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arXiv · 2607.25540

Kemeny Rank Aggregation is NP-Hard for Three Voters

Dominik Peters
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Abstract

Rank aggregation is the task of combining $n$ input rankings (linear orders) of alternatives into a single output ranking. The Kemeny rank aggregation rule selects the output ranking that minimizes the total Kendall-tau distance to the input rankings, i.e., the total number of adjacent swaps that need to be performed across input rankings so that they are all equal to the output ranking. Dwork et al. (2001) proved that the problem of computing such a ranking is NP-complete for every even $n \ge 4$ and asked whether hardness holds even for $n = 3$. We give a hardness reduction from MAX CUT that proves the problem is NP-complete for $n = 3$. The reduction was found in July 2026 by GPT 5.6 Sol Ultra and simplified in part with help from Claude Fable 5.

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Dominik Peters. 2026-07-28. Kemeny Rank Aggregation is NP-Hard for Three Voters. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.25540

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