or unknown, exaggerate the score of the compromise candidate almost up to the next higher candidates, but not quite up to them.
In practice, this is the same as thresholding, assuming you rate your compromise close enough to perfect.
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@lime said in On one-sided strategy:
@jack-waugh said in On one-sided strategy:
Give your favorites the top score and your most hated the bottom score. If you have a compromise candidate, and if you are convinced that your favorites are very unpopular or unknown, exaggerate the score of the compromise candidate almost up to the next higher candidates, but not quite up to them.
In practice, this is the same as thresholding, assuming you rate your compromise close enough to perfect.
What you mean, "rate"? In my heart, or on my ballot?
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@jack-waugh said in On one-sided strategy:
@lime said in On one-sided strategy:
@jack-waugh said in On one-sided strategy:
Give your favorites the top score and your most hated the bottom score. If you have a compromise candidate, and if you are convinced that your favorites are very unpopular or unknown, exaggerate the score of the compromise candidate almost up to the next higher candidates, but not quite up to them.
In practice, this is the same as thresholding, assuming you rate your compromise close enough to perfect.
What you mean, "rate"? In my heart, or on my ballot?
On your ballot.
