When Verifiers Vote Backwards under Verdict Substitution: Signed Pivotal Value in Correlated Self-Consistency
Replacing one ballot can change a majority decision only on queries decided by a single vote; this structural fact requires no independence assumption. We study the sign of that change using a labeled, verdict-style intervention: one correctness signal replaces one correctness-indicator ballot in $k{=}7$ self-consistency panels. This diagnostic intervention is not identical to deployed answer-identity plurality. A primary MATH-500 experiment ($n{=}570$) gives a different-model verifier a $+24.2$pp pivotal gain, whereas a role-reversed configuration gives $-11.2$pp; an exploratory code stress test (14 pivotal rows across 9 tasks) gives $-24.5$pp. An exact signed-gain decomposition accounts...
| Authors | Yang Shu |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 8 August 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 8 August 2026 |
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