Stronger Impossibility Results for Strategy-Proof Voting with i.i.d. Beliefs

Abstract

The classic Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem says that every strategy-proof voting rule with at least three possible candidates must be dictatorial. In \cite{McL11}, McLennan showed that a similar impossibility result holds even if we consider a weaker notion of strategy-proofness where voters believe that the other voters' preferences are i.i.d.~(independent and identically distributed): If an anonymous voting rule (with at least three candidates) is strategy-proof w.r.t.~all i.i.d.~beliefs and is also Pareto efficient, then the voting rule must be a random dictatorship. In this paper, we strengthen McLennan's result by relaxing Pareto efficiency to $\epsilon$-Pareto efficiency where Pareto efficiency can be violated with probability $\epsilon$, and we further relax $\epsilon$-Pareto efficiency to a very weak notion of efficiency which we call $\epsilon$-super-weak unanimity. We then show the following: If an anonymous voting rule (with at least three candidates) is strategy-proof w.r.t.~all i.i.d.~beliefs and also satisfies $\epsilon$-super-weak unanimity, then the voting rule must be $O(\epsilon)$-close to random dictatorship.