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Piotr Faliszewski

Publications and source records attributed to Piotr Faliszewski.

87 records · Page 5Linked to original sources
arXiv2013

Fully Proportional Representation as Resource Allocation: Approximability Results

We model Monroe's and Chamberlin and Courant's multiwinner voting systems as a certain resource allocation problem. We show that for many restricted variants of this problem, under standard complexity-theoretic assumptions, there are no constant-factor approximation algorithms. Yet, we also show cases where good approximation algorithms exist (briefly put, these variants correspond to optimizing total voter satisfaction under Borda scores, within Monroe's and Chamberlin and Courant's voting systems).

cs.GT↗
arXiv2013

Achieving Fully Proportional Representation is Easy in Practice

We provide experimental evaluation of a number of known and new algorithms for approximate computation of Monroe's and Chamberlin-Courant's rules. Our experiments, conducted both on real-life preference-aggregation data and on synthetic data, show that even very simple and fast algorithms can in many cases find near-perfect solutions. Our results confirm and complement very recent theoretical analysis of Skowron et al., who have shown good lower bounds on the quality of (some of) the algorithms that we study.

cs.MA↗
arXiv2012

The Complexity of Manipulative Attacks in Nearly Single-Peaked Electorates

Many electoral bribery, control, and manipulation problems (which we will refer to in general as "manipulative actions" problems) are NP-hard in the general case. It has recently been noted that many of these problems fall into polynomial time if the electorate is single-peaked (i.e., is polarized along some axis/issue). However, real-world electorates are not truly single-peaked. There are usually some mavericks, and so real-world electorates tend to merely be nearly single-peaked. This paper studies the complexity of manipulative-action algorithms for elections over nearly single-peaked electorates, for various notions of nearness and various election systems. We provide instances where even one maverick jumps the manipulative-action complexity up to $\np$-hardness, but we also provide many instances where a reasonable number of mavericks can be tolerated without increasing the manipulative-action complexity.

cs.GT↗
arXiv2011

Clone Structures in Voters' Preferences

In elections, a set of candidates ranked consecutively (though possibly in different order) by all voters is called a clone set, and its members are called clones. A clone structure is a family of all clone sets of a given election. In this paper we study properties of clone structures. In particular, we give an axiomatic characterization of clone structures, show their hierarchical structure, and analyze clone structures in single-peaked and single-crossing elections. We give a polynomial-time algorithm that finds a minimal collection of clones that need to be collapsed for an election to become single-peaked, and we show that this problem is NP-hard for single-crossing elections.

cs.GT↗
arXiv2010

Approximation Algorithms for Campaign Management

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 winner while paying as little as possible. We describe a 2-approximation algorithm for this problem for a large class of electoral systems known as scoring rules. Our result holds even for weighted voters, and has applications for campaign management in commercial settings. We also give approximation algorithms for our problem for two Condorcet-consistent rules, namely, the Copeland rule and maximin.

cs.GT↗
arXiv2010

Rationalizations of Condorcet-Consistent Rules via Distances of Hamming Type

The main idea of the {\em distance rationalizability} approach to view the voters' preferences as an imperfect approximation to some kind of consensus is deeply rooted in social choice literature. It allows one to define ("rationalize") voting rules via a consensus class of elections and a distance: a candidate is said to be an election winner if she is ranked first in one of the nearest (with respect to the given distance) consensus elections. It is known that many classic voting rules can be distance rationalized. In this paper, we provide new results on distance rationalizability of several Condorcet-consistent voting rules. In particular, we distance rationalize Young's rule and Maximin rule using distances similar to the Hamming distance. We show that the claim that Young's rule can be rationalized by the Condorcet consensus class and the Hamming distance is incorrect; in fact, these consensus class and distance yield a new rule which has not been studied before. We prove that, similarly to Young's rule, this new rule has a computationally hard winner determination problem.

cs.GT↗
arXiv2010

Multimode Control Attacks on Elections

In 1992, Bartholdi, Tovey, and Trick opened the study of control attacks on elections---attempts to improve the election outcome by such actions as adding/deleting candidates or voters. That work has led to many results on how algorithms can be used to find attacks on elections and how complexity-theoretic hardness results can be used as shields against attacks. However, all the work in this line has assumed that the attacker employs just a single type of attack. In this paper, we model and study the case in which the attacker launches a multipronged (i.e., multimode) attack. We do so to more realistically capture the richness of real-life settings. For example, an attacker might simultaneously try to suppress some voters, attract new voters into the election, and introduce a spoiler candidate. Our model provides a unified framework for such varied attacks, and by constructing polynomial-time multiprong attack algorithms we prove that for various election systems even such concerted, flexible attacks can be perfectly planned in deterministic polynomial time.

cs.GT↗
arXiv2008

Llull and Copeland Voting Computationally Resist Bribery and Control

The only systems previously known to be resistant to all the standard control types were highly artificial election systems created by hybridization. We study a parameterized version of Copeland voting, denoted by Copeland^α, where the parameter αis a rational number between 0 and 1 that specifies how ties are valued in the pairwise comparisons of candidates. We prove that Copeland^{0.5}, the system commonly referred to as "Copeland voting," provides full resistance to constructive control, and we prove the same for Copeland^α, for all rational α, 0 < α< 1. Copeland voting is the first natural election system proven to have full resistance to constructive control. We also prove that both Copeland^1 (Llull elections) and Copeland^0 are resistant to all standard types of constructive control other than one variant of addition of candidates. Moreover, we show that for each rational α, 0 \leq α\leq 1, Copeland^αvoting is fully resistant to bribery attacks, and we establish fixed-parameter tractability of bounded-case control for Copeland^α. We also study Copeland^αelections under more flexible models such as microbribery and extended control and we integrate the potential irrationality of voter preferences into many of our results.

cs.GT↗
arXiv2008

How Hard Is Bribery in Elections?

We study the complexity of influencing elections through bribery: How computationally complex is it for an external actor to determine whether by a certain amount of bribing voters a specified candidate can be made the election's winner? We study this problem for election systems as varied as scoring protocols and Dodgson voting, and in a variety of settings regarding homogeneous-vs.-nonhomogeneous electorate bribability, bounded-size-vs.-arbitrary-sized candidate sets, weighted-vs.-unweighted voters, and succinct-vs.-nonsuccinct input specification. We obtain both polynomial-time bribery algorithms and proofs of the intractability of bribery, and indeed our results show that the complexity of bribery is extremely sensitive to the setting. For example, we find settings in which bribery is NP-complete but manipulation (by voters) is in P, and we find settings in which bribing weighted voters is NP-complete but bribing voters with individual bribe thresholds is in P. For the broad class of elections (including plurality, Borda, k-approval, and veto) known as scoring protocols, we prove a dichotomy result for bribery of weighted voters: We find a simple-to-evaluate condition that classifies every case as either NP-complete or in P.

cs.GT↗
arXiv2008

The Complexity of Power-Index Comparison

We study the complexity of the following problem: Given two weighted voting games G' and G'' that each contain a player p, in which of these games is p's power index value higher? We study this problem with respect to both the Shapley-Shubik power index [SS54] and the Banzhaf power index [Ban65,DS79]. Our main result is that for both of these power indices the problem is complete for probabilistic polynomial time (i.e., is PP-complete). We apply our results to partially resolve some recently proposed problems regarding the complexity of weighted voting games. We also study the complexity of the raw Shapley-Shubik power index. Deng and Papadimitriou [DP94] showed that the raw Shapley-Shubik power index is #P-metric-complete. We strengthen this by showing that the raw Shapley-Shubik power index is many-one complete for #P. And our strengthening cannot possibly be further improved to parsimonious completeness, since we observe that, in contrast with the raw Banzhaf power index, the raw Shapley-Shubik power index is not #P-parsimonious-complete.

cs.CC↗
arXiv2007

Copeland Voting Fully Resists Constructive Control

Control and bribery are settings in which an external agent seeks to influence the outcome of an election. Faliszewski et al. [FHHR07] proved that Llull voting (which is here denoted by Copeland^1) and a variant (here denoted by Copeland^0) of Copeland voting are computationally resistant to many, yet not all, types of constructive control and that they also provide broad resistance to bribery. We study a parameterized version of Copeland voting, denoted by Copeland^alpha where the parameter alpha is a rational number between 0 and 1 that specifies how ties are valued in the pairwise comparisons of candidates in Copeland elections. We establish resistance or vulnerability results, in every previously studied control scenario, for Copeland^alpha, for each rational alpha, 0 <alpha < 1. In particular, we prove that Copeland^0.5, the system commonly referred to as ``Copeland voting,'' provides full resistance to constructive control. Among the systems with a polynomial-time winner problem, this is the first natural election system proven to have full resistance to constructive control. Results on bribery and fixed-parameter tractability of bounded-case control proven for Copeland^0 and Copeland^1 in [FHHR07] are extended to Copeland^alpha for each rational alpha, 0 < alpha < 1; we also give results in more flexible models such as microbribery and extended control.

cs.GT↗
arXiv2007

Nonuniform Bribery

We study the concept of bribery in the situation where voters are willing to change their votes as we ask them, but where their prices depend on the nature of the change we request. Our model is an extension of the one of Faliszewski et al. [FHH06], where each voter has a single price for any change we may ask for. We show polynomial-time algorithms for our version of bribery for a broad range of voting protocols, including plurality, veto, approval, and utility based voting. In addition to our polynomial-time algorithms we provide NP-completeness results for a couple of our nonuniform bribery problems for weighted voters, and a couple of approximation algorithms for NP-complete bribery problems defined in [FHH06] (in particular, an FPTAS for plurality-weighted-$bribery problem).

cs.GT↗
arXiv2006

The Consequences of Eliminating NP Solutions

Given a function based on the computation of an NP machine, can one in general eliminate some solutions? That is, can one in general decrease the ambiguity? This simple question remains, even after extensive study by many researchers over many years, mostly unanswered. However, complexity-theoretic consequences and enabling conditions are known. In this tutorial-style article we look at some of those, focusing on the most natural framings: reducing the number of solutions of NP functions, refining the solutions of NP functions, and subtracting from or otherwise shrinking #P functions. We will see how small advice strings are important here, but we also will see how increasing advice size to achieve robustness is central to the proof of a key ambiguity-reduction result for NP functions.

cs.CC↗
arXiv2005

Open Questions in the Theory of Semifeasible Computation

The study of semifeasible algorithms was initiated by Selman's work a quarter of century ago [Sel79,Sel81,Sel82]. Informally put, this research stream studies the power of those sets L for which there is a deterministic (or in some cases, the function may belong to one of various nondeterministic function classes) polynomial-time function f such that when at least one of x and y belongs to L, then f(x,y) \in L \cap \{x,y\}. The intuition here is that it is saying: ``Regarding membership in L, if you put a gun to my head and forced me to bet on one of x or y as belonging to L, my money would be on f(x,y).'' In this article, we present a number of open problems from the theory of semifeasible algorithms. For each we present its background and review what partial results, if any, are known.

cs.CC↗