Probably no way to answer this with available data, but I’m curious about the extent to which individual revealed preferences (election votes edition) are concordant or discordant with their revealed preferences (personal donations edition). To the extent they are discordant, what factors might explain the discordance, and what might we learn from having two different types of revealed preferences to pull from? This loops back into some of the discussions earlier in the year about whether there should be more of a community voice in funding allocation and if so how that could be carried out in a way that is less open to manipulation.
For instance, I think this system makes it frictionless for me to specify smaller preferences (and even mildly encouraged doing so). That strikes me as an advantage it has over GWWC pledge fulfillment information, where even if I take the time to give to the organization that is tenth on my list, I might not take the time to enter that donation into the GWWC database. In contrast, I think the structure of the Donation Election mildly encouraged me to give points to organizations I thought would generate lots of other votes as well.[1]
(My own votes didn’t track my donations that closely, but that may be due to unusual personal circumstances this year for me).
Only mildly so—e.g., a voter would be disenfranchised in all rounds after all organizations to which they assigned votes were eliminated. They would be treated as indifferent among all remaining choices. Thus, a rational voter who was not indifferent would distribute points such that they threw at least one point to an organization they expected to be in the top four. Given that most voters gave points to 2-4 organizations, this probably creates a small bias toward organizations perceived as more popular.
I agree that this is hard with available data. I guess we could try to look at donation data e.g. from here or responses to this post and see how well it matches what people collectively voted for (ideally weighted by ~Forum engagement), but both groups are probably pretty different from the voting group (and the second group is small). A lot of comments on why people voted the way they did also noted something about why they’re donating to the candidates they voted for (but definitely not all comments).
Also:
A lot of people probably donated to charities or projects that weren’t candidates (including me, although I did also donate to something I think I gave some points to)
There are ~strategic reasons for voting for charities you aren’t donating to (e.g. it’s not clear (to me) if you should split donations or how much, but if you’ve thought a fair bit about different candidates, you probably want to give points to multiple candidates)
Probably no way to answer this with available data, but I’m curious about the extent to which individual revealed preferences (election votes edition) are concordant or discordant with their revealed preferences (personal donations edition). To the extent they are discordant, what factors might explain the discordance, and what might we learn from having two different types of revealed preferences to pull from? This loops back into some of the discussions earlier in the year about whether there should be more of a community voice in funding allocation and if so how that could be carried out in a way that is less open to manipulation.
For instance, I think this system makes it frictionless for me to specify smaller preferences (and even mildly encouraged doing so). That strikes me as an advantage it has over GWWC pledge fulfillment information, where even if I take the time to give to the organization that is tenth on my list, I might not take the time to enter that donation into the GWWC database. In contrast, I think the structure of the Donation Election mildly encouraged me to give points to organizations I thought would generate lots of other votes as well.[1]
(My own votes didn’t track my donations that closely, but that may be due to unusual personal circumstances this year for me).
Only mildly so—e.g., a voter would be disenfranchised in all rounds after all organizations to which they assigned votes were eliminated. They would be treated as indifferent among all remaining choices. Thus, a rational voter who was not indifferent would distribute points such that they threw at least one point to an organization they expected to be in the top four. Given that most voters gave points to 2-4 organizations, this probably creates a small bias toward organizations perceived as more popular.
I agree that this is hard with available data. I guess we could try to look at donation data e.g. from here or responses to this post and see how well it matches what people collectively voted for (ideally weighted by ~Forum engagement), but both groups are probably pretty different from the voting group (and the second group is small). A lot of comments on why people voted the way they did also noted something about why they’re donating to the candidates they voted for (but definitely not all comments).
Also:
A lot of people probably donated to charities or projects that weren’t candidates (including me, although I did also donate to something I think I gave some points to)
There are ~strategic reasons for voting for charities you aren’t donating to (e.g. it’s not clear (to me) if you should split donations or how much, but if you’ve thought a fair bit about different candidates, you probably want to give points to multiple candidates)