On β-Plurality Points in Spatial Voting Games

Abstract

Let V be a set of n points in ℝ^d, called voters. A point p ∈ ℝ^d is a plurality point for V when the following holds: for every q ∈ ℝ^d the number of voters closer to p than to q is at least the number of voters closer to q than to p. Thus, in a vote where each v ∈ V votes for the nearest proposal (and voters for which the proposals are at equal distance abstain), proposal p will not lose against any alternative proposal q. For most voter sets a plurality point does not exist. We therefore introduce the concept of β-plurality points, which are defined similarly to regular plurality points except that the distance of each voter to p (but not to q) is scaled by a factor β, for some constant 0<β⩽1. We investigate the existence and computation of β-plurality points, and obtain the following results.  
- Define β^*_d := sup{β : any finite multiset V in ℝ^d admits a β-plurality point}. We prove that β^*₂ = √3/2, and that 1/√d ⩽ β^*_d ⩽ √3/2 for all d⩾3. 
- Define β(V) := sup {β : V admits a β-plurality point}. We present an algorithm that, given a voter set V in {ℝ}^d, computes an (1-ε)⋅ β(V) plurality point in time O(n²/ε^(3d-2) ⋅ log(n/ε^(d-1)) ⋅ log²(1/ε)).