Re:Show HN: RankedVote – SurveyMonkey but focused on ranked-...
by godelski on Friday October 07, 2022 @01:38PM
(#33124531)
It isn't a flawed characterization. It is called the Favorite Betrayer[0] (also known as Strong Spoiler Effect) and has been seen in practice. We should also talk about rank's failure of the Monotonicity Criterion[1][2] because that's relevant here too.
To claim it is impossible in practice is to deny history.
[0] https://electowiki.org/wiki/Favorite_betrayal_criterion
That's a flawed characterization that keeps getting repeated.
As I explain in another comment below, in theory you could get your favorite candidate to win by further downranking the candidate who would otherwise win. One way of accomplishing that is to move other candidates up higher above your actual preferred candidate.
But in reality, there's no way to know what the exact precise vote breakdowns will be, so voting strategically (lying about your preferences) is impossible in a practical sense. There's no intuition to develop -- just vote your preferences.