Algorithmic Shortlisting in Participatory Budgeting
Quick summary
arXiv:2508.06577v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Participatory budgeting is a democratic innovation that allows citizens to propose and vote on public investment projects. To help organizers manage large volumes of submissions, we design and test privacy-preserving methods for algorithmic shortlisting. These algorithms predict which projects are likely to be funded using only project features and anonymous historical voting data. We demonstrate the limitations of a naive approach that uses a large language model to rank projects based on past success and propose a vote-based pipeline
Key takeaways
- arXiv:2508.06577v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Participatory budgeting is a democratic innovation that allows citizens to propose and vote on public investment projects.
- To help organizers manage large volumes of submissions, we design and test privacy-preserving methods for algorithmic shortlisting.
- These algorithms predict which projects are likely to be funded using only project features and anonymous historical voting data.
Why it matters
“Algorithmic Shortlisting in Participatory Budgeting” may affect what data AI products can use and where accountability sits. Product teams should watch compliance duties, rights holders should watch enforcement, and users should watch transparency and appeal mechanisms.
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