Votes Can Be Confidently Bought in Instant Runoff Elections, and What to Do About It

Williams, Jack; Baltz, Samuel; Stewart, Charles

doi:10.2139/ssrn.4387782

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…2 Figure ?? presents one ranking question with such radio-button design, which is also a common ballot design in ranked-choice voting elections (Williams et al, 2023;Crowder-Meyer et al, 2021).…”

Section: Appendix C Existing Scholarship On Ranking Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Addressing Measurement Errors in Ranking Questions for the Social Sciences

Atsusaka,

Kim

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although existing studies show that ranking questions may offer fine-grained information about people's opinions, others are concerned about measurement errors in these questions due to their complexity. We introduce a statistical framework to improve ranking data analysis by addressing measurement errors in ranking questions. First, we propose a formal framework to define measurement errors from random responses---arbitrary and meaningless responses based on a wide range of random patterns. We then quantify bias due to random responses, show that the bias may change our conclusion in any direction, and clarify why item order randomization alone does not solve the statistical issue. Next, we introduce our methodology based on two key design-based considerations: item order randomization and the addition of paired "anchor" ranking questions with known correct answers. These designs allow researchers to (1) learn about the direction of the bias due to random responses and (2) estimate the proportion of random responses, enabling our bias-corrected estimator. We illustrate our methods by studying people's relative importance of partisan identity compared to race, gender, and religious identities, finding that about 30% of respondents offered random responses and that they can change our substantive conclusions.

show abstract

Section: Appendix C Existing Scholarship On Ranking Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Addressing Measurement Errors in Ranking Questions for the Social Sciences

Atsusaka,

Kim

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Votes Can Be Confidently Bought in Some Ranked Ballot Elections, and What to Do about It

Williams,

Baltz,

Stewart

2024

Polit. Anal.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We show that, in some ranked ballot elections, it may be possible to violate the secret vote. There are so many ways to rank even a handful of candidates that many possible rankings might not be cast by any voter. So, a vote buyer could pay someone to rank the candidates a certain way and then use the announced election results to verify that the voter followed through. We examine the feasibility of this attack both theoretically and empirically, focusing on instant runoff voting (IRV). Although many IRV elections have few enough candidates that this scheme is not feasible, we use data from San Francisco and a proposed election rule change in Oakland to show that some important IRV elections can have large numbers of unused rankings. There is no evidence that this vote-buying scheme has ever been used. However, its existence has implications for the administration and security of IRV elections. This scheme is more feasible when more candidates can be ranked in the election and when the election results report all the ways that candidates were ranked.

show abstract

Votes Can Be Confidently Bought in Instant Runoff Elections, and What to Do About It

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Addressing Measurement Errors in Ranking Questions for the Social Sciences

Addressing Measurement Errors in Ranking Questions for the Social Sciences

Votes Can Be Confidently Bought in Some Ranked Ballot Elections, and What to Do about It

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About