I have been ruminating on an alternative to voting as a way of dealing with afk players. It's a variation on musical chairs.
In a Samurai themed game, I had ##serve tea instead of voting. You could only serve tea once, and you couldn't serve tea to yourself, or to somebody who served you that day phase. Mafia were only able to serve tea to a fellow scum buddy (in this game, mafia were the Ninja faction) once per day phase. Once one player remained who hadn't been served tea, that player was the lynch for the day. Players could also no vote for a phase with ##empty cup which was useful for town who wanted to force a quick end to the phase (guaranteeing that a certain player they thought was mafia would be in the night phase lynch pool) or for mafia to end the phase quickly.
The most important rule was that once you had served tea, you couldn't do it again on that day phase (so you couldn't effectively change your vote), and illegal tea serving was simply ignored without specifying why it failed - relevant for the new roles in this game.
What would happen is closer to phase end, there would be a deadlock of two or three players who couldn't serve tea without themselves dying. The game would then go to night phase, where posting was prohibited except for a traditional vote. However, only the players who had been served tea were eligible to vote, and they could only vote for players who hadn't received any tea.
Players could not change their vote, and if they failed to vote by night end then the phase would start again, and the non-voters would be added to the viable lynch pool. The player who ultimately won the vote through a hammer would be killed off as if they had been lynched in the preceding day phase, and couldn't submit night actions/have actions resolved against them.
Other than that, there was no restrictions against tea drinkers targeting non tea drinkers etc.
The mechanic was reasonably successful, however it was only tried once and it was a small game sample size (12 players) so I don't know how scalable it is. However, the unusual mechanic meant for some very interesting roles that nobody had expected.
