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Shijie Huang - Dissertation Final.pdf (3.15 MB)

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Waiting Lines and System Selection in Constrained Service Systems with Applications in Election Resource Allocation

Huang, Shijie
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9655-8946
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1471541297

Abstract Details

2016, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Industrial and Systems Engineering.
In the United States, voting is one of the most fundamental rights protected by the federal law. However, there is a growing concern over voter disenfranchisement and system inequity caused by long waiting lines. Studies have found that inappropriate voting resource allocation has deterred hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens from voting. This research proposes an analytic framework to quantify the number of deterred voters and assess the resulting political consequences. We apply this framework to the 2012 Sandoval County General Election in New Mexico to study whether electoral outcomes were altered by “effective disenfranchisement” for a few closely contested offices. Furthermore, Indifference-Zone Generalized Binary Search (IZGBS) is developed to determine the minimum sets of resources needed to satisfy a given service level for elections with one or multiple bottleneck resources. What makes the problem challenging is the service level generally needs to be evaluated using discrete event simulations, which is slow and noisy. For example, there are no analytical methods to estimate the waiting time of the 99th percentile voter. Thus, simulation-based ranking and selection (R&S), also known as design and analysis of R&S experiments, are preferred than stochastic integer programming methods in this type of problems. The proposed approach incorporates constrained R&S with Generalized Binary Search (GBS) to provide computationally efficient and rigorous solutions. It also explores the intuitive monotone assumption that adding resources cannot harm average performance for relevant Discrete Event Simulation (DES) models, which has received little attention in the simulation literature previously. The method is based on the assumption of normal populations (but not requiring equal variances). Therefore, special attention is given to quantile-related outputs that are associated with asymptotically normal estimates. The asymptote is in the number of simulated voters on Election Day, which is often over one thousand. Later, IZGBS is applied to the Franklin County of Ohio and Sandoval County of New Mexico to establish the resource requirement so that voters can expect to wait less than thirty minutes. Several topics are suggested for future research, including building on IZGBS to provide optimization solutions for more general problems.
Theodore Allen (Advisor)
Güzin Bayraksan (Committee Member)
Antonio Conejo (Committee Member)
137 p.
Industrial Engineering; Operations Research
Multiple Comparisons; Comparison with a Standard; Ranking and Selection; Indifference-zone; Generalized Binary Search; Simulation-based Optimization; Quantile Estimator; Election; Voting System; Equity;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Huang, S. (2016). Waiting Lines and System Selection in Constrained Service Systems with Applications in Election Resource Allocation [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1471541297

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Huang, Shijie. Waiting Lines and System Selection in Constrained Service Systems with Applications in Election Resource Allocation. 2016. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1471541297.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Huang, Shijie. "Waiting Lines and System Selection in Constrained Service Systems with Applications in Election Resource Allocation." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1471541297

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1471541297
355
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.