Related papers: Physics peeks into the ballot box
Referring to a standard context of voting theory, and to the classic notion of voting situation, here we show that it is possible to observe any arbitrary set of elections' outcomes, no matter how paradoxical it may appear. On this purpose…
Voting is a game with a no-go theorem. New proofs of Arrow's impossibility theorem are given based on quantum information theory. We show that the Arrowian dictator is equivalent to the perfect cloning circuit. We present…
According to our current conception of physics, any valid physical theory is supposed to describe the objective evolution of a unique external world. However, this condition is challenged by quantum theory, which suggests that physical…
We exhibit the hidden beauty of weighted voting and voting power by applying a generalization of the Penrose-Banzhaf index to social choice rules. Three players who have multiple votes in a committee decide between three options by…
We study a model of electoral accountability and selection whereby heterogeneous voters aggregate incumbent politician's performance data into personalized signals through paying limited attention. Extreme voters' signals exhibit an…
Most democratic countries use election methods to transform election results into whole numbers which usually give the number of seats in a legislative body the parties obtained. Which election method does this best can be specified by…
The voter model is a classical interacting particle system modelling how consensus is formed across a network. We analyse the time to consensus for the voter model when the underlying graph is a subcritical scale-free random graph.…
The world of mathematics is often considered abstract, with its symbols, concepts, and topics appearing unrelated to physical objects. However, it is important to recognize that the development of mathematics is fundamentally influenced by…
Elections seem simple---aren't they just counting? But they have a unique, challenging combination of security and privacy requirements. The stakes are high; the context is adversarial; the electorate needs to be convinced that the results…
This paper is devoted to the application of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics to social (political) science. By using the quantum dynamical equations we model the process of decision making in US elections. The crucial point…
Physical systems are characterized by their structure and dynamics. But the physical laws only express relations, and their symmetries allow any possible relational structure to be also possible in a different parametrization or basis of…
Perpetual voting was recently introduced as a framework for long-term collective decision making. In this framework, we consider a sequence of subsequent approval-based elections and try to achieve a fair overall outcome. To achieve…
We model dynamically changing candidate positions in the face of a dynamic electorate. To formulate our equations, we use a space-time-continuous Hegselmann-Krause equation, which we solve using a particle method. We use the combined…
Accounting for undecided and uncertain voters is a challenging issue for predicting election results from public opinion polls. Undecided voters typify the uncertainty of swing voters in polls but are often ignored or allocated to each…
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual musical competition held among active members of the European Broadcasting Union since 1956. The event is televised live across Europe. Each participating country presents a song and receive a vote…
Decision procedures aggregating the preferences of multiple agents can produce cycles and hence outcomes which have been described heuristically as `chaotic'. We make this description precise by constructing an explicit dynamical system…
All physical systems in equilibrium obey the laws of thermodynamics. In other words, whatever the precise nature of the interaction between the atoms and molecules at the microscopic level, at the macroscopic level, physical systems exhibit…
Inferring universal laws of the environment is an important ability of human intelligence as well as a symbol of general AI. In this paper, we take a step toward this goal such that we introduce a new challenging problem of inferring…
Consider an election where N seats are distributed among parties with proportions p_1,...,p_m of the votes. We study, for the common divisor and quota methods, the asymptotic distribution, and in particular the mean, of the seat excess of a…
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…