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On the complexity of achieving proportional representation

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Abstract

We demonstrate that winner selection in two prominent proportional representation voting systems is a computationally intractable problem—implying that these systems are impractical when the assembly is large. On a different note, in settings where the size of the assembly is constant, we show that the problem can be solved in polynomial time.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and Computer Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Ariel D. Procaccia, Jeffrey S. Rosenschein & Aviv Zohar

Authors
  1. Ariel D. Procaccia
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  2. Jeffrey S. Rosenschein
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  3. Aviv Zohar
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Correspondence to Ariel D. Procaccia.

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Procaccia, A.D., Rosenschein, J.S. & Zohar, A. On the complexity of achieving proportional representation. Soc Choice Welfare 30, 353–362 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-007-0235-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-007-0235-2

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