Solving hard problems in election systems

An interesting problem in the field of computational social choice theory is that of elections, in which a winner or set of winners is to be deduced from preferences among a collection of agents, in a way that attempts to maximize the collective well-being of the agents. Besides their obvious use in political science, elections are also used computationally, such as in multiagent systems, in which different agents may have different beliefs and preferences and must reach an agreeable decision. Because the purpose of voting is to gain an understanding of a collection of actual preferences, dishonesty in an election system is often harmful to the welfare of the voters as a whole. Different forms of dishonesty can be performed by the voters (manipulation), by an outside agent affecting the voters (bribery), or by the chair, or administrator, of an election (control). The Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem shows that in all reasonable election systems, manipulation, or strategic voting, is always inevitable in some cases. Bartholdi, Tovey, and Trick counter by arguing that if finding such a manipulation is NP-hard, then manipulation by computationally-limited agents should not pose a significant threat. However, more recent work has exploited the fact that NP-hardness is only a worst-case measure of complexity, and has shown that some election systems that are NP-hard to manipulate may in fact be easy to manipulate under some reasonable assumptions. We evaluate, both theoretically and empirically, the complexity, worst-case and otherwise, of manipulating, bribing, and controlling elections. Our focus is particularly on scoring protocols. In doing so, we gain an understanding of how these election systems work by discovering what makes manipulation, bribery, and control easy or hard. This allows us to discover the strengths and weaknesses of scoring protocols, and gain an understanding of what properties of election systems are desirable or undesirable. One approach we have used to do this is relating the problems of interest in election systems to problems of known complexity, as well as to problems with known algorithms and heuristics, particularly Satisfiability and Partition. This approach can help us gain an understanding of computational social choice problems in which little is known about the complexity or potential algorithms. Among other results, we show how certain parameters and properties of scoring protocols can make elections easy or hard to manipulate. We find that the empirical complexity of manipulation in some cases have unusual behaviors for its complexity class. For example, it is found that in the case of manipulating the Borda election of unweighted voters with an unbounded candidate cardinality, the encoding of this problem to Satisfiability performs especially well near the boundary cases of this problem and for unsatisfiable instances, both results contrary to the normal behavior of NP-complete problems. Although attempts have been made to design fair election systems with certain properties, another dilemma that this has given rise to is the existence of election systems in which it is hard to elect the winners, at least in the worst case. Two notable election systems in which determining the winners are hard are Dodgson and Young. We evaluate the problem of finding the winners empirically, to extend these complexity results away from the worst case, and determine whether the worst-case complexity of these hard winner problems is truly a computational barrier. We find that, like most NP-complete problems such as Satisfiability, many instances of interest in finding winners of hard election systems are still relatively simple. We confirm that indeed, like Satisfiability, the hard worst-case results occur only in rare circumstances. We also find an interesting complexity disparity between the related problems of finding the Dodgson or Young score of a candidate, and that of finding the set of Dodgson or Young winners. Surprisingly, it appears empirically easier for one to find the set of all winners in a Dodgson or Young election than to score a single candidate in either election

Approximation and elections

Any culture that requires that a decision be made within a group necessarily creates methods for aggregating each individual’s preferences. For instance, we see such a need in political elections, committees, and businesses. With the Internet and the increasing use of multiagent software systems, the general need for means of aggregating differing preferences has increased dramatically. Voting is one way to come to a single option (or small group of options) out of a larger pool of candidate options. Many voting systems exist, and criteria exist (within the field of social choice theory) for deciding which most fairly and accurately take into account the preferences of each voter. Since there is generally much to be gained from influencing such a vote through manipulation or bribery, one desirable criterion of fairness would be whether such activities are impossible in the system. However, it has been shown that a reasonable system that disallows manipulation does not exist [18, 43], so the next-best solution would be a system in which deciding how to bribe or otherwise influence the vote is so computationally difficult as to render it impossible or highly unlikely. While the debate over which voting systems are most fair and effective is on record of existing over the past few centuries (and likely goes further back to ancient Greece), there may exist the seeds of a renewal of this debate in the current boom in voting due to new technologies. For one, in artificial intelligence agents may vote to determine the best course of action to take given the individual’s preferences. In addition, algorithms in search engines and metasearch engines do order results in a manner that assumes a ranking was somehow approached. Voting is not only on the rise in software, of course, as most any user of the Internet could demonstrate. Internet users routinely vote most any user of the Internet could demonstrate. Internet users routinely vote online in situations ranging from the inane (e.g., rating a video on YouTube) to the potentially crucial (e.g., voting on whether a story is newsworthy or not on any of a plethora of such sites, including Digg, Reddit, and Newsvine). These newer uses of voting systems are interesting. They are used in environments where there are potentially far more candidates and voters than are conventionally seen in, say, political elections. Also, in these new environments, voting and manipulation can be automated to some degree, thus making the possibility of manipulation and control even more real than it has been in the past. Faliszewski, Hemaspaandra, and Hemaspaandra have proved for a number of voting systems that the bribery problem is too complex to be feasible (i.e., NP-complete) [15], and much research has been put forth determining the complexity of other problems related to voting. But it is still possible in the optimization cases of these problems that there exist approximation algorithms that can find a good solution with a reasonable amount of computation. That is, while a voting system may seem “resistant” to a particular form of manipulation as described by previous research, it may be that the problem is not as difficult if we allow a constant amount of error. Or, it may be that the problem is still difficult when error is allowed, thus making the voting system even more resilient with respect to some forms of manipulation. This thesis will examine the possibility of such approximations for some problems in elections

Global Corruption Baromoter Latin America & The Caribbean 2019: Citizens\u27 Views and Experiences of Corruption

In the last five years, momentum has been building against corruption in Latin America and the Caribbean. High-level politicians were found guilty of corruption in Guatemala and Brazil, and a wave of legal action against the perpetrators of grand corruption swept across the continent, including the Lava Jato investigation, or “Operation Car Wash”, in Brazil. This presents a real opportunity for anti-corruption in the region. However, this 10th edition of the Global Corruption Barometer – Latin America and the Caribbean shows that most citizens think their governments are not doing enough to tackle corruption and that corruption levels have increased in the past 12 months across the region

Electoral politics in Grimsby 1818-1835

Large urban parliamentary constituencies and rural (county> constituencies have received much attention in recent years from historical psephologists: the smaller borough constituencies have received comparatively little yet in important ways these were the 'typical' constituencies. This study is an attempt to remedy that hiatus, and is somewhat novel in examining electoral behaviour over a number of elections spanning the period of the first Reform Act. That voting was open is crucial to an understanding of voting behaviour in this period, for in general the smaller the constituency the greater the opportunities for influencing the vote casting of electors. The existence within small boroughs of a large body of independent electors freely expressing their will in the polls may be an image conveyed by campaign literature, yet it was in large measure a fiction. This study emphasises the pervasiveness and significance of 'influence', both legitimate and otherwise, and suggests that political inclination, social class, and even bribery were relatively unimportant when set against the widely spread tentacles of influence as mediated. through property. Family influences too were significant, and it is clear that electors were calculating individuals. A detailed longitudinal study has been made possible by the nature of the available data (pollbooks, directories, corporation records, and a singular collection of letters and election material) and some considerable evidence on spatial distribution of partisan votes has emerged. It has also become clear that voting in parliamentary elections resembled closely that in local elections, and was subject to the same influences and directed by the same organisational machine, however informal that may have been. Finally, the Reform Act of 1832, interpreted by Whig historians as a landmark on the road to democracy, had a quite different impact locally. Formal changes in Grimsby made for a less representative electorate, a regression rather than advance of democracy. The Act left the influences on voters largely unchanged

Corruption in an Unstable Environment

In this paper we study the influence of economic stability on the level of corruption in a country, where high stability is defined as a low level of variance in economic output growth. We present a political competition model with exogenous shocks to economic output where politicians can decide about the level of corruption and an election is held within the framework of a Bayesian game. Corruption is assumed to be harmful to the economy and politicians try to maximize income from corrupt activities as well as the probability of getting reelected. We show that independent of the absolute size of economic output growth a low degree of economic stability yields a high level of corruption and vice versa. Thus we conclude that not only does corruption influence economic activity, but also the opposite effect might exist, namely that exogenously caused fluctuations of output influence the readiness of politicians to behave in a corrupt manner. To support our theoretical findings we additionally carry out a cross-country empirical analysis of GDP growth variance and corruption and come to results confirming our thesis

On the Make : Campaign Funding and the Corrupting of the American Judiciary

The thesis offered here is that the cost of judicial campaigns has reached a level where both candidates and sitting judges are shaping their behavior to attract financial and other support. This not only results in distortion of judicial selection by repelling meritorious potential candidates who are unwilling to compromise their principles, but in the capture of judges by special interests willing to finance judicial campaigns. Some argue that the great increase in contributions to judicial candidates simply means that contributors are giving to candidates they feel certain will support their positions. To some extent this is certainly true. But even in those situations the legality of the action does not mean it is socially desirable or without harmful consequences