Maximal Lotteries
-
I just learned about this now. It’s a Smith compliant method, and is participation compliant up until necessary randomization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximal_lotteries
Basically, you form the majority margin matrix Mij over candidates. Then consider the two player game where each player chooses one candidate: if player 1 chooses i, and player 2 chooses j, then player 1 gets Mij and player 2 gets -Mij.
This game has at least one mixed strategy Nash equilibrium, which is a distribution over candidates. A maximal lottery selects a candidate at random according to one such mixed strategy Nash equilibrium. In this sense, a maximal lottery is a mixed “candidate” that cannot be challenged by a majority.
Occasionally maximal lotteries are non-unique, but they often are. A trivial case is when a Condorcet winner exists, in which case the maximal lottery selects the Condorcet winner as a pure strategy. Orthogonally, if there is an odd number of voters, and if preferences are strict, the maximal lottery is always unique. Otherwise, symmetries like multiple dominance components in the Smith set can induce degeneracies.
Still, any maximal lottery satisfies probabilistic notions of participation, where participation cannot reduce the chances of a preferred outcome for a voter.
I think this is nearly the “right” notion of compliance. There is only slight room in choosing which maximal lottery to implement. For example, in case of degeneracy, one could choose a maximal lottery that optimizes expected score. Or, maybe compute Jeffrey’s prior over maximal lotteries, and then sample a maximal lottery accordingly.
What thoughts do others have?
-
@cfrank I think lottery methods in general are interesting and worth looking into. Looking at the Wikipedia page, it seems interesting that this would satisfy participation but not monotonicity, which is the opposite of most Condorcet methods. So while some might criticise it for failing monotonicity (seen as easy to get in a Condorcet method), the prize is arguably better, since elections are really about voters rather than candidates.
-
@toby-pereira yes monotonicity fails, but I think pairwise probability margins are apparently monotonic.
I think maximal lotteries are interesting too, and I wonder if it makes sense to compensate the dissatisfied majorities with electoral credit to spend in subsequent election(s).
For example, say the maximal lottery (or maybe any other Condorcet method) elects A when there is no Condorcet winner. Let beat(X) be the set of candidates that beat X in a head-to-head majority.
Then for each B in beat(A), it seems like the majority preferring B to A should be compensated in some way. Coming up with any way to compensate majorities for electoral grievances that generalizes across time and is game-theoretically stable might get complicated. There may already be literature on this kind of thing.
The ideal would be for the electoral process to be history dependent in cases of Condorcet cycles, but still preserve long-run maximal lottery distribution properties (somehow). Maybe the maximal lottery is the only way to go… the worry is that majorities with instantaneous grievances might not internalize future lotteries as granting them sufficient compensation.
-
@Toby-Pereira this seems in line with compensation, I haven’t read in full yet; it seems complex: https://econtheory.org/ojs/index.php/te/article/viewFile/5380/39121/1195
EDIT: It isn't quite what I thought it was, but is still interesting. And thinking more about the idea of compensation, I think it’s probably impossible while also preserving fair majoritarianism, since compensation in the form of increased future electoral influence becomes strategically relevant information. Probably, compensation would have to be outside of the electoral process, and that gets into problems of money and power in politics.
-
@cfrank I'll try and have a look in the next few days.
-
@toby-pereira hopefully it’s interesting. I had another thought which might be something actually workable: Say there is a first provisional winner by lottery. That candidate then has the opportunity to secure their victory by offering concessions to the offended majorities within a fixed time horizon. After that time horizon, if an agreement is not reached, then another lottery is run, and that second candidate will be declared the final winner. The ratification could be a second majority vote after a concession contract is made public. Or something like that.
Alternatively, after the lottery probabilities and majority margin matrix are made public, candidates in the bipartisan set draft conditional concessions which are independently ratified by majority approval vote. Then a maximal lottery is computed over only the candidates with ratified concessions, and those concessions are legally binding for the winner. If no concessions are ratified, then the maximal lottery proceeds as usual.