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arXiv · 2108.12949

Justifying Groups in Multiwinner Approval Voting

Edith Elkind·Piotr Faliszewski·Ayumi Igarashi·Pasin Manurangsi·Ulrike Schmidt-Kraepelin·Warut Suksompong
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Abstract

Justified representation (JR) is a standard notion of representation in multiwinner approval voting. Not only does a JR committee always exist, but previous work has also shown through experiments that the JR condition can typically be fulfilled by groups of fewer than $k$ candidates. In this paper, we study such groups -- known as $n/k$-justifying groups -- both theoretically and empirically. First, we show that under the impartial culture model, $n/k$-justifying groups of size less than $k/2$ are likely to exist, which implies that the number of JR committees is usually large. We then present efficient approximation algorithms that compute a small $n/k$-justifying group for any given instance, and a polynomial-time exact algorithm when the instance admits a tree representation. In addition, we demonstrate that small $n/k$-justifying groups can often be useful for obtaining a gender-balanced JR committee even though the problem is NP-hard.

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Edith Elkind, Piotr Faliszewski, Ayumi Igarashi, Pasin Manurangsi, Ulrike Schmidt-Kraepelin, Warut Suksompong. 2021-08-30. Justifying Groups in Multiwinner Approval Voting. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2023.114039

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