Peter Barath wrote:
1. Random Ballot performs quite well: On average, the Random Ballot
lottery achieved 93.7% the total utility of the option with the
largest total utility, and 98.4% the Gini welfare value of the
option with the largest Gini welfare value.
In only 5% of all situations, this measure of relative
performance was less than 88.3% resp. 94.5%!
I don't feel so happy about it. We should care not only for
how a method influences the result but also for how a method
influences what the options will be. In a real world, if we
used Random Ballot, on many ballot paper's first option would
be: "I become dictator" so we would end up soon having
a dictator.
A single election wouldn't grant anyone dictatorial powers (unless he
managed to grab a supermajority of the parliament or whatnot and get
himself an Enabling Act).
If you think the risk is too great even so, have a preface adjustment
where all candidates that fall below a threshold of first votes are
eliminated. The threshold should be very low, say 10. This will
introduce some compromising incentive, but again, that incentive should
be very slight.
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