Differentially Private Approval-Based Committee Voting

Zhechen Li, Zimai Guo, Lirong Xia, Yongzhi Cao, Hanpin Wang

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate tradeoffs among differential privacy (DP) and several representative axioms for approval-based committee voting, including justified representation, proportional justified representation, extended justified representation, Pareto efficiency, and Condorcet criterion. Without surprise, we demonstrate that all of these axioms are incompatible with DP, and thus establish both upper and lower bounds for their two-way tradeoffs with DP. Furthermore, we provide upper and lower bounds for three-way tradeoffs among DP and every pairwise combination of such axioms, revealing that although these axioms are compatible without DP, their optimal levels under DP cannot be simultaneously achieved. Our results quantify the effect of DP on the satisfaction and compatibility of the axioms in approval-based committee voting, which can provide insights for designing voting rules that possess both privacy and axiomatic properties.