Most theoretical definitions about the complexity of manipulating elections focus on the decision problem of recognizing which instances can be successfully manipulated, rather than the search problem of finding the successful manipulative actions. Since the latter is a far more natural goal for manipulators, that definitional focus may be misguided if these two complexities can differ. Our mai...

Previous models of the popular vote in U.S. Presidential elections emphasize economic growth and price stability, the role of parties and incumbency, and pre-election expectations for the future. Despite the closeness of the pre-election polls in 2004, formal models instead predict a landslide victory for President Bush. An obvious question is whether this anomaly arises, at least in part, from...

Predicting election winners (or, election possible winners) is an important topic in computational social choice. Very generally put, we consider the following setting: There is some set of candidates C and some set of voters V (with preferences over C). We either do not know which candidates will take part in the election or we do not know which voters will cast their votes. However, for each ...

We study a leader election protocol that we call the Swedish leader election protocol. This name comes from a protocol presented by L. Bondesson, T. Nilsson, and G. Wikstrand (2007). The goal is to select one among n > 0 players, by proceeding through a number of rounds. If there is only one player remaining, the protocol stops and the player is declared the leader. Otherwise, all remaining pla...

The commonly used asynchronous bounded delay (ABD) network models assume a fixed bound on message delay. We propose a probabilistic network model, called asynchronous bounded expected delay (ABE) model. Instead of a strict bound, the ABE model requires only a bound on the expected message delay. While the conditions of ABD networks restrict the set of possible executions, in ABE networks all as...

In “Can we elect if we cannot compare” (SPAA’03), Barrière, Flocchini, Fraigniaud and Santoro consider a qualitative model of distributed computing, where the labels of the entities are distinct but mutually incomparable. They study the leader election problem in a distributed mobile environment and they wonder whether there exists an algorithm such that for each distributed mobile environment,...

Ad hoc networks are characterized by high dynamics in particular with respect to the formation of network partitions. This behavior makes it difficult to (s)elect a suitable leader for a given network partition at any given time. However, such leaders or representatives are needed by many protocols for ad hoc networks. In this paper, we will illustrate the leader election process and its influe...

The problem of constructing a labeled map of an anonymous and asynchronous network is addressed. We present an algorithm that explores and maps the network by using k identical agents that have no prior knowledge of the network topology. An algorithm of Das, Flocchini, Nayak and Santoro for mapping of the network requires that n and k are co-prime. Our improved algorithm, presented here, requir...

We present a cellular algorithm in O(w) for the leader election problem on a finite connected subset F of ZZ of excentricity w, for any fixed d. The problem consists in finding an algorithm such that when setting the elements of F to a special state, and all the others to a state #, the cellular automaton iterates a finite number of steps and eventually sets only one precise element of F to a s...

In this paper we document a strong correlation between the use of primaries and the transition from “party-based” voting to “candidate-oriented” voting in U.S. statewide elections. First, at the aggregate level we find that the direct primary is associated with a significant increase in “split-ticket” voting, both across states and within states over time. Second, we use a new data set of count...