Overstating: A tale of two cities

This work presents a rationale for the prevalent limits to voters’ information disclosure in electoral settings. When allowed to express an intensity of preferences, strategic voters overstate in equilibrium of large multicandidate elections. Due to these overstatements, the set of voting equilibria of elections held under different voting rules coincide: the voting rules are strategically equivalent. Voters need not anymore overstate in electorates with few voters. However, enlarging the set of available grades does not significantly alter the set of possible winners in such elections.