---
title: "Multimode Control Attacks on Elections"
authors:
  - "Piotr Faliszewski"
  - "Edith Hemaspaandra"
  - "Lane A. Hemaspaandra"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2009/32"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2009/0032.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Twenty-First International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 2009
pages: "128-132"
track: ""
keywords:
---

# Multimode Control Attacks on Elections

Piotr Faliszewski, Edith Hemaspaandra, Lane A. Hemaspaandra

*Proceedings of the Twenty-First International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 128-132.

## Abstract

In 1992, Bartholdi, Tovey, and Trick opened the study of control attacks on elections — attempts to improve the election outcome by such actions as adding/deleting candidates or voters. That work has led to many results on how algorithms can be used to find attacks on elections and how complexity-theoretic hardness results can be used as shields against attacks. However, all the work in this line has assumed that the attacker employs just a single type of attack. In this paper, we model and study the case in which the attacker launches a multipronged (i.e., multimode) attack. We do so to more realistically capture the richness of real-life settings. For example, an attacker might simultaneously try to suppress some voters, attract new voters into the election, and introduce a spoiler candidate. Our model provides a unified framework for such varied attacks, and by constructing polynomial-time multiprong attack algorithms we prove that for various election systems even such concerted, flexible attacks can be perfectly planned in deterministic polynomial time.Piotr Faliszewski, Edith Hemaspaandra, Lane A. Hemaspaandra