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In political science, social choice, and game theory, insincere or dishonest voting is the practice of casting a vote that provides more support to a worse outcome than a better one, i.e. one that involves voters lying about whether they prefer candidate A or B.[1] For example, in a first-past-the-post election, a sincere voter would support the single candidate they think is best, whereas an insincere voter would oppose such a candidate. The design of many voting methods incentivizes voters to be dishonest when expressing their opinions.[2]
First-preference methods like first-past-the-post and ranked-choice runoff voting (RCV) are well-known for incentivizing voters to give the highest rank to the lesser of two evils, i.e. to lie about who their favorite candidate is. If the voter's most preferred candidate is unlikely to win the election, the voter is instead incentivized to support the "least bad" of the candidates they consider viable.
By contrast, systems that satisfy independence of irrelevant alternatives (such as score, approval, and highest medians) tend to exhibit very low rates of insincere voting, and can even satisfy the sincere favorite criterion (which means voters are never forced to choose between the lesser of two evils).
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Farquharson, Robin (1969). Theory of Voting. Blackwell (Yale U.P. in the U.S.). ISBN 978-0-631-12460-3.
- ^ Wolitzky, Alexander (2009). "Fully sincere voting". Games and Economic Behavior. 67 (2): 720–735. doi:10.1016/j.geb.2009.01.001.