Assertion-Based Approaches to Auditing Complex Elections, with Application to Party-List Proportional Elections

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2107.11903v2
• Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2021 12:50:11 GMT
• Title: Assertion-Based Approaches to Auditing Complex Elections, with Application to Party-List Proportional Elections
• Authors: Michelle Blom, Jurlind Budurushi, Ronald L. Rivest, Philip B. Stark, Peter J. Stuckey, Vanessa Teague, Damjan Vukcevic
• Abstract summary: We show that assertions with linear dependence on transformations of the votes can easily be transformed to canonical form for SHANGRLA. We illustrate the approach by constructing assertions for party-list elections using the D'Hondt method.
• Score: 21.883045335485317
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Risk-limiting audits (RLAs), an ingredient in evidence-based elections, are increasingly common. They are a rigorous statistical means of ensuring that electoral results are correct, usually without having to perform an expensive full recount -- at the cost of some controlled probability of error. A recently developed approach for conducting RLAs, SHANGRLA, provides a flexible framework that can encompass a wide variety of social choice functions and audit strategies. Its flexibility comes from reducing sufficient conditions for outcomes to be correct to canonical `assertions' that have a simple mathematical form. Assertions have been developed for auditing various social choice functions including plurality, multi-winner plurality, super-majority, Hamiltonian methods, and instant runoff voting. However, there is no systematic approach to building assertions. Here, we show that assertions with linear dependence on transformations of the votes can easily be transformed to canonical form for SHANGRLA. We illustrate the approach by constructing assertions for party-list elections such as Hamiltonian free list elections and elections using the D'Hondt method, expanding the set of social choice functions to which SHANGRLA applies directly.

Related papers

• Improving the Computational Efficiency of Adaptive Audits of IRV Elections [54.427049258408424]
  AWAIRE can audit IRV contests with any number of candidates, but the original implementation incurred memory and computation costs that grew superexponentially with the number of candidates. This paper improves the algorithmic implementation of AWAIRE in three ways that make it practical to audit IRV contests with 55 candidates, compared to the previous 6 candidates.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-07-23T13:28:00Z)
• Efficient Weighting Schemes for Auditing Instant-Runoff Voting Elections [57.67176250198289]
  AWAIRE involves adaptively weighted averages of test statistics, essentially "learning" an effective set of hypotheses to test. We explore schemes and settings more extensively, to identify and recommend efficient choices for practice. A limitation of the current AWAIRE implementation is its restriction to a small number of candidates.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-02-18T10:13:01Z)
• The Decisive Power of Indecision: Low-Variance Risk-Limiting Audits and Election Contestation via Marginal Mark Recording [51.82772358241505]
  Risk-limiting audits (RLAs) are techniques for verifying the outcomes of large elections. We define new families of audits that improve efficiency and offer advances in statistical power. New audits are enabled by revisiting the standard notion of a cast-vote record so that it can declare multiple possible mark interpretations.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-02-09T16:23:54Z)
• Adaptively Weighted Audits of Instant-Runoff Voting Elections: AWAIRE [61.872917066847855]
  Methods for auditing instant-runoff voting (IRV) elections are either not risk-limiting or require cast vote records (CVRs), the voting system's electronic record of the votes on each ballot. We develop an RLA method that uses adaptively weighted averages of test supermartingales to efficiently audit IRV elections when CVRs are not available.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-07-20T15:55:34Z)
• New Algorithms and Applications for Risk-Limiting Audits [4.375873233252245]
  Risk-limiting audits (RLAs) are a significant tool in increasing confidence in the accuracy of elections. This work suggests a new generic method, called Batchcomp", for converting classical (ballot-level) RLAs into ones that operate on batches. We present an adaptation of ALPHA, an existing RLA method, to a method which applies to censuses.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-05-06T13:34:39Z)
• Ballot-Polling Audits of Instant-Runoff Voting Elections with a Dirichlet-Tree Model [23.14629947453497]
  Instant-runoff voting (IRV) is used in several countries around the world. It requires voters to rank candidates in order of preference, and uses a counting algorithm that is more complex than systems such as first-past-the-post or scoring rules. An even more complex system, the single transferable vote (STV), is used when multiple candidates need to be elected. There is currently no known risk-limiting audit (RLA) method for STV, other than a full manual count of the ballots.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-09-08T15:35:50Z)
• Auditing Ranked Voting Elections with Dirichlet-Tree Models: First Steps [23.14629947453497]
  Ranked voting systems are used in many places around the world. There is no known risk-limiting audit (RLA) method for STV other than a full hand count. We present a new approach to auditing ranked systems that uses a statistical model, a Dirichlet-tree, that can cope with high-dimensional parameters in a computationally efficient manner.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-06-29T13:06:42Z)
• Obvious Manipulability of Voting Rules [105.35249497503527]
  The Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem states that no unanimous and non-dictatorial voting rule is strategyproof. We revisit voting rules and consider a weaker notion of strategyproofness called not obvious manipulability.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-11-03T02:41:48Z)
• Bribery as a Measure of Candidate Success: Complexity Results for Approval-Based Multiwinner Rules [58.8640284079665]
  We study the problem of bribery in multiwinner elections, for the case where the voters cast approval ballots (i.e., sets of candidates they approve) We consider a number of approval-based multiwinner rules (AV, SAV, GAV, RAV, approval-based Chamberlin--Courant, and PAV) In general, our problems tend to be easier when we limit out bribery actions on increasing the number of approvals of the candidate that we want to be in a winning committee.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-04-19T08:26:40Z)
• Modeling Voters in Multi-Winner Approval Voting [24.002910959494923]
  We study voting behavior in single-winner and multi-winner approval voting scenarios with varying degrees of uncertainty. We find that people generally manipulate their vote to obtain a better outcome, but often do not identify the optimal manipulation. We propose a novel model that takes into account the size of the winning set and human cognitive constraints.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-12-04T19:24:28Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.