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Party Tricks: On Primaries and Gerrymandering. Omer Lev (BGU)
June 9, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm IDT
CS colloquium lecture by Dr. Omer Lev from Ben-Gurion University.
Title: Party Tricks: On Primaries and Gerrymandering
Abstract: In the last few years, the effects that primaries and gerrymandering have on election outcomes became a commonly debated issue, particularly in the US. Both primaries (candidate selection by parties) and district-based elections are examples of mechanisms that involve adding stages to a decison-making procedure. I will discuss several results on how these particular stages change elections, including the effect parties may have on the quality of winners, how population distribution affects the possibility of manipulation of the districts (“gerrymandering power”), and some new results showing gerrymandering effects in real-world data.
Joint work (in different papers) with Yoram Bachrach, Allan Borodin, Yoad Lewenberg, Jeffrey S. Rosenschein, Nisarg Shah, Tyrone Strangway, and Yair Zick.
Short Bio: Omer Lev is a faculty member at the department of Industrial Engineering and Management in Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Before joining Ben-Gurion University, he did his post doctoral fellowship at the department of Computer Science of the University of Toronto, following his PhD at the Hebrew University. Omer is interested in various areas of AI and theoretical computer science, mostly involving a game-theoretical analysis trying to understand various phenomena, while keeping the research closely related to real-world data and observable behavior. Lately, his focus has been on multi-staged decision mechanisms, peer evaluation, and crowd-activities.