Efficient Voting

Questions

• What configurations can lead to high throughput voting locations, and what will lead to long lines and waits?
• How do different parameters contribute, e.g., the number of places to vote vs. number of people?

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Simplifications / CA Dynamics

• Voting is just for one location (i.e., not considering say city-wide dynamics)
• Voting happens in an N by N square room
• 1 or more Entrances / Exits on the left wall
• 1 or more Voting Boxes on the right wall

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N = 20

• Voters enter the room at with some probability from entrances / exits
• Voters travel from the entrance to a voting box
• When they get to the voting box they turn to state Voting
• Voting to Voted with some probability
• Voted have to get to an exit to leave

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Voter

Voting

Voted

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Empty

7 Total States

N = 20

1 Voter Simulation

CA Details

• Some probabilistic updates = Stochastic CA
• Synchronous updates - as a result need a relatively large neighborhood to avoid collisions

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Neighborhood

Other CA Rules

• Voters can “hop” over Voting, to get in the next line
• There are built in movement priorities so that two Voters don’t both move into the same square at the same time (same with Voted)
• Movement / Voter behavior is not very realistic*

What to measure / metrics?

• Number of successful votes after some number of time-steps
• The ratio of Voters to Voted in the system at each timesteps

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