Related papers: Exact Scale Invariance in Mixing of Binary Candida…
In discrete contexts such as the degree distribution for a graph, \emph{scale-free} has traditionally been \emph{defined} to be \emph{power-law}. We propose a reasonable interpretation of \emph{scale-free}, namely, invariance under the…
We investigate the site percolation transition in two strongly correlated systems in three dimensions: the massless harmonic crystal and the voter model. In the first case we start with a Gibbs measure for the potential, $U=\frac{J}{2}…
Consider elections where the set of candidates is partitioned into parties, and each party must nominate exactly one candidate. The Possible President problem asks whether some candidate of a given party can become the winner of the…
We examine the question of scale versus conformal invariance on maximally symmetric curved backgrounds and study general 2-derivative conformally invariant free theories of vectors and tensors. For spacetime dimension $D>4$, these conformal…
We study diversity in approval-based committee elections with incomplete or inaccurate information. We define diversity according to the Maximum Coverage problem, which is known to be $\mathsf{NP}$-complete, with a best attainable…
In multiwinner approval elections with many candidates, voters may struggle to determine their preferences over the entire slate of candidates. It is therefore of interest to explore which (if any) fairness guarantees can be provided under…
On the basis of a general action principle, we revisit the scale invariant field equation using the co-tensor relations by Dirac (1973). This action principle also leads to an expression for the scale factor $\lambda$, which corresponds to…
We discuss voting scenarios in which the set of voters (agents) and the set of alternatives are the same; that is, voters select a single representative from among themselves. Such a scenario happens, for instance, when a committee selects…
We consider a simple model of imprecise comparisons: there exists some $\delta>0$ such that when a subject is given two elements to compare, if the values of those elements (as perceived by the subject) differ by at least $\delta$, then the…
In the context of single-winner ranked-choice elections between $m$ candidates, we explore the tradeoff between two competing goals in every democratic system: the majority principle (maximizing the social welfare) and the minority…
We study the voter model dynamics in the presence of confidence and bias. We assume two types of voters. Unbiased voters whose confidence is indifferent to the state of the voter and biased voters whose confidence is biased towards a common…
This paper proposes normative criteria for voting rules under uncertainty about individual preferences. The criteria emphasize the importance of responsiveness, i.e., the probability that the social outcome coincides with the realized…
We show that the natural scaling of measurement for a particular problem defines the most likely probability distribution of observations taken from that measurement scale. Our approach extends the method of maximum entropy to use…
We study a nonequilibrium model with up-down symmetry and a noise parameter $q$ known as majority-vote model of M.J. Oliveira 1992 with heterogeneous agents on square lattice. By Monte Carlo simulations and finite-size scaling relations the…
We analyze Assessment Voting, a new two-round voting procedure that can be applied to binary decisions in democratic societies. In the first round, a randomly-selected number of citizens cast their vote on one of the two alternatives at…
There are many factors that can influence the outcome of an election. We here identify two dominant effects that can affect the votes obtained by a candidate, namely, the Majority Effect and the Media Effect. We mimic these two effects in a…
Electoral control types are ways of trying to change the outcome of elections by altering aspects of their composition and structure [BTT92]. We say two compatible (i.e., having the same input types) control types that are about the same…
We consider the voter model on Z, starting with all 1's to the left of the origin and all 0's to the right of the origin. It is known that if the associated random walk kernel p has zero mean and a finite r-th moment for any r>3, then the…
It is known that if X is uniformly distributed modulo 1 and Y is an arbitrary random variable independent of X then Y+X is also uniformly distributed modulo 1. We prove a converse for any continuous random variable Y (or a reasonable…
Balls-in-bins models describe a random sequential allocation of infinitely many balls into a finite number of bins. In these models a ball is placed into a bin with probability proportional to a given function (feedback function), which…