Manipulative Voting Dynamics

Manipulative Voting Dynamics PDF Author: Neelam Gohar
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443892300
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
One of the most actively growing subareas in multi-agent systems is computational social choice theory, which provides a theoretical foundation for preference aggregation and collective decision-making in multi-agent domains. It is concerned with the application of techniques developed in computer science, including complexity analysis and algorithm design, in the study of social choice mechanisms, such as voting. It seeks to import concepts from social choice theory into Artificial Intelligence and computing. People often have to reach a joint decision despite conflicting preferences over the alternatives. This joint decision can be reached by an informal negotiating process or by a carefully specified protocol. Over the course of the past decade or so, computer scientists have also become deeply involved in this study. Within computer science, there is a number of settings where a decision must be made based on the conflicting preferences of multiple parties. The paradigms of computer science give a different and useful perspective on some of the classic problems in economics and related disciplines. A natural and very general approach for deciding among multiple alternatives is to vote on them. Voting is one of the most popular ways of reaching common decisions. As such, the study of elections is an area where fields such as computer science, economics, business, operations research, and political science can be brought together. Social choice theory deals with voting scenarios, in which a set of individuals must select an outcome from a set of alternatives. This book focuses on convergence to pure strategy Nash equilibria in plurality voting games and a number of other positional and non-positional scoring rules. In such games, the voters strategically choose a candidate to vote for, and the winner is determined by the plurality (or other) voting rules. Voters take turns modifying their votes; these manipulations are classified according to the way in which they affect the outcome of the election. The focus is on achieving a stable outcome, taking strategic behaviour into account. A voting profile is in equilibrium, when no voter can change his vote so that his more preferable candidate gets elected. The book investigates restrictions on the number of iterations that can be made for different voting rules, considering both weighted and equi-weighted voting settings.

Manipulative Voting Dynamics

Manipulative Voting Dynamics PDF Author: Neelam Gohar
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443892300
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
One of the most actively growing subareas in multi-agent systems is computational social choice theory, which provides a theoretical foundation for preference aggregation and collective decision-making in multi-agent domains. It is concerned with the application of techniques developed in computer science, including complexity analysis and algorithm design, in the study of social choice mechanisms, such as voting. It seeks to import concepts from social choice theory into Artificial Intelligence and computing. People often have to reach a joint decision despite conflicting preferences over the alternatives. This joint decision can be reached by an informal negotiating process or by a carefully specified protocol. Over the course of the past decade or so, computer scientists have also become deeply involved in this study. Within computer science, there is a number of settings where a decision must be made based on the conflicting preferences of multiple parties. The paradigms of computer science give a different and useful perspective on some of the classic problems in economics and related disciplines. A natural and very general approach for deciding among multiple alternatives is to vote on them. Voting is one of the most popular ways of reaching common decisions. As such, the study of elections is an area where fields such as computer science, economics, business, operations research, and political science can be brought together. Social choice theory deals with voting scenarios, in which a set of individuals must select an outcome from a set of alternatives. This book focuses on convergence to pure strategy Nash equilibria in plurality voting games and a number of other positional and non-positional scoring rules. In such games, the voters strategically choose a candidate to vote for, and the winner is determined by the plurality (or other) voting rules. Voters take turns modifying their votes; these manipulations are classified according to the way in which they affect the outcome of the election. The focus is on achieving a stable outcome, taking strategic behaviour into account. A voting profile is in equilibrium, when no voter can change his vote so that his more preferable candidate gets elected. The book investigates restrictions on the number of iterations that can be made for different voting rules, considering both weighted and equi-weighted voting settings.

Strategic Manipulation in Voting Systems

Strategic Manipulation in Voting Systems PDF Author: Reyhaneh Reyhani Shokat Abad
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Game theory
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
In this thesis, we are going to study the strategic manipulation of voting rules, mostly scoring rules. In the first part, we focus on naive manipulation, where we have a coalition of manipulators and the other voters vote sincerely. In Section 1.4 we introduce a new measure of manipulability of voting rules, which reflects both the size and the prevalence of the manipulating coalitions and is adaptable to various concepts of manipulation. We place this measure in a framework of probabilistic measures that organizes many results in the recent literature. We discuss algorithmic aspects of computation of the measures and present a case study of exact numerical results in the case of 3 candidates for several common voting rules. In Section 1.5 we study manipulability measures as power indices in cooperative game theory. In Chapter 2, we study the asymptotic behaviour of a model of manipulation called safe manipulation for a given scoring rule under the uniform distribution on voting situations. The technique used is computation of volumes of convex polytopes. We present explicit numerical results in the 3 candidate case. In the second part of the thesis, we adopt a game-theoretic approach to study strategic manipulation. We try to explore more behavioural assumptions for our voters. In Chapter 3, we have an introduction to voting games and different factors such as the available amount of information, voters' strategies and ability to communicate . In Chapter 4, we consider best-reply dynamics for voting games in which all players are strategic and no coalitions are formed. We study the class of scoring rules, show convergence of a suitably restricted version for the plurality and veto rules, and failure of convergence for other rules including k-approval and Borda. In Chapter 5,We discuss a new model for strategic voting in plurality elections under uncertainty. In particular, we introduce the concept of inertia to capture players' uncertainty about poll accuracy. We use a sequence of pre-election polls as a source of partial information. Under some behavioural assumptions, we show how this sequence can help agents to coordinate on an equilibrium outcome. We study the model analytically under some special distributions of inertia, and present some simulation results for more general distributions. Some special cases of our model yield a voting rule closely related to the instant-runoff voting rule and give insight into the political science principle known as Duverger's law. Our results show that the type of equilibrium and the speed of convergence to equilibrium depend strongly on the distribution of inertia and the preferences of agents. This thesis is based on the results of the following papers [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5].

Why Governments and Parties Manipulate Elections

Why Governments and Parties Manipulate Elections PDF Author: Alberto Simpser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107311322
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Why do parties and governments cheat in elections they cannot lose? This book documents the widespread use of blatant and excessive manipulation of elections and explains what drives this practice. Alberto Simpser shows that, in many instances, elections are about more than winning. Electoral manipulation is not only a tool used to gain votes, but also a means of transmitting or distorting information. This manipulation conveys an image of strength, shaping the behavior of citizens, bureaucrats, politicians, parties, unions and businesspeople to the benefit of the manipulators, increasing the scope for the manipulators to pursue their goals while in government and mitigating future challenges to their hold on power. Why Governments and Parties Manipulate Elections provides a general theory about what drives electoral manipulation and empirically documents global patterns of manipulation.

The Dictator's Dilemma at the Ballot Box

The Dictator's Dilemma at the Ballot Box PDF Author: Masaaki Higashijima
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dictatorship
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Modern dictatorships hold elections. Contrary to our stereotypical views of autocratic politics, dictators often introduce elections with limited manipulation wherein they refrain from employing blatant electoral fraud and pro-regime electoral institutions. Why do such electoral reforms happen in autocracies? Do these elections destabilize autocratic rule? The Dictator's Dilemma at the Ballot Box explores how dictators design elections and what consequences those elections have on political order. It argues that strong autocrats who can effectively garner popular support through extensive economic distribution become less dependent on coercive electioneering strategies. When autocrats fail to design elections properly, elections backfire in the form of coups, protests, and the opposition's stunning election victories. The book's theoretical implications are tested on a battery of cross-national analyses with newly collected data on autocratic elections and in-depth comparative case studies of the two Central Asian republics--Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The book's findings suggest that indicators of free and fair elections in dictatorships may not be enough to achieve full-fledged democratization.

Political Cycles in a Developing Economy

Political Cycles in a Developing Economy PDF Author: Stuti Khemani
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Business cycles
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Book Description
Empirical results from India suggest that politicians exert greater effort in managing public works during election years. Surprisingly, there is no evidence of a populist spending spree to sway voters just before elections.

The Political Logic of Poverty Relief

The Political Logic of Poverty Relief PDF Author: Alberto Diaz-Cayeros
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107140285
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
The Political Logic of Poverty Relief places electoral politics and institutional design at the core of poverty alleviation. The authors develop a theory with applications to Mexico about how elections shape social programs aimed at aiding the poor. They also assess whether voters reward politicians for targeted poverty alleviation programs.

Network Propaganda

Network Propaganda PDF Author: Yochai Benkler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190923644
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or "Fake news" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a "post-truth" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analysing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment. The authors argue that longstanding institutional, political, and cultural patterns in American politics interacted with technological change since the 1970s to create a propaganda feedback loop in American conservative media. This dynamic has marginalized centre-right media and politicians, radicalized the right wing ecosystem, and rendered it susceptible to propaganda efforts, foreign and domestic. For readers outside the United States, the book offers a new perspective and methods for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics.

Securing the Vote

Securing the Vote PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030947647X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
During the 2016 presidential election, America's election infrastructure was targeted by actors sponsored by the Russian government. Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy examines the challenges arising out of the 2016 federal election, assesses current technology and standards for voting, and recommends steps that the federal government, state and local governments, election administrators, and vendors of voting technology should take to improve the security of election infrastructure. In doing so, the report provides a vision of voting that is more secure, accessible, reliable, and verifiable.

Election Fraud

Election Fraud PDF Author: R. Michael Alvarez
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815701608
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Allegations of fraud have marred recent elections around the world, from Russia and Italy to Mexico and the United States. Such charges raise fundamental questions about the quality of democracy in each country. Yet election fraud and, more broadly, electoral manipulation remain remarkably understudied concepts. There is no consensus on what constitutes election fraud, let alone how to detect and deter it. E lection Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation brings together experts on election law, election administration, and U.S. and comparative politics to address these critical issues. The first part of the book, which opens with an essay by Craig Donsanto of the U.S. Department of Justice, examines the U.S. understanding of election fraud in comparative perspective. In the second part of the book, D. Roderick Kiewiet, Jonathan N. Katz, and other scholars of U.S. elections draw on a wide variety of sources, including survey data, incident reports, and state-collected fraud allegations, to measure the extent and nature of election fraud in the United States. Finally, the third part of the book analyzes techniques for detecting and potentially deterring fraud. These strategies include both statistical analysis, as Walter R. Mebane, Jr. and Peter Ordeshook explain, and the now widespread practice of election monitoring, which Alberto Simpser examines in an intriguing essay.

Vote for US

Vote for US PDF Author: Joshua A. Douglas
Publisher:
ISBN: 1633885100
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
"An expert on US election law presents an encouraging assessment of current efforts to make our voting system more accessible, reliable, and effective"--