Theoretical Computer Science 410 (2009) 2746–2753
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Theoretical Computer Science
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tcs
Parameterized computational complexity of control problems in voting
systems
I
Hong Liu
∗
, Haodi Feng, Daming Zhu, Junfeng Luan
Algorithms Group, School of Computer Science and Technology, Software Park Campus, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong Province, China
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 5 November 2008
Received in revised form 12 February 2009
Accepted 9 April 2009
Communicated by X. Deng
Keywords:
Voting systems
Constructive control
Destructive control
Plurality voting
Condorcet voting
Approval voting
Parameterized complexity
a b s t r a c t
Voting systems are common tools in a variety of areas. This paper studies parameterized
computational complexity of control of Plurality, Condorcet and Approval voting systems,
respectively. The types of controls considered include adding or deleting candidates
or voters, under constructive or destructive setting. We obtain the following results:
(1) constructive control by adding candidates in Plurality voting is W[2]-hard with
respect to the parameter ‘‘number of added candidates’’, (2) destructive control by adding
candidates in Plurality voting is W[2]-hard with respect to the parameter ‘‘number of
added candidates’’, (3) constructive control by adding voters in Condorcet voting is
W[1]-hard with respect to the parameter ‘‘number of added voters’’, (4) constructive
control by deleting voters in Condorcet voting is W[1]-hard with respect to the parameter
‘‘number of deleted voters’’, (5) constructive control by adding voters in Approval voting is
W[1]-hard with respect to the parameter ‘‘number of added voters’’, and (6) constructive
control by deleting voters in Approval voting is W[2]-hard with respect to the parameter
‘‘number of deleted voters’’.
© 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Voting systems provide a general framework for preference aggregation, in which each agent expresses a preference
order over a set of candidates, and some voting rule [4] is applied to compute the winner(s). These systems are used not
only in political elections but also in a variety of other areas, for example, meta-search engines [9] and planning in multi-
agent systems [10].
In addition to work that focuses on winner(s) determination, researchers have spent much effort on studying, from the
computational complexity view, the potential dangers that various voting systems would face. The dangers most studied
so far include manipulation [1,7], control [2,13,17,19], and bribery [12,13]. This paper focuses on control of voting systems.
In their seminal paper [2], Bartholdi et al. put forward the following general control problem: Is it computationally hard
or easy for an authority conducting the voting procedure (called chair) to cause a distinguished candidate to be the unique
winner through control of the candidate or voter set? Hemaspaandra et al. [17] called this general problem as constructive
control problem and also put forward a complementary destructive control problem. While in constructive setting the chair
aims to ensure that a specified desirable candidate is the (unique) winner, in destructive setting the chair tries to ensure
that a specified detested candidate is not the (unique) winner.
With respect to different settings (constructive or destructive), different types of control (e.g. adding or deleting
candidates or voters), and different voting systems, different variants of control problem can be formed. Variants of control
I
Research supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (60603007).
∗
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 13001727985.
E-mail addresses: hong-liu@sdu.edu.cn, hongliu2005@gmail.com (H. Liu), fenghaodi@sdu.edu.cn (H. Feng), dmzhu@sdu.edu.cn (D. Zhu),
jfluan@sdu.edu.cn (J. Luan).
0304-3975/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tcs.2009.04.004