Gowda, Kishen N.Kishen N.GowdaMisra, NeeldharaNeeldharaMisraPatel, VrajVrajPatel2025-08-312025-08-312020-01-01[9783030489656]10.1007/978-3-030-48966-3_212-s2.0-85086229166http://repository.iitgn.ac.in/handle/IITG2025/24310We consider the problem of protecting and manipulating elections by recounting and changing ballots, respectively. Our setting involves a plurality-based election held across multiple districts, and the problem formulations are based on the model proposed recently by [Elkind et al., IJCAI 2019]. It turns out that both of the manipulation and protection problems are NP-complete even in fairly simple settings. We study these problems from a parameterized perspective with the goal of establishing a more detailed complexity landscape. The parameters we consider include the number voters, and the budgets of the attacker and the defender. While we observe fixed-parameter tractability when parameterizing by number of voters, our main contribution is a demonstration of parameterized hardness when working with the budgets of the attacker and the defender.falseElections | Parameterized complexity | W-hardnessConference Paperhttps://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.0317616113349277-28820201cpBook Series0