Condorcet Voting [EXPLAINED!]

Condorcet Voting

Hello again everyone. I'm here to once again spread the good word about why Condorcet Voting is the best kind of voting (unless you're mafia). I'll be sticking to why it's good in playing mafia, but it really does has applications in all types of group voting systems.


What it is:
Condorcet Voting is a vote system where you order/rank your choices from least to greatest. In this case, you'd rank your most suspicious suspect first, and least suspicious suspect last. Then, you take everyone's "vote lists" and calculate for each pair of people, who is more suspicious. You can do this because for a given pair in everyones list, you know who thinks person 1 is more suspicious, and who thinks person2 is more suspicious. For example:

A, B, C --> A, B
A, C, B --> A, B
B, C, A --> B, A

You can tell that people think A is more suspicious than B because A got voted over B, 2 to 1.

If someone beats out everyone else in these 1 to 1 matchups, that person is deemed the most suspicious person! If not, it becomes a little more complicated, but you can skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to read a poorly written explanation. Basically, if someone doesn't win all the scenarios, you have a situation where people think A > B, B > C, and C > A. which is a bit of a paradox. To resolve that, you'd start with the greatest pairing and accept them until you get a circular reasoning, and then flip the votes. FOR example, if 90% of people thought A >B but only 51% of people thought C > A and 52% of people thought B > C, A would be most suspicious, B second, and C last . A > B > C


The above might sound a tad difficult to understand, but there's an easier way to tell who is most suspicious. If they're generally high in people's individual rankings, they're probably going to be ranked high in the group ranking. That's it. Let someone else deal with the algorithm.

Addendum 1
There is a higher than usual potential for ties when players aren't submitting votes optimally, to try and jockey their most suspicious person into the top slot. To solve this, the player(s) who is/are deemed least suspicious will function as tie breakers. In other words, their vote counts a teeny bit more in tie vote scenarios.

Addendum 2
Sometimes, people try to jiggle their lower votes in hopes of moving their #1 slot into the consensus #1 slot, even though they'd still be pretty happy with the #2 or #3 consensus. This is an unintended consequence of making the votes public throughout the day. However, there needs to be a mechanism for pressuring, so the last 5% of the day (basically an hour) should have privately submitted votes.


Cons of typical vote systems
A) Man, don't you hate it when you KNOW you have that one person scum pegged. And a few people agree with you? But deep down, you know you won't be able to get the votes because the town is just so divided. Scum's doing good work keeping the consensus down and the village in circles. Oh wait! Look at the time. It's sundown, and no majority's been set. Host ends the day and no one got voted out. What a waste.

B) Oh wait, maybe the host has a slightly less dumb version of voting in which you don't need majority. Bad news is, you have to compromise on someone else because the person with the most votes is someone you KNOW is town. Now instead of working to get your scum read in the ground, you're compromising and voting on some null read. (This is the best example of the vote system not accurately representing what a person believes)

C) Or better yet, (yes thats sarcastic), the guy that's been the pressure vote all day was just an idiot. He's actually the mayor and revealed with 30 minutes left in the day. Most of you try and unvote, but have no idea on how you're going to come to a consensus on who to vote next. Great. Another day wasted and scum gets another nice kill.


These problems are solved!!!
Condorcet addresses all of these problems. In scenario A and B, you might not get your #1 scum read taken down, but maybe your #2 or #3 gets voted out. That's not a waste of a day. Either you eliminated a scum, or you eliminated someone that a lot of other people thought was scum, and can clear the clutter for the next day. No repeat between 2 high profile people. In scenario C, everyone that is online would drop the mayor to the bottom of their vote lists, and #2 or #3 would bubble up to the top and get voted out. Crisis averted.


How to use on sc2mafia:
- For voters, rank your votes, comma or new line separated and wrap it in a spoiler called cvote.

Spoiler : cvote :

Bob, Charlie, Alpha

- For hosts, in your first post, put ALL possible participants in a spoiler in your opening post in the same fashion as a voter would. To reset the thread, do another cvote spoiler with the remaining players' names. You can see the live vote by going to https://narrator.systeminplace.net/co...THREAD NUMBER>

for example, the url for this thread would be
https://narrator.systeminplace.net/co...l?thread=43420
- You can click on voters to see who is voting who. If you find your vote isn't counting, the host probably messed up your name in the initial vote. Letter casing matters!!



Here is an additional links to help explain Condorcet Voting
https://plus.maths.org/content/which-voting-system-best

Also, to help keep this thread on topic, I'd happily respond to more questions about how Condorcet votes are calculated in this thread:
https://www.sc2mafia.com/forum/showth...orcet-Lynching

Otherwise...

prove me wrong!

Can there be a tie vote? What occurs then?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cryptonic

Can there be a tie vote? What occurs then?

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Host would have to resolve this somehow, or someone will have to change the order of who they want to be voted. However, it's a problem that isn't solved differently than how you would handle single voting. I'd argue that it should happen less often in condorcet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Voss

Host would have to resolve this somehow, or someone will have to change the order of who they want to be voted. However, it's a problem that isn't solved differently than how you would handle single voting. I'd argue that it should happen less often in condorcet.

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How about random ballot?

By which I mean, a random person's vote is extracted, and doubled, in order to break a tie.

Have you tested this in games before?
It seems quite town sided, wondering if you see that in practice? Does balance need to be adjusted for games with votes like this you think?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cryptonic

Have you tested this in games before?
It seems quite town sided, wondering if you see that in practice? Does balance need to be adjusted for games with votes like this you think?

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The game

lol, I do understand this principle and I absolutely hate it. Regardless of my alignment, I will always be lynched day 1 if used because of my playstyle. Another major drawback that condorcet voting has is that it reveals PRs VERY easily (which is why I never approve the use of it).

It's similar to the Chinese Firing Drill method.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cryptonic

Have you tested this in games before?
It seems quite town sided, wondering if you see that in practice? Does balance need to be adjusted for games with votes like this you think?

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Yeah, scum won the one game I presided. But I'd posit that hosts making players use a voting system that doesn't force them to vote for who they think is most suspicious, is actually scum sided. Players could organize it themselves (aka ranking players), but you'd have to get everyone to do the game's vote mechanic on the person that the Condorcet vote says to. If enough players bought into it, only scum would not use a town organization. Here's a bullish way I could do it in a forum mafia game.

"Hey y'all, please rank everyone in the game from most suspicious to least suspicious. At the end of the day we'll vote for the person that Condorcet says is the most suspicious. If you don't want to do this, you either don't get why this is a little know but TOWN tactic, or you're scum because you want to use other voting methods that don't help scum hunt."

Unfortunately if I would do that, town would spend all day arguing whether we should do it, what it is that i'm proposing, and/or whether I'm scum for trying to do something other than scum finding.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Yayap

lol, I do understand this principle and I absolutely hate it. Regardless of my alignment, I will always be lynched day 1 if used because of my playstyle. Another major drawback that condorcet voting has is that it reveals PRs VERY easily (which is why I never approve the use of it).

It's similar to the Chinese Firing Drill method.

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I guess I haven't played with you, so I don't know how your personality makes people think your generally suspicious. But if you're generally suspicious, I'd rather you be voted out then to vote someone that a vocal minority think is scum, and other people voting because they want no lynch.

Why does Condorcet reveal PRs? I have a theory on why you'd say this, and a response to it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Magoroth

How about random ballot?

By which I mean, a random person's vote is extracted, and doubled, in order to break a tie.

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I mean, would you do this if you were the host with a single vote mechanic?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Voss

I guess I haven't played with you, so I don't know how your personality makes people think your generally suspicious. But if you're generally suspicious, I'd rather you be voted out then to vote someone that a vocal minority think is scum, and other people voting because they want no lynch.

Why does Condorcet reveal PRs? I have a theory on why you'd say this, and a response to it.

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Condorcet reveals PRs because you end up ranking people using information gained by your role instead of what was said in day chat, its a form of "too much information" - people usually think that mafia are the only ones that have TMI but forget that PRs do as well. This is usually how I identify who is what role while scumhunting - because people talk too much about stuff they aren't suppose to know if they were simple citizen. Whenever people start posting a list of people in a town to scum order, I usually have them pegged very quickly, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that can do this.

As for why I appear scummy is: mafia usually won't night kill someone they think they can myslynch - so I tend to intentionally position myself near the bottom 4 of everyones reads (but not "the" bottom to be lynched myself) and I can usually talk my way out of a lynch by finding someone more scummy than myself... (and I attract the attention of PRs to check me) Condorcet ends up having the bottom 4 more randomized on a general basis but I'm the consistent person on everyones scum radar, thus why I die.

Maybe try doing something else once in a while

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Yayap

Condorcet reveals PRs because you end up ranking people using information gained by your role instead of what was said in day chat, its a form of "too much information" - people usually think that mafia are the only ones that have TMI but forget that PRs do as well. This is usually how I identify who is what role while scumhunting - because people talk too much about stuff they aren't suppose to know if they were simple citizen. Whenever people start posting a list of people in a town to scum order, I usually have them pegged very quickly, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that can do this.

As for why I appear scummy is: mafia usually won't night kill someone they think they can myslynch - so I tend to intentionally position myself near the bottom 4 of everyones reads (but not "the" bottom to be lynched myself) and I can usually talk my way out of a lynch by finding someone more scummy than myself... (and I attract the attention of PRs to check me) Condorcet ends up having the bottom 4 more randomized on a general basis but I'm the consistent person on everyones scum radar, thus why I die.

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The way I'd deal with me being a PR and not wanting to out information (or me being someone who wants to help PRs out in this situation) would be 1) either purposefully flip around the bottom of my pool, or 2) make a slight clarification in the vote system I proposed.

Condorcet vote does work even if you don't specify everyone. So if there are 10 players, and only specify 3 players in a rank, you can assume that your vote preference looks something like....

B, C, A, [everyone else], yourself.

You prefer B to anyone else, C to anyone else but B, A to anyone else but C and B, and anyone other than A, B, or C, besides yourself.

I think that would help mask the information you're trying to give. And in reality, a citizen shouldn't really know who the 9th and 10th most suspicious people are.



And yeah, I'm sure you're smart enough to figure out another method to stay alive if the game you played used this voting method.

Or just put only 1 guy in the vote tag if you're unsure about the outcome

Updated thread with hosting instructions.

I've updated the official version of Condorcet to include more tie vote resolving, and to have some portion of the day's end's votes be hidden. See Opening Post.

Hype

https://www.netflix.com/watch/81240934

if anyone needs an explanation on ranked choice voting and has netflix, hasan minaj does a much better job than me to talk about the negative effects of majority and plurality voting.