How many freemasons are there? The consensus voting mechanism in metric spaces

DOI10.1007/978-3-030-57980-7_21zbMATH Open1506.91054arXiv2005.12505OpenAlexW3089919202MaRDI QIDQ2109972FDOQ2109972

Mashbat Suzuki, Adrian Vetta

Publication date: 21 December 2022

Abstract: We study the evolution of a social group when admission to the group is determined via consensus or unanimity voting. In each time period, two candidates apply for membership and a candidate is selected if and only if all the current group members agree. We apply the spatial theory of voting where group members and candidates are located in a metric space and each member votes for its closest (most similar) candidate. Our interest focuses on the expected cardinality of the group after $T$ time periods. To evaluate this we study the geometry inherent in dynamic consensus voting over a metric space. This allows us to develop a set of techniques for lower bounding and upper bounding the expected cardinality of a group. We specialize these methods for two-dimensional metric spaces. For the unit ball the expected cardinality of the group after $T$ time periods is $Theta(T^{1/8})$. In sharp contrast, for the unit square the expected cardinality is at least $Omega(lnT)$ but at most $O(lnTcdotlnlnT)$.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.12505

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Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Social choice (91B14)

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