The framework for a declared-strategy voting system has been developed and three variations of this system have been described. All three systems allow 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. However, in order for voters to select sophisticated strategies under these systems, they must have prior information about the preferences of others and be familiar with game theory. The unstable and indecisive systems we described are less susceptible to such sophisticated manipulation than the other system. However, instability and indecisiveness make these systems generally undesirable; thus our third system seems most attractive.
Despite being somewhat manipulable, our system does provide voters with equal access to the information necessary to formulate decision-theoretic strategies. Thus it has a degree of information neutrality. In voting situations where voters are likely to cast strategic votes that are not sophisticated, introducing this system would increase the interpretability of election results. In addition, the use of tie-breaking rules increases the richness of the vocabulary with which voters may express their votes.
In order to further reduce declared-strategy voting's susceptibility to manipulation, we must build into the system the ability to identify an optimal sophisticated strategy on a voter's behalf (should such a strategy exist). Whether this is possible for all sets of preference information and for all types of traditional aggregation procedures remains an open question. Farquharson [9] demonstrated an iterative elimination process for identifying optimal sophisticated strategies for binary voting procedures (procedures in which the alternatives are voted on two at a time, with winning alternatives advanced to the next round and losing alternatives eliminated until only one alternative remains). Felsenthal and Maoz [10] applied this procedure to plurality and approval voting. Further work is needed to determine whether this procedure is useful in the declared-strategy framework.