Related papers: Geometric Comparisons of Electoral Rules Under Fee…
We evaluate the tendency for different voting methods to promote political compromise and reduce tensions in a society by using computer simulations to determine which voters candidates are incentivized to appeal to. We find that Instant…
We explore the voter model dynamics on a directed random graph model ensemble (digraphs), given by the Directed Configuration Model. The voter model captures the evolution of opinions over time on a graph where each vertex represents an…
In this paper, we investigate the so-called ``Sznajd Model'' (SM) in one dimension, which is a simple cellular automata approach to consensus formation among two opposite opinions (described by spin up or down). To elucidate the SM…
The integrity of elections is central to democratic systems. However, a myriad of malicious actors aspire to influence election outcomes for financial or political benefit. A common means to such ends is by manipulating perceptions of the…
We study the behavior of Range Voting and Normalized Range Voting with respect to electoral control. Electoral control encompasses attempts from an election chair to alter the structure of an election in order to change the outcome. We show…
We investigate a variation of the classical voter model in which the set of influencing agents depends on an individual's current opinion. The initial population consists of a random sample of equally sized sub-populations for each state,…
Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) adoption is expanding across U.S. elections, but faces persistent criticism for complexity, strategic manipulation, and ballot exhaustion. We empirically test these concerns on real election data, across three…
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…
Much research in electoral control -- one of the most studied form of electoral attacks, in which an entity running an election alters the structure of that election to yield a preferred outcome -- has focused on giving decision complexity…
We study electoral campaign management scenarios in which an external party can buy votes, i.e., pay the voters to promote its preferred candidate in their preference rankings. The external party's goal is to make its preferred candidate a…
In this paper, we develop the metric geometry of ranking statistics, proving that the two major permutation distances in the statistics literature -- Kendall tau and Spearman footrule -- extend naturally to incomplete rankings with both…
We study the following metric distortion problem: there are two finite sets of points, $V$ and $C$, that lie in the same metric space, and our goal is to choose a point in $C$ whose total distance from the points in $V$ is as small as…
We propose a simple method for combining together voting rules that performs a run-off between the different winners of each voting rule. We prove that this combinator has several good properties. For instance, even if just one of the base…
Polarization and unexpected correlations between opinions on diverse topics (including in politics, culture and consumer choices) are an object of sustained attention. However, numerous theoretical models do not seem to convincingly explain…
Proportional representation (PR) is often discussed in voting settings as a major desideratum. For the past century or so, it is common both in practice and in the academic literature to jump to single transferable vote (STV) as the…
Consider the following social choice problem. Suppose we have a set of $n$ voters and $m$ candidates that lie in a metric space. The goal is to design a mechanism to choose a candidate whose average distance to the voters is as small as…
This article is concerned with a general class of stochastic spatial models for the dynamics of opinions. Like in the voter model, individuals are located on the vertex set of a connected graph and update their opinion at a constant rate…
A distinction in reasons and motives for choosing a particular political leader establishes the key difference between older and young democracy. The former is based on electoral history, while the latter is based on feelings and personal…
We study metric distortion in distributed voting, where $n$ voters are partitioned into $k$ groups, each selecting a local representative, and a final winner is chosen from these representatives (or from the entire set of candidates). This…
The voter model is a toy model of consensus formation based on nearest-neighbor interactions. A voter sits at each vertex in a hypercubic lattice (of dimension $d$) and is in one of two possible opinion states. The opinion state of each…