Talk by Arnaud Dellis, Université du Québec à Montréal

(with Sabine Kröger, Université Laval)

Abstract: Instant Runoff Voting is a voting procedure that requires voters to rank candidates. It is currently used in several countries (Australia, USA, Canada), and various places worldwide are debating its adoption for political elections. A primary argument in support of its adoption is that it is such a complex voting procedure that people would be unable to vote strategically and would then choose to resort to voting sincerely. We conducted a laboratory experiment to assess the validity of this claim. More generally, we investigate how complexity affects voting behavior. Our findings confirm that complexity does impede strategic voting. However, we also observe that rather than resorting to sincere voting, voters tend to respond to complexity by adopting a voting heuristic, which we call Lifting, that consists of reversing the ranks of their two most preferred candidates. Additionally, we find that the complexity of Instant Runoff Voting adversely affects voters and makes it more difficult for them to learn from experience.