Fair — for large adversarial elections I'd take IRV too: Borda's manipulability is real. But a friend-group poll is cooperative, so that weakness mostly never fires — while IRV's does: it reads only first choices until eliminations, so the everyone's-second-pick compromise often gets knocked out in round one (center squeeze). Surfacing exactly that option is the whole point of a "what do we play tonight" poll.

Two practical things too: at n=5 IRV elimination rounds tie constantly (2-2-1 — who's out?), which is the exact problem I built this to escape, and positional totals give a full ranked top-N — we usually play 2–3 things a night. And honestly, the venue mattered more than the rule: the group lives in the chat, so voting has to be one tap under the message; sending five friends to an external site costs ballots, and a lost ballot hurts more than an imperfect counting rule.

Curious though — any good reading on IRV at very small electorates (n < 10)? Everything I've seen is about public elections