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Democratic Elections in Faulty Distributed Systems

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Distributed Computing and Networking (ICDCN 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 7730))

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Abstract

In this paper, we show that for elections in distributed systems the conversion from non-binary choices to binary choices does not always provide optimal results when the preferences of nodes are not identical. With this observation, we study the problem of conducting democratic elections in distributed systems in the form of social choice and social welfare functions with three or more candidates. We present some impossibility and possibility results for distributed democratic elections in presence of Byzantine behavior. We also discuss some existing election schemes, and present a new approach that attempts to mitigate the effects of Byzantine votes. We analyze the performance of these schemes through simulations to compare their efficacy in producing the most desirable social welfare rankings.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Parallel and Distributed Systems Lab, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

    Himanshu Chauhan & Vijay K. Garg

Authors
  1. Himanshu Chauhan
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  2. Vijay K. Garg
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. IRISA/INRIA-Rennes, Campus Universitaire de Beaulieu, Campus Universitaire de Beaulieu, 35042, Rennes Cedex, France

    Davide Frey

  2. IRISA-ISTIC Université de Rennes 1, Institut Universitaire de France, Campus Universitaire de Beaulieu, 35042, Rennes Cedex, France

    Michel Raynal

  3. Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, 200 S. 33rd Street, 19104, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Saswati Sarkar

  4. Faculty of Technology and Computer Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Homi Bhabha Road, 400005, Mumbai, India

    Rudrapatna K. Shyamasundar

  5. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, 791 Drees Labs, The Ohio State University, 2015 Neil Avenue, 43210-1277, Columbus, OH, USA

    Prasun Sinha

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© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Chauhan, H., Garg, V.K. (2013). Democratic Elections in Faulty Distributed Systems. In: Frey, D., Raynal, M., Sarkar, S., Shyamasundar, R.K., Sinha, P. (eds) Distributed Computing and Networking. ICDCN 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7730. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35668-1_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35668-1_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-35667-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-35668-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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