# Obvious Manipulability of Voting Rules

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.01983 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.01983/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 25 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Nov 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Is it ever safe to vote strategically?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1301.1420/) (2013)
- [Obvious Manipulations in Cake-Cutting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.02988/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Temporal Elections: Welfare, Strategyproofness, and Proportionality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.13637/) (2024)
- [Manipulation of individual judgments in the quantitative pairwise comparisons method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01809/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem states that no unanimous and non-dictatorial voting rule is strategyproof. We revisit voting rules and consider a weaker notion of strategyproofness called not obvious manipulability that was proposed by Troyan and Morrill (2020). We identify several classes of voting rules that satisfy this notion. We also show that several voting rules including k-approval fail to satisfy this property. We characterize conditions under which voting rules are obviously manipulable. One of our insights is that certain rules are obviously manipulable when the number of alternatives is relatively large compared to the number of voters. In contrast to the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem, many of the rules we examined are not obviously manipulable. This reflects the relatively easier satisfiability of the notion and the zero information assumption of not obvious manipulability, as opposed to the perfect information assumption of strategyproofness. We also present algorithmic results for computing obvious manipulations and report on experiments.