We investigate the problem of winner determination from computational social choice theory in the data stream model. Specifically, we consider the task of summarizing an arbitrarily ordered stream of $n$ votes on $m$ candidates into a small space data structure so as to be able to obtain the winner determined by popular voting rules. As we show, finding the exact winner requires storing essentially all the votes. So, we focus on the problem of finding an {\em $\eps$-winner}, a candidate who could win by a change of at most $\eps$ fraction of the votes. We show non-trivial upper and lower bounds on the space complexity of $\eps$-winner determination for several voting rules, including $k$-approval, $k$-veto, scoring rules, approval, maximin, Bucklin, Copeland, and plurality with run off.
In many real world situations, collective decisions are made using voting. Moreover, scenarios such as committee or board elections require voting rules that return multiple winners. In multi-winner approval voting (AV), an agent may vote for as many candidates as they wish. Winners are chosen by tallying up the votes and choosing the top-$k$ candidates receiving the most votes. An agent may manipulate the vote to achieve a better outcome by voting in a way that does not reflect their true preferences. In complex and uncertain situations, agents may use heuristics to strategize, instead of inc…
Tulane University（杜兰大学）；Louisiana State University（路易斯安那州立大学）；University of West Florida（西佛罗里达大学）；Institute for Human and Machine Cognition（人机认知研究所）
In many real world situations, collective decisions are made using voting and, in scenarios such as committee or board elections, employing voting rules that return multiple winners. In multi-winner approval voting (AV), an agent submits a ballot consisting of approvals for as many candidates as they wish, and winners are chosen by tallying up the votes and choosing the top-$k$ candidates receiving the most approvals. In many scenarios, an agent may manipulate the ballot they submit in order to achieve a better outcome by voting in a way that does not reflect their true preferences. In complex…
We study computational aspects of a well-known single-winner voting rule called the Schulze method [Schulze, 2003] which is used broadly in practice. In this method the voters give (weak) ordinal preference ballots which are used to define the weighted majority graph (WMG) of direct comparisons between pairs of candidates. The choice of the winner comes from indirect comparisons in the graph, and more specifically from considering directed paths instead of direct comparisons between candidates. When the input is the WMG, to our knowledge, the fastest algorithm for computing all winners in the …
On the Complexity of Winner Determination and Strategic Control in Conditional Approval Voting
Athens University of Economics and Business（雅典经济与商业大学）；Archimedes, Athena Research Center（阿基米德、雅典研究中心）；Input Output Global (IOG)（输入输出全球（IOG））；University of Warsaw（华沙大学）
Epistemic social choice aims at unveiling a hidden ground truth given votes, which are interpreted as noisy signals about it. We consider here a simple setting where votes consist of approval ballots: each voter approves a set of alternatives which they believe can possibly be the ground truth. Based on the intuitive idea that more reliable votes contain fewer alternatives, we define several noise models that are approval voting variants of the Mallows model. The likelihood-maximizing alternative is then characterized as the winner of a weighted approval rule, where the weight of a ballot decr…
In a district-based election, we apply a voting rule $r$ to decide the winners in each district, and a candidate who wins in a maximum number of districts is the winner of the election. We present efficient sampling-based algorithms to predict the winner of such district-based election systems in this paper. When $r$ is plurality and the margin of victory is known to be at least $\varepsilon$ fraction of the total population, we present an algorithm to predict the winner. The sample complexity of our algorithm is $\mathcal{O}\left(\frac{1}{\varepsilon^4}\log \frac{1}{\varepsilon}\log\frac{1}δ\…
The Possible-Winner problem asks, given an election where the voters' preferences over the set of candidates is partially specified, whether a distinguished candidate can become a winner. In this work, we consider the computational complexity of Possible-Winner under the assumption that the voter preferences are $partitioned$. That is, we assume that every voter provides a complete order over sets of incomparable candidates (e.g., candidates are ranked by their level of education). We consider elections with partitioned profiles over positional scoring rules, with an unbounded number of candid…
TU Berlin（柏林工业大学）；AGH University of Science and Technology（AGH科技大学）；Ben-Gurion University（本-古里安大学）
Given an election, a preferred candidate p, and a budget, the SHIFT BRIBERY problem asks whether p can win the election after shifting p higher in some voters' preference orders. Of course, shifting comes at a price (depending on the voter and on the extent of the shift) and one must not exceed the given budget. We study the (parameterized) computational complexity of S HIFT BRIBERY for multiwinner voting rules where winning the election means to be part of some winning committee. We focus on the well-established SNTV, Bloc, k-Borda, and Chamberlin-Courant rules, as well as on approximate vari…
We investigate the problem of computing the probability of winning in an election where voter attendance is uncertain. More precisely, we study the setting where, in addition to a total ordering of the candidates, each voter is associated with a probability of attending the poll, and the attendances of different voters are probabilistically independent. We show that the probability of winning can be computed in polynomial time for the plurality and veto rules. However, it is computationally hard (#P-hard) for various other rules, including $k$-approval and $k$-veto for $k>1$, Borda, Condorcet,…
Various voting rules are based on ranking the candidates by scores induced by aggregating voter preferences. A winner (respectively, unique winner) is a candidate who receives a score not smaller than (respectively, strictly greater than) the remaining candidates. Examples of such rules include the positional scoring rules and the Bucklin, Copeland, and Maximin rules. When voter preferences are known in an incomplete manner as partial orders, a candidate can be a possible/necessary winner based on the possibilities of completing the partial votes. Past research has studied in depth the computa…
Prior work on the complexity of bribery assumes that the bribery happens simultaneously, and that the briber has full knowledge of all votes. However, in many real-world settings votes come in sequentially, and the briber may have a use-it-or-lose-it moment to decide whether to alter a given vote, and when making that decision the briber may not know what votes remaining voters will cast. We introduce a model for, and initiate the study of, bribery in such an online, sequential setting. We show that even for election systems whose winner-determination problem is polynomial-time computable, an …
