Haste makes waste: a case to favour voting bots

Abstract

Voting is a common way to reach a group decision. When possible, voters will attempt to vote strategically, in order to optimize their satisfaction from the outcome. Previous research has modelled how rational voter agents (bots) vote to maximize their personal utility in an iterative voting process that has a deadline (a timeout). However, it remains an open question whether human beings behave rationally when faced with the same settings. The focus of this paper is therefore to examine how the deadline factor affects manipulative behavior in real-world scenarios were humans are required to reach a decision before a deadline. An On-line platform was built to enable voting games by all types of users: agents (bots), humans, and mixed games with both humans and agents. We compare the results of human behavior and bot behavior and conclude that it might be wise to allow bots to make (certain) decisions on our behalf.