Voting mechanisms are susceptible to external information that can skew voter preferences, affecting the probability of alternatives being selected and overall social welfare. This work analyzes the impact of such anchoring information on voting outcomes.
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.
The author explores the potential threats posed by quantum computing to the complexity shield protecting voting rules, while also highlighting opportunities for new research and development in this intersection of fields.