Ensuring Resilient Voting: Mitigating Sybil Attacks and Voter Abstention

Core Concepts

The core message of this article is to develop voting rules that are resilient to sybil attacks and voter abstention, by using the status-quo as an anchor of resilience. The authors characterize the tradeoff between safety (the inability of sybils or abstentions to change the status quo against the will of the genuine agents) and liveness (the ability of the genuine agents to change the status quo), and show that the Status-Quo Enforcing voting rules are often optimal.

Abstract

The article addresses the challenges of sybil votes and partial participation in voting procedures, which can undermine the ability of voting to truly reflect the will of the society.
The authors build upon the framework of Reality-Aware Social Choice, using the status-quo as an ever-present distinguished alternative. They introduce the concepts of safety and liveness to characterize the resilience of voting rules in the presence of sybils and abstentions.
The authors first analyze the simplest setting with two alternatives, the status-quo and a proposal. They define the Status-Quo Enforcing mechanism, which adds virtual votes in support of the status-quo, and show that it often achieves the optimal tradeoff between safety and liveness.
The authors then generalize their results to more complex social choice settings, including multiple alternatives, multiple referenda, and single-peaked domains. They also consider an approximate notion of safety, where the outcome may not be the preferred alternative of the honest voters, but is not too far from it.
Finally, the authors relax the assumption that the identity of absentees is adversarial, and show that this leads to an improved safety-liveness tradeoff. They also consider the case where inactive voters can delegate their vote, which can eliminate the dependency on the turnout.

Stats

The fraction of sybils is denoted by σ and the fraction of inactive voters is denoted by µ.

Quotes

"Voting procedures are a simple and widely used way to aggregate the preferences of multiple individuals. Voting, however, can truly reflect the will of the society only insofar as all eligible people in the society—and only them—vote."
"Sybil attacks, in which fake or duplicate identities (sybils) infiltrate an online community, pose a serious threat to such communities, as they might tilt community-wide decisions in their favor."
"Our goal in this context is to enhance social choice theory with effective group decision mechanisms that can handle both sybil votes and vote abstention."

Key Insights Distilled From

Safe Voting

by Reshef Meir,... at arxiv.org 04-09-2024

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.05271.pdf

Deeper Inquiries

How can the proposed voting rules be extended to settings with more complex preference structures, such as multi-dimensional preferences or interdependent valuations

The proposed voting rules can be extended to settings with more complex preference structures by considering multi-dimensional preferences or interdependent valuations. In the context of multi-dimensional preferences, the voting rules can be adapted to handle voting on multiple issues or criteria simultaneously. This can be achieved by incorporating a weighted voting system where voters assign weights to each dimension or issue based on their importance. The voting rule can then aggregate these weighted preferences to determine the overall outcome. For interdependent valuations, the voting rules can take into account the dependencies between different alternatives and how they affect each other. This can be done by introducing mechanisms that consider the interactions between different choices and their impact on the overall decision.

What are the potential drawbacks or unintended consequences of using status-quo enforcing voting rules in practice, and how can they be mitigated

Using status-quo enforcing voting rules in practice may have potential drawbacks and unintended consequences. One drawback is the risk of perpetuating the status quo even when significant changes are needed or desired by the majority of voters. This can lead to stagnation and prevent progress or adaptation to changing circumstances. Additionally, status-quo enforcing rules may discourage innovation and experimentation, as they inherently bias towards maintaining the current state of affairs. To mitigate these drawbacks, it is important to regularly reassess the status quo and ensure that it aligns with the evolving needs and preferences of the community. Transparency and accountability in the decision-making process are also crucial to address concerns about the potential misuse of status-quo enforcing rules for maintaining power or influence.

How can the insights from this work on sybil-resilient voting be applied to other domains, such as decentralized governance of online communities or blockchain-based systems

The insights from this work on sybil-resilient voting can be applied to other domains, such as decentralized governance of online communities or blockchain-based systems, to enhance the security and integrity of decision-making processes. In decentralized governance, where decision-making power is distributed among participants, the concepts of safety and liveness can help in designing voting mechanisms that are resistant to manipulation and ensure that the collective decisions reflect the genuine preferences of the participants. In blockchain-based systems, where transparency and trust are essential, the principles of sybil-resilience can be utilized to prevent fraudulent activities and ensure the validity of voting outcomes. By incorporating these insights, decentralized platforms can foster greater trust and participation among users, leading to more robust and democratic governance structures.