Obvious Independence of Clones

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of Obviously Independent of Clones (OIoC), a property ensuring that strategic clone manipulation is evidently ineffective, and evaluates existing IoC rules for this property.

Contribution

It formalizes the OIoC criterion and analyzes whether five existing IoC voting rules satisfy this new, stronger property.

Findings

Some IoC rules satisfy OIoC, making clone manipulation obviously ineffective.

The formal definition of OIoC clarifies the robustness of voting rules against strategic cloning.

The analysis guides the design of more transparent and manipulation-resistant voting mechanisms.

Abstract

The Independence of Clones (IoC) criterion measures a voting rule's robustness to strategic nomination. Prior literature has established empirically that individuals may still submit costly, distortionary misreports even in strategy-proof (SP) settings, due to failure to recognize the SP property. The intersection of these issues motivates the search for mechanisms that are Obviously Independent of Clones (OIoC): where strategic nomination/exiting of clones obviously has no effect on the outcome. We construct a formal and intuitive definition of a voting rule being OIoC and examine five IoC rules to identify whether they satisfy OIoC.