Next: Introduction
Towards an Information-Neutral Voting Scheme That Does Not
Leave Too Much To Chance
Presented at the Midwest Political Science Association 54th
Annual Meeting, April 18-20, 1996
Lorrie Faith Cranor
Department of Engineering
and Policy
lorracks@cs.wustl.edu
Ron K. Cytron
Department of Computer Science
cytron@cs.wustl.edu
Washington University
St. Louis, MO 63130
Abstract:
We examine a new voting procedure that allows voters to express
their preferences in the form of a voting strategy --- a first-order
function which specifies a vote. We examine the calculations
necessary to formulate such voting strategies, and present examples
which illustrate the effects of risk. The voting framework we
discuss allows rational voters to vote strategically using
decision-theoretic techniques to select their optimal strategies,
even if they have no prior information about the preferences of
others and are unfamiliar with decision theory; moreover, randomness
can be introduced into the framework to increase resistance to
manipulability while maintaining outcomes that do not leave too much
to chance.
Lorrie Faith Cranor
Thu Apr 25 14:31:14 CDT 1996