Election Attacks with Few Candidates

Abstract

We investigate the parameterized complexity of strategic behaviors in generalized scoring rules. In particular, we prove that the manipulation, control (all the 22 standard types), and bribery problems are fixed-parameter tractable for most of the generalized scoring rules, with respect to the number of candidates. Our results imply that all these strategic voting problems are fixed-parameter tractable for most of the common voting rules, such as Plurality, r-Approval, Borda, Copeland, Maximin, Bucklin, etc., with respect to the number of candidates.