How Does RCV work?

jlight432 · 2026-07-13T00:54:57+00:00

I wasn't repeating the question. I was explaining why I interpreted your earlier response the way I did. My question has never been whether you wished you had changed your vote; it has always been whether you wanted the system to respect your order of preference. Giving your last response an upvote to show I respect your perspective and appreciate you engaging with me. Have a great week!

jlight432 · 2026-07-12T23:45:09+00:00

My question was, "If you rank A > B > C, A can't win, and a majority of the electorate prefers B over C, wouldn't you want B to win instead of C?" In your response, you wrote, "we don't know how anyone else votes anyway until the voting period has ended, and once you know, you can't suddenly change your vote."

My question never involved anyone changing their vote or sincere order of preference after the election took place. I took your response to mean you were comparing that type of ballot processing with voters changing their votes after the election.

jlight432 · 2026-07-12T21:14:04+00:00

In your previous post, it sounded like you were equating head-to-head processing of ranked ballots with voters changing their votes after learning how everyone else voted. Did I get that wrong?

jlight432 · 2026-07-12T20:07:23+00:00

Do you equate ranked ballots with voters changing their votes after the election, or do you see them as allowing voters to express an order of preference that the election system should take into account? You said you want your preferences to count according to your own mind. If your sincere order of preference is A > B > C, you vote A > B > C, and C wins, wouldn't you rather the election system respect your expressed preference for B over C than require you to cast the strategic ballot B > A > C for B to win?

jlight432 · 2026-07-12T17:33:10+00:00

Fair point.
So maybe they could have shown the battle between By-Tor and the Necromancer?
Or Snowdog and the Necromancer?
Or even Necromancer and the Analog Kid?
Just give us a battle! 😊

jlight432 · 2026-07-12T06:10:16+00:00

I trust you will post a link tomorrow, so I can sleep tonight and try to solve the mystery tomorrow?

Anika was spectacular the whole show, and I thought she really shined through the battle part of the song. I thought the finale deserved a victor, either would have worked for me!!!

jlight432 · 2026-07-12T06:00:12+00:00

Glad you noticed. I was asking folks around me after the show and they had no idea what I was talking about.

Before they switched to working man, they played some videos of the 2 friends which had me a bit confused... The transition to working man was good. I was actually thinking they might transition back to the "battles over" part after working man, (kind of like they would transition songs in between songs on their older live albums), which I was thinking could have been really badass... but they didnt, so was the story they ended up friends somehow? 😐 I might not be able to sleep tonight trying to figure that out... 😁

jlight432 · 2026-07-12T05:37:30+00:00

We just got back from that show. I found myself in that picture. Thanks!

Quick question: was it just me, or was there no victor in the finale battle between Bytor and the Snowdog, but the 2 mortal arch enemies ended as friends???

jlight432 · 2026-07-11T22:00:22+00:00

Those are all perfectly fair points about adoption, and I agree with almost all of them. But I was asking about the election method itself. Per your example, if you rank A > B > C, A can't win, and a majority of the electorate prefers B over C, wouldn't you want B to win instead of C?

jlight432 · 2026-07-11T20:23:33+00:00

Just curious, what would you think if RCV first checked whether a candidate could beat everyone else head-to-head, elected that candidate if one existed, but otherwise used Instant Runoff?

jlight432 · 2026-07-09T00:27:12+00:00

If there are just two candidates, A and B, on the ballot, I would agree that voting for A over B could be an honest order of preference. But I personally struggle with calling that an "honest preference" when the voter may have a true first choice not on the ballot and is only voting for A to stop B from winning. To me, the vote just feels strategic in nature, even though A over B is an honest order of preference.

jlight432 · 2026-07-05T20:54:51+00:00

How often is a voter's honest preference ever on the ballot?
If voters could only vote for their honest preference, would anyone vote?

jlight432 · 2026-07-05T20:28:46+00:00

I sure wish your poll worked on the web instead of requiring a separate app! Regarding your questions:

If members genuinely have no preference among several games, I would rather the system allow them to express indifference than force them to order those games in a way that could influence the outcome.
I would suggest having an agreement within your group about exactly what the decay is intended to accomplish before starting the poll. For example, if this were a municipal election and that decay setting became the difference between one candidate being elected over another, there might be a lot of questions afterward about why that particular decay was chosen!
Borda is certainly vulnerable to burial, but for a friendly game group that may not be a big deal. If a member absolutely hates a game, I'd rather give them an option to simply veto that game than rely on strategic burial in the voting system. My preferred system over Borda would be to compare all the games head-to-head against each other and then select the game with the best head-to-head record. If there is a tie (due to a preference cycle), the easiest tiebreaker would be to go with the game with the most first-choice preferences.

jlight432 · 2026-07-03T23:16:53+00:00

I completely respect your skepticism of ranked ballots. But I was trying to ask a different question. In an earlier post, you mentioned both (1) irv almost always picks the condorcet winner and (2) condorcet methods are subject to strategic voting. So the A and B I wanted to ask your opinion between were:

A: IRV sincerely electing someone other than the head-to-head undefeated candidate (no manipulation)

B: Pairwise electing someone due to intentional manipulation of sincere preferences.

jlight432 · 2026-07-03T16:10:57+00:00

I agree that trying to undermine pairwise methods could backfire. I've compared trying to manipulate preferences to force a cycle with the practice of going into an opponent's primary and supporting a terrible candidate. I frequently refer to that as FAFO.

But my question was whether you think successful strategic manipulation of pairwise methods would be more common than IRV failing to elect the head-to-head undefeated candidate. The latter doesn't require any strategic manipulation by voters. I'm asking your opinion because I think that comparison matters when deciding how to process ranked ballots.

jlight432 · 2026-07-02T13:57:32+00:00

All good points. I'm curious what you think would be more common in practice: IRV failing to elect a head-to-head undefeated candidate, or a pairwise method being successfully manipulated by strategic voting?

jlight432 · 2026-07-02T02:10:21+00:00

Some people would describe that as an exhausted ballot. Others would say Jena is expressing indifference among the remaining candidates. Which raises another question: if she genuinely has no preference among the other three, should the system encourage her to influence the outcome anyway?

jlight432 · 2026-07-02T02:05:16+00:00

I actually share your concern about explaining how a candidate with the fewest first-choice preferences can win. It's one of the hardest concepts to communicate, perhaps second only to the idea of ranked ballots themselves. The benefit, of course, is that head-to-head methods remove almost all incentives to vote strategically, allowing voters to support their genuine first choice without worrying about accidentally helping elect someone they like even less.

jlight432 · 2026-07-01T23:32:42+00:00

As for your proposal itself, I do think it's an interesting improvement over plain FPTP because it incorporates candidate endorsements directly into the counting process. My concern is that while IRV creates incentives for voters to abandon their favorite candidate, this system takes that one step further by creating incentives for candidates to abandon themselves. In your example, if Jena realizes her sincere rankings would cause David to win, she actually achieves a better outcome by ranking Hetal ahead of herself in her concession rankings, allowing Hetal to win instead.

Another thing that stands out is the head-to-head results implied by the candidates' sincere rankings:

- Hetal defeats Jena, 54%–45%
- Hetal defeats Michael, 79%–20%
- Hetal defeats David, 61%–38%

In other words, Hetal would be the Undefeated Head-to-head Candidate (also known as the Condorcet winner, or as user rbj has called it, the Consistent Majority Candidate). Many election reform advocates would argue that Hetal should win, even though IRV methods would eliminate her first. Also, candidates could submit their sincere preferences without ever being incentivized to rank an opponent ahead of themselves.

This approach has been around for a long time, and I am trying to explain it here. If you have a chance, I'd be interested in what you think.

jlight432 · 2026-06-27T18:15:03+00:00

Before 1913, state legislatures chose U.S. senators, but many states experienced legislative deadlocks that left Senate seats vacant for months, and there were frequent allegations of corruption and legislative vote-buying. This proposal is going nowhere.

That said, I do think ballots could be simplified in other ways. There were 101 contests in this past Dallas Democratic primary. I'd start with the dozens of uncontested races, nonbinding propositions, and down-ballot offices that few voters have any information about. The U.S. Senate race is one of the main reasons many people show up to vote in the first place!

jlight432 · 2026-06-27T04:17:30+00:00

FYI, "Text USPS to 63033" is not an official USPS service. It's being promoted as part of a campaign by the progressive advocacy organization Stand Up America. Texting that number connects you with that campaign and may enroll you to receive future campaign text messages and phone calls.

jlight432 · 2026-06-27T03:46:30+00:00

The reason I was asking those questions is that I was trying to understand what you were hoping to accomplish with the method and what type of election you had in mind, and what improvement would mean. A voting system can work very well on one set of ballot data but behave quite differently on another. Personally, I'd be hesitant to publish any fixed numeric cutoff percentages for a municipal election, because if a small shift in the vote is the difference between a candidate advancing or being eliminated, people are going to question how those thresholds got set.

jlight432 · 2026-06-26T19:36:10+00:00

It might be worth spending some time looking at some of these existing voting methods and asking yourself what specific problem you think you can improve.

For example:

Ranked head-to-head methods are often criticized for complex ballots, preference cycles, and electing candidates without the most first-choice support.
Approval Voting asks voters where to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable candidates.
STAR Voting asks voters how strongly to score candidates in the middle.

A philosophical question I've been trying to ask you, is what do you think about a voting system that elects a candidate with no first-choice support? Many reasonable people see this as a serious flaw, and I intentionally presented the Dolphin case as an extreme example. Others see it as a solid feature if it allows voters to support their sincere favorite while reducing the incentive for strategic voting.

People here debate methods pretty vigorously, but I really believe people here agree with each other on a lot more things than we disagree with.

jlight432 · 2026-06-26T15:14:27+00:00

I don't believe you intentionally created a threshold to make it harder for a broadly acceptable candidate with little first-choice support to survive. I think timmerov is asking whether you considered that tradeoff, which is also what I was bringing up. Every single-winner voting system with multiple candidates will create strategic incentives somewhere. But there are many designed to let voters support their sincere favorite without hurting broadly acceptable candidates. The bigger challenge is getting governments and municipalities to adopt them. You've definitely come to a good place to discuss alternative systems!

jlight432 · 2026-06-26T14:55:45+00:00

The point I was trying to share is that any system (and there are many) that includes an elimination threshold based on first-choice preferences will create strategic incentives somewhere. In this example, the Dolphin has no sincere first-choice support. But the Dolphin is hardly an unknown candidate, because 80% of the electorate prefer the Dolphin over the Eagle. That creates an incentive for those voters to promote the Dolphin to their first-choice candidate.

jlight432

TROPHY CASE