The Communication Burden of Single Transferable Vote, in Practice

We study single-winner STV from the point of view of communication. First, we assume that voters give, in a single shot, their top-k alternatives; we define a version of STV that works for such votes, and we evaluate empirically the extent to which it approximates the standard STV rule. Second, we evaluate empirically the communication cost of the protocol for STV defined by Conitzer and Sandholm (2005) and some of its improvements

Special Libraries, April 1912

Volume 3, Issue 4https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1912/1003/thumbnail.jp

Sincere, strategic, and heuristic voting under four election rules: An experimental study

Nous rendons compte d'une série d'expériences de laboratoire à propos des comportements de vote. Dans une situation où les sujets ont des préférences unimodales nous observons que le vote à un tour et le vote à deux tours génèrent des effets significatifs de dépendance du chemin, alors que le vote par approbation élit toujours le vainqueur de Condorcet et que le vote unique transférable (système de Hare) ne l'élit jamais. A partir de l'analyse des données individuelles nous concluons que les électeurs se comportent de manière stratégique tant que les calculs stratégiques ne sont pas trop complexes, auquel cas ils se repose sur des heuristiques simples.Elections, comportement de vote.

Voces Populi and the Art of Listening

The strategy most damaging to many preferential election methods is to give insincerely low rank to the main opponent of one’s favorite candidate. Theorem 1 determines the 3-candidate Condorcet method that minimizes the number of noncyclic profiles allowing this strategy. Theorems 2, 3, and 4 establish conditions for an anonymous and neutral 3-candidate single-seat election to be monotonic and still avoid this strategy completely. Plurality elections combine these properties; among the others "conditional IRV" gives the strongest challenge to the plurality winner. Conditional IRV is extended to any number of candidates. Theorem 5 is an impossibility of Gibbard-Satterthwaite type, describing 3 specific strategies that cannot all be avoided in meaningful anonymous and neutral elections.Preferential Election methods; Plurality Election methods

The social security rights of older international migrants in the European Union

Europe is now home to a significant and diverse population of older international migrants. Social and demographic changes have forced the issue of social security in old age onto the European social policy agenda in the last decade. In spite of an increased interest in the financial well-being of older people, many retired international migrants who are legally resident in the European Union face structured disadvantages. Four linked factors are of particular importance in shaping the pension rights and levels of financial provision available to individual older migrants: migration history, socio-legal status, past relationship to the paid labour market, and location within a particular EU Member State. Building on a typology of older migrants, the paper outlines the ways in which policy at both the European Union and Member State levels serves to diminish rather than enhance the social security rights of certain older international migrants

Designing a Multiagent System for Course-Offering Determination

I attended a doctoral symposium of the conference. It was very good to know about how to guide PhD students to conduct high-quality research and complete PhD program. I attended all the keynote sessions of the conference. The presentation on Computational Disaster Management by Professor Pascal Van Hentenryck was very insightful and encouraging. The talk on “Agents might not be people” by Professor Nigel Gilbert was illuminating. The talk on “Satisfiability to Linear Algebra” by Professor Fangzhen Lin was revealing. I attended almost all sections of PRIMA 2013 and some presentations of AI 2013. They reflect the advancement of the field. The discussions with the people on-site were very interesting and helpful to my future research. Also, it was great to talk to active researchers in the field and exchanged ideas of our research and explored the possibility of collaboration.This paper describes the design of a multiagent system that facilitates course-offering decision making for a program in an institution. We first model course offering determination for upcoming semester as a multi-winner election with exogenous constraints which is a problem for computational social choice in multiagent systems, which has rarely been considered. Then, the paper describes the architecture and models of the multiagent system for course offering determination with Gaia role model methodology, TROPOS strategic actor diagram, Agent Unified Modeling Language (AUML) sequence diagram for a multi-agent negotiation interaction protocol, and Pseudo-code algorithms for generating fractional votes and course election protocol. A novel course selection preference model for students has been proposed and described formally. The effectiveness of the approach and the implemented system has been showed with the initial experimental results

Afghanistan: the long, hard road to the 2014 transition

Afghanistan is hurtling toward a devastating political crisis as the government prepares to take full control of security in 2014, argues this report. Plagued by factionalism and corruption, Afghanistan is far from ready to assume responsibility for security when U.S. and NATO forces withdraw in 2014. That makes the political challenge of organising a credible presidential election and transfer of power from President Karzai to a successor that year all the more daunting. A repeat of previous elections’ chaos and chicanery would trigger a constitutional crisis, lessening chances the present political dispensation can survive the transition. In the current environment, prospects for clean elections and a smooth transition are slim. The electoral process is mired in bureaucratic confusion, institutional duplication and political machinations. Electoral officials indicate that security and financial concerns will force the 2013 provincial council polls to 2014. There are alarming signs Karzai hopes to stack the deck for a favoured proxy. Demonstrating at least will to ensure clean elections could forge a degree of national consensus and boost popular confidence, but steps toward a stable transition must begin now to prevent a precipitous slide toward state collapse. Time is running out. Institutional rivalries, conflicts over local authority and clashes over the role of Islam in governance have caused the country to lurch from one constitutional crisis to the next for nearly a decade. As foreign aid and investment decline with the approach of the 2014 drawdown, so, too, will political cohesion in the capital. To ensure political continuity and a stable security transition, action to correct flaws in the electoral framework and restore credibility to electoral and judicial institutions is needed well before the presidential and provincial council polls. Tensions have already begun to mount between the president and the Wolesi Jirga (the lower house of the National Assembly), as debate over electoral and other key legal reforms heats up. Opposition demands for changes to the structures of the Independent Elections Commission (IEC) and Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) and an overhaul of the Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV) election mechanism have become more vigorous by the day. There is also, as yet, no sign of an agreement on the timing of the 2014 elections or the following year’s parliamentary elections, though President Karzai insisted on 4 October that the former would be held on time and “without interruption”. The IEC has hedged on publicly announcing the planned postponement of the provincial council polls, for fear that such an announcement could deepen the political crisis. At a minimum, the IEC must announce a timetable and a plan for the 2014 elections that adhere closely to constitutional requirements by December 2012, and a new IEC chairman must be selected to replace the outgoing chairman, whose term expires in April 2013, as well as a new chief electoral officer. It is a near certainty that under current conditions the 2014 elections will be plagued by massive fraud. Vote rigging in the south and east, where security continues to deteriorate, is all but guaranteed. High levels of violence across the country before and on the day of the polls are likely to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands more would-be voters. The IEC will likely be forced to throw out many ballots. This would risk another showdown between the executive, legislature and judiciary. Under the current constitution and electoral laws, the government is not equipped to cope with legal challenges to polling results. Nearly a decade after the first election, parliament and the president remain deeply divided over the responsibilities of constitutionally-mandated electoral institutions. The IEC, its credibility badly damaged after the fraudulent 2009 and 2010 elections, is struggling to redefine its role as it works to reform existing laws. There is also still considerable disagreement over whether the ECC should take the lead in arbitrating election-related complaints. It will be equally important to decide which state institution has final authority to adjudicate constitutional disputes before the elections. The uncertainty surrounding the responsibilities of the Supreme Court versus those of the constitutionally-mandated Independent Commission for the Supervision of the Implementation of the Constitution (ICSIC) proved to be a critical factor in the September 2010 parliamentary polls. The Supreme Court’s subsequent decision to establish a controversial special tribunal on elections raised serious questions about its own impartiality. Institutional rivalries between the high court and ICSIC have increased considerably since then, with the Wolesi Jirga aggressively championing the latter’s primacy in opposition to the president. The tug of war between these two constitutionally-mandated institutions has extended to Supreme Court appointments; two of nine positions on the bench are held by judges whose terms have already expired, and the terms of three more expire in 2013. The ICSIC faces similar questions about its legitimacy, since only five of its required seven commissioners have been appointed by the president and approved by parliament. Ambiguities over the roles of the Supreme Court and the constitutional commission must be resolved well before the presidential campaign begins in earnest in early 2013. An important first step would be to appoint the required judges and commissioners. Institutional rivalry between the high court and the constitutional commission, however, can no more be resolved by presidential decree than it can by a simple parliamentary vote. Constitutional change will ultimately be necessary to restore the Supreme Court’s independence and to establish clear lines of authority between it and the ICSIC. Even if wholesale constitutional change is not possible in the near term, legal measures must be adopted within the next year to minimise the impact of institutional rivalry over electoral disputes and to ensure continuity between the end of Karzai’s term and the start of the next president’s term. Although Karzai has signalled his intent to exit gracefully, fears remain that he may, directly or indirectly, act to ensure his family’s continued majority ownership stake in the political status quo. This must be avoided. It is critical to keep discord over election results to a minimum; any move to declare a state of emergency in the event of a prolonged electoral dispute would be catastrophic. The political system is too fragile to withstand an extension of Karzai’s mandate or an electoral outcome that appears to expand his family’s dynastic ambitions. Either would risk harming negotiations for a political settlement with the armed and unarmed opposition. It is highly unlikely a Karzai-brokered deal would survive under the current constitutional scheme, in which conflicts persist over judicial review, distribution of local political power and the role of Islamic law in shaping state authority and citizenship. Karzai has considerable sway over the system, but his ability to leverage the process to his advantage beyond 2014 has limits. The elections must be viewed as an opportunity to break with the past and advance reconciliation. Quiet planning should, nonetheless, begin now for the contingencies of postponed elections and/or imposition of a state of emergency in the run up to or during the presidential campaign season in 2014. The international community must work with the government to develop an action plan for the possibility that elections are significantly delayed or that polling results lead to prolonged disputes or a run-off. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) should likewise be prepared to organise additional support to Afghan forces as needed in the event of an election postponement or state of emergency; its leadership would also do well to assess its own force protection needs in such an event well in advance of the election. All this will require more action by parliament, less interference from the president and greater clarity from the judiciary. Failure to move on these fronts could indirectly lead to a political impasse that would provide a pretext for the declaration of a state of emergency, a situation that would likely lead to full state collapse. Afghan leaders must recognise that the best guarantee of the state’s stability is its ability to guarantee the rule of law during the political and military transition in 2013-2014. If they fail at this, that crucial period will at best result in deep divisions and conflicts within the ruling elite that the Afghan insurgency will exploit. At worst, it could trigger extensive unrest, fragmentation of the security services and perhaps even a much wider civil war. Some possibilities for genuine progress remain, but the window for action is narrowing