Model checking of multi-agent systems (MAS) is known to be hard, both theoretically and in practice. A smart abstraction of the state space may significantly reduce the model, and facilitate the verification. In this paper, we propose and study an intuitive agent-based abstraction scheme, based on the removal of variables in the representation of a MAS. This allows to do the reduction without generating the global model of the system. Moreover, the process is easy to understand and control even

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... for domain experts with little knowledge of computer science. We formally prove the correctness of the approach, and evaluate the gains experimentally on models of a postal voting procedure.