Computational Complexity Characterization of Protecting Elections from Bribery

Abstract: The bribery problem in election has received considerable attention in the literature, upon which various algorithmic and complexity results have been obtained. It is thus natural to ask whether we can protect an election from potential bribery. We assume that the protector can protect a voter with some cost (e.g., by isolating the voter from potential bribers). A protected voter cannot be bribed. Under this setting, we consider the following bi-level decision problem: Is it possible for the protector to protect a proper subset of voters such that no briber with a fixed budget on bribery can alter the election result? The goal of this paper is to give a full picture on the complexity of protection problems. We give an extensive study on the protection problem and provide algorithmic and complexity results. Comparing our results with that on the bribery problems, we observe that the protection problem is in general significantly harder. Indeed, it becomes $\sum_{p}^2$-complete even for very restricted special cases, while most bribery problems lie in NP. However, it is not necessarily the case that the protection problem is always harder. Some of the protection problems can still be solved in polynomial time, while some of them remain as hard as the bribery problem under the same setting.