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arXiv 提交日期: 2026-04-07
📄 Abstract - Polynomial-Time Algorithm for Thiele Voting Rules with Voter Interval Preferences

We present a polynomial-time algorithm for computing an optimal committee of size $k$ under any given Thiele voting rule for elections on the Voter Interval domain (i.e., when voters can be ordered so that each candidate is approved by a consecutive voters). Our result extends to the Generalized Thiele rule, in which each voter has an individual weight (scoring) sequence. This resolves a 10-year-old open problem that was originally posed for Proportional Approval Voting and later extended to every Thiele rule (Elkind and Lackner, IJCAI 2015; Peters, AAAI 2018). Our main technical ingredient is a new structural result -- a concavity theorem for families of intervals. It shows that, given two solutions of different sizes, one can construct a solution of any intermediate size whose score is at least the corresponding linear interpolation of the two scores. As a consequence, on Voter Interval profiles, the optimal total Thiele score is a concave function of the committee size. We exploit this concavity within an optimization framework based on a Lagrangian relaxation of a natural integer linear program formulation, obtained by moving the cardinality constraint into the objective. On Voter Interval profiles, the resulting constraint matrix is totally unimodular, so it can be solved in polynomial time. Our main algorithm and its proof were obtained via human--AI collaboration. In particular, a slightly simplified version of the main structural theorem used by the algorithm was obtained in a single call to Gemini Deep Think.

顶级标签: theory systems machine learning
详细标签: computational social choice voting theory polynomial-time algorithm approval voting combinatorial optimization 或 搜索:

选民区间偏好下蒂勒投票规则的多项式时间算法 / Polynomial-Time Algorithm for Thiele Voting Rules with Voter Interval Preferences


1️⃣ 一句话总结

这篇论文提出了一种高效算法,能够在选民偏好呈连续区间分布时,快速计算出蒂勒投票规则下的最优委员会,从而解决了一个长达十年的公开问题。

源自 arXiv: 2604.05953