Truthful Voting (COMSOC)

Definition

Truthful Voting ( COMSOC)

Truthful voting means submitting a ballot that faithfully represents the voter’s true preferences. In the complete-ranking model,

$$\underset{\text{reported ranking}}{\underbrace{{\hat{\succ }}_i}}=\underset{\text{true ranking}}{\underbrace{{\succ }_i}}.$$

The voter reports the alternatives in their actual order of preference, rather than changing that order to influence the outcome as in strategic voting. For a ballot selecting only one alternative, truthful voting selects a most-preferred alternative.

Truthfulness concerns the report, not the result: it does not guarantee that the voter’s favourite wins or that voting truthfully gives them the best obtainable outcome.