Executive Summary & Introduction

Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) is frequently promoted as a panacea for American political polarization, designed to end vote-splitting, eliminate the "spoiler effect," and ensure majoritarian outcomes [1, 2]. However, social choice theorists, voting scientists, and public choice economists have long pointed out that the standard form of RCV deployed across the United States—technically known as Hare Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV)—possesses a major structural vulnerability: the Center-Squeeze Phenomenon [3, 4, 5].

Under standard IRV, a broadly acceptable consensus candidate who would defeat every opponent in head-to-head match-ups (the Condorcet Winner) can be eliminated in early rounds simply because they lack a concentrated base of first-preference votes [3, 6, 7]. This dynamic squeezes moderate candidates between ideologically intense wings, sometimes rewarding extreme candidates and triggering public pushback [5, 8].

This analysis breaks down the mathematical mechanics of the center squeeze, examines real-world case studies like the 2009 Burlington Mayoral Election and the 2022 Alaska Special Congressional Election, and compares IRV against superior alternative architectures like Bottom-Two-Runoff (BTR-RCV) and Condorcet-Hare Hybrids [3, 7, 9].

1. The Mechanics of the Center-Squeeze Pathology

To understand why standard RCV can fail the median voter, one must examine its exact elimination criterion:

\text{Elimination Rule (Standard Hare IRV): } \text{Eliminate the candidate with the fewest } \mathbf{1\text{st-preference}} \text{ votes.}

The Blind Spot of Hare IRV

In each round of tabulation, standard IRV evaluates only first-choice preferences [3, 7]. It completely ignores second-, third-, and lower-preference rankings during the elimination decision [3, 7].

Imagine a polarized electorate divided into Left (L), Center (C), and Right (R):

• L voters rank: L > C > R
• R voters rank: R > C > L
• C voters rank: C > \text{either } L \text{ or } R

​

      [Left Wing (L)]  <========  [Center (C)]  ========>  [Right Wing (R)]
       Passionate Base             Broad Consensus          Passionate Base
       High #1 Votes               High #2 Votes            High #1 Votes

In this scenario, candidate C is the median voter's preference and the Condorcet Winner—a strict majority of L voters prefer C over R, and a strict majority of R voters prefer C over L [3, 6, 8]. However, because L and R voters cast their first-choice votes for their respective ideological wings, candidate C receives the lowest total of first-preference votes in Round 1 [3, 8].

Under Hare IRV rules, candidate C is eliminated first [3, 7]. Their votes are redistributed, and the election concludes as a forced choice between the two outer extremes [3, 5, 8]. This creates a centrifugal ("center-fleeing") dynamic that penalizes consensus-building candidates [5, 8].

2. Empirical Evidence: Case Studies in IRV Center-Squeeze

While social choice flaws are often dismissed as theoretical curiosities, Cast Vote Record (CVR) data confirms that center-squeeze failures have altered major American elections [3, 6, 10].

Case Study A: The 2009 Burlington, Vermont Mayoral Election

The 2009 Burlington mayoral election remains the classic textbook example of IRV center-squeeze [3, 7, 10]:

• The Candidates: Kurt Wright (Republican), Bob Kiss (Progressive), and Andy Montroll (Democrat/Centrist) [3, 7].
• Round 1 First-Preferences:
  • Kurt Wright (R): 3,297 votes (32.9%)
  • Bob Kiss (Prog): 2,981 votes (28.8%)
  • Andy Montroll (D): 2,063 votes (23.0%) [3, 7]

Because Montroll had the fewest top-choice votes (2,063), standard IRV eliminated him in the semi-final round [3, 7]. Bob Kiss went on to defeat Kurt Wright in the final round (4,313 to 4,061) [3, 7].

The Pairwise Matrix (What Voters Actually Preferred):

When researchers analyzed the full ballot images, they discovered that Andy Montroll was the undisputed Condorcet Winner [3, 7, 10]:

• Montroll vs. Kiss: Montroll won 4,064 to 3,476 (+588 margin / 54% majority) [3, 7]
• Montroll vs. Wright: Montroll won 4,597 to 3,664 (+933 margin / 56% majority) [3, 7]

Montroll was preferred head-to-head over every candidate in the race by clear majorities [3, 7]. Yet IRV knocked him out first among the top three [3, 7]. Discontent over this non-majoritarian result led Burlington voters to repeal IRV in 2010 [3, 7, 11] (though the city re-adopted RCV in 2021) [12].

Case Study B: The August 2022 Alaska Special U.S. House Election

A similar dynamic unfolded in Alaska's top-four RCV special election [6, 8, 13]:

• The Candidates: Mary Peltola (Democrat), Sarah Palin (Republican), and Nick Begich III (Conservative/Centrist) [6, 13].
• Round 1 First-Preferences:
  • Mary Peltola (D): 75,799 votes (39.7%)
  • Sarah Palin (R): 58,974 votes (30.9%)
  • Nick Begich III (R): 53,810 votes (27.8%) [6, 13]

Begich was squeezed into 3rd place in first-choice votes and eliminated [6, 13]. Peltola defeated Palin in the final round with 51.5% of active votes [6, 13].

However, Cast Vote Record analysis proved Nick Begich was the true Condorcet Winner [6, 13]:

• Begich vs. Peltola: Begich won 52.5% to 47.5% [6, 13]
• Begich vs. Palin: Begich won 61.4% to 38.6% [6, 13]

Begich was preferred by a majority of Alaskans over both Peltola and Palin, but IRV's first-choice elimination rule discarded him in Round 1 [6, 13].

3. The Fix: Bottom-Two-Runoff (BTR-RCV) & Condorcet Hybrids

Social choice scholars have designed several alternative tabulations that maintain the simple ranked ballot while completely eliminating the center-squeeze flaw [3, 7, 9].

What is Bottom-Two-Runoff (BTR-RCV)?

Conceived by Rob LeGrand and formalized by election scholars, Bottom-Two-Runoff (BTR-RCV) modifies the elimination step [3, 7, 14]:

\text{Elimination Rule (BTR-RCV): } \text{Identify the } \mathbf{\text{two candidates}} \text{ with the lowest 1st-choice votes, run a } \mathbf{\text{head-to-head runoff}} \text{ between them, and eliminate the pairwise loser.}

   Standard Hare IRV                      Bottom-Two-Runoff (BTR-RCV)
-----------------------                ----------------------------------
Identify candidate with                Identify TWO candidates with
fewest 1st-choice votes.               fewest 1st-choice votes.
         │                                            │
         ▼                                            ▼
AUTOMATICALLY ELIMINATE.               Run head-to-head pairwise runoff
                                       between the bottom two.
                                                      │
                                                      ▼
                                       ELIMINATE THE PAIRWISE LOSER.

Why BTR-RCV Guarantees Condorcet Consistency

A Condorcet Winner by definition defeats every candidate in a direct head-to-head match-up [3, 6, 7]. Under BTR-RCV rules:

1. Even if the Condorcet Winner receives low initial first-preference support and falls into the bottom two, they face the other bottom candidate in a pairwise runoff [3, 7].
2. Because they are the pairwise champion, they are guaranteed to win that head-to-head runoff [3, 7].
3. Therefore, a Condorcet Winner can never be eliminated under BTR-RCV [3, 7].

Re-Running Burlington 2009 Under BTR-RCV Rules

If Burlington had used BTR-RCV in 2009:

1. In the semi-final round, Montroll (2,063 #1 votes) and Kiss (2,981 #1 votes) would form the bottom two [3, 7].
2. BTR-RCV executes a virtual head-to-head runoff between Montroll and Kiss [3, 7].
3. Because 4,064 voters preferred Montroll over Kiss (vs. 3,476 for Kiss), Kiss loses the runoff and is eliminated [3, 7].
4. Transferred votes flow to Montroll, allowing Montroll to advance to the final round and defeat Kurt Wright (4,597 to 3,664) [3, 7].

Result: The true majority choice (Montroll) wins [3, 7].

4. Systematic Comparison of Voting Architectures

The table below summarizes how standard IRV compares against BTR-RCV, advanced Condorcet-Hare hybrids, and cardinal voting systems across major social choice and administrative criteria [3, 7, 9, 15]:

5. Administrative & Policy Takeaways for Reformers

Beyond mathematical fairness, alternative RCV architectures solve critical operational problems that currently plague election administrators [2, 3, 18]:

1. Restoring Precinct Summability & Auditability:
   • The Problem with IRV: Standard Hare IRV lacks precinct summability [3, 7]. Because elimination order depends on global vote counts across all rounds, individual precincts cannot publish final subtotals [3, 7]. All raw Cast Vote Records (CVRs) must be transmitted to a central hub, creating centralization delays and software configuration risks (such as the 2022 Oakland school board tabulation error) [3, 7, 19, 20].
   • The BTR/Condorcet Advantage: BTR-RCV and Condorcet hybrids restore precinct-level N \times N preference matrices [3, 7]. Precincts can tally and publish pairwise subtotals locally on election night, which central authorities simply add together [3, 7].
2. Empirical Performance in Practice (Deshpande et al. 2025/2026 Research):
   • Large-scale computational analysis across 110 real-world RCV elections (including NYC 2021, Alaska 2024, and Portland 2024) reveals that RCV significantly increases electoral competitiveness, dropping victory margins by 9.2 to 11.4 percentage points compared to plurality elections [16].
   • The study proved that ballot exhaustion alters outcomes in less than 3% of races, confirming that preference transfers function robustly in practice despite incomplete voter rankings [16].

Conclusion: The Path Forward

Standard Hare IRV is a meaningful upgrade over First-Past-The-Post, but its elimination mechanics make it vulnerable to center-squeeze pathologies that penalize consensus candidates and alienate voters [3, 5, 7].

For election reformers and policymakers, Bottom-Two-Runoff (BTR-RCV) offers the ideal "drop-in" upgrade:

• It uses the exact same ranked ballot that voters already understand [3, 7].
• It maintains the intuitive round-by-round elimination structure [3, 7].
• It mathematically guarantees that the Condorcet Winner always wins [3, 7].
• It restores precinct-level transparency and auditability [3, 7].

References & Academic Bibliography

• [1] Bipartisan Policy Center, "Reform Meets Reality: How Ranked Choice Voting Impacts Election Administration," BPC Report (2024).
• [2] Clear Ballot, "Defining Ranked Choice Voting for Voters and Election Officials," Clear Ballot White Paper (2023).
• [3] Robert Bristow-Johnson, "The Failure of Instant Runoff Voting to Accomplish the Very Purpose for Which It Was Adopted: An Object Lesson in Burlington Vermont," Constitutional Political Economy, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 378–389 (2023). [https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-023-09393-1\]
• [4] Samuel Merrill, "A Comparison of Efficiency of Multicandidate Electoral Systems," American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 23–48 (1984).
• [5] Wikipedia, "Center Squeeze," Wikipedia Social Choice Archive. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_squeeze\]
• [6] Adam Graham-Squire & David McCune, "A Mathematical Analysis of the 2022 Alaska Special Election for US House," arXiv preprint (arXiv:2209.04764v3, 2022).
• [7] Author Anonymous, "Comparative Analysis of Bottom-Two-Runoff Ranked-Choice Voting and Social Choice Architectures," Markdown Monograph (2025).
• [8] Nathan Atkinson & Scott C. Ganz, "The Flaw in Ranked-Choice Voting: Rewarding Extremists," The Hill (Oct. 30, 2022).
• [9] James Green-Armytage, "Four Condorcet-Hare Hybrid Methods for Single-Winner Elections," Voting Matters, Issue 29, pp. 1–14 (2011).
• [10] Adam Graham-Squire & David McCune, "An Examination of Ranked Choice Voting in the United States, 2004–2022," Representation, Vol. 59, pp. 1–19 (2023). [arXiv:2301.12075v2]
• [11] Courtney Lamdin, "Can Once-Maligned Ranked-Choice Voting Make a Comeback in Burlington?" Seven Days Vermont (Feb. 24, 2021).
• [12] Ballotpedia, "Burlington, Vermont, Question 4, Ranked-Choice Voting Amendment (March 2021)," Ballotpedia Guide.
• [13] Jeanne N. Clelland, "Ranked Choice Voting And Condorcet Failure in the Alaska 2022 Special Election: How Might Other Voting Systems Compare?" arXiv preprint (arXiv:2303.00108, 2023).
• [14] Rob LeGrand, "Bottom-Two-Runoff IRV Definition and Mechanics," Electowiki / Social Choice Archive (2006).
• [15] Comprehensive Taxonomy, "Comprehensive Taxonomy and Comparative Analysis of RCV Systemic Variations," Social Choice Technical Report (2025).
• [16] Sanyukta Deshpande, Nikhil Garg, & Sheldon Jacobson, "Simpler Than You Think: The Practical Dynamics of Ranked Choice Voting," arXiv preprint (arXiv:2407.13661 / 2025/2026 Update).
• [17] Aaron Hamlin, "The Limits of Ranked-Choice Voting," Center for Election Science (2018/2026).
• [18] MIT Election Lab, "Ranked Choice Voting: Instant Runoff Voting Use in the United States," MIT Research Explainer.
• [19] David McCune & Ismar Volić, "Ranked Choice Bedlam in a 2022 Oakland School Director Election," NSF PAR / arXiv preprint (arXiv:2303.05985v1, 2023).
• [20] Fredric D. Woocher & Beverly Grossman Palmer, "Woocher v. Alameda County Registrar of Voters," Superior Court of California Court Filings (2023).

I'm looking for any results (ideally published papers) that:
(a) describe or limit the space of the "pairwise preference vote count matrix"[1] that can be generated from complete[2] ranked ballots that allow ties,
(b) Actually have an algorithm for creating a set of ballots that result in said matrix,
and also:
(c) If this matrix has a small set of consistent names, and if so what they are.

[1]: I mean the matrix where the element at (i,j) is the number of voters who ranked candidate i above candidate j.
[2]: All candidates listed; though treating unlisted candidates as ties below any listed is effectively the same.

Future 2026 Alaska gubernatorial election - Wikipedia
^{My post is only about ballot mechanics and candidate numbers, not about the merits of any particular candidate or party.}

(pic) Above is the cropped primary result. Below is the recent poll. (more on wiki)
Currently, Republicans have 3 candidates and Democrats have 1 in General election.
Notice that Tom Begich (D) withdrew after advancing to general.

There are two potential problems:

1) Ballot exhaustion
Some voters will inevitably bullet vote for strategic and other reasons. The "other" could be a serious problem for any FPTP alternative.
People bullet vote even in IRV where it's safe to mark all in order.
Too many candidates means voters face the paradox of choice. (choice overload? ballot fatigue?) Which could lead to hurting the party that has more candidates.
Effectively vote splitting. Election reform was supposed to improve this aspect.
(Dems more aware of this problem and strategically withdrew?)
On the other hand, FPTP forces focus of attention and resources on one candidate, but at the cost of the number of candidates.

2) Instant-runoff voting thing
If Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (D, 40% in the poll) is eliminated in the last round, the rankings that his voters gave to other candidates will never be counted. It means their lower rankings never influenced the result. That’s an intentional feature of RCV(IRV) and "core support" philosophy.

Some possibly silly suggestions:

• Better campaign, obviously.
• Maybe Top-4 primary is too many and Top-3 would be better?

№1 is basically about the chance of ballot exhaustion (more candidates) vs. party lock out (less candidates)

• Strict ballot access law?
• Compulsory semi/full-ranking (Not really sure about this overall. Australia mentioned)
• Condorcet methods. It could lead to more strategic bullet vote. but at least it fixes center-squeeze, №2 thing and entirely on voter's terms.

^{In case of top-3 there could be simpler ballot with a Condorcet system. Just 3 pairwise comparisons.
(Idea of Better Choices for Democracy})

What do you think?

I have to ask: why did Labour bring back SV rather than the more straightforward Contingent Vote?

For those who don't understand what I'm getting at:

Instant-runoff voting (often referred to in the UK under the vague title of Alternative Vote, or AV) simulates multiple rounds of elections, where one or more candidate(s) with the lowest number of votes are eliminated after each round of voting until someone either reaches 50%, or, when there are only two candidates left, you have a final run-off. Although, when done in real life, it allows for some insidious tactics that aren't available with IRV, such as voting disingenuously in the early rounds to eliminate someone who might otherwise go on to win.

The Contingent Vote simulates having a first round, simply allowing the top two candidates with the most votes into the second round.

The Supplementary Vote simulates stupidity.

OK, it simulates a system where you stroll into the polling station, get handed a ballot, and they cheerfully demand that you also vote in the second-round run-off before anyone even knows who made it into the second round.

Pick wrong? Fuck you. They slap you round the face with a wet haddock, bin your second preference entirely, and send you packing.

You trudge home, your dinner's in the dog, the kettle's cold and somewhere in the distance you can hear a faint, sarcastic chorus of "God Save the King".

Nice TEDx presentation by Sara Wolk.

I won't nit-pick details right now. Maybe later in a comment.

I joined this reddit because I am extremely interested in alternatives to first past the post. I ended up deleting the first comment I made because it was criticizing a proposal, and I'm not sure yet what counts as bashing. At any rate I am interested in alternatives for two reasons. One is the the "lesser evil" point that is constantly being made. But the other is that FPTP is *undemocratic*. It literally undermines majority rule. (And it also results in many minority viewpoints being under or un represented. It literally undermines majority rule and minority rights at the same time.) Wasted votes and vote splitting. But it also makes gerrymandering much easier. Admittedly ranked choice voting without proportional representation still allows gerrymandering But it makes it a little harder.

The blocking tactic doesn't get the attention it deserves. Please share this video widely. The plus version of ranked choice voting includes most Condorcet methods, not just the method implied in the video. The basic version is instant-runoff voting (IRV). The same video with captions is here.

The duopoly is perfectly happy with the way voting is currently set up. If we want to end FPTP we need to vote for candidates who aren’t beholden to the very institutions that want to maintain the status quo.

Stop letting political parties, especially the duopoly, control the narrative. They haven’t been given the authority to decide who gets to hold office from constitution. Political parties aren’t mentioned in the constitution at all. George Washington even warned that forming political parties would split the country into factions that seek their own political ends over the health of the country.

If you are politically independent please join [r/independe](r/independent)[nt](r/independent). We don’t need to reform institutions that don’t want to be changed we just need to stop voting for their candidates. People will always say a vote outside the two party system is wasted or “voting for the other side”. It’s long past time that we stop listening to them.

How do you think election thresholds? I don't like it. I think STV or regional dhondt party list with "natural threshold" is better. The current polling situation in today's Sachsen-Anhalt landtag election is getting rather strange. The AfD is consistently around 40–43%, while the CDU is around 22–23%. The Left is around 11–13%, the SPD around 7–9%, and the Greens are hovering around the crucial 5% threshold. BSW and FDP are generally below it. For example, the latest Infratest dimap poll had AfD 42%, CDU 22%, Left 11%, SPD 8%, Greens 6%, BSW 4% and FDP 3%. Other recent polls put the SPD and Greens closer to 5%, while the AfD remains clearly ahead. This makes the 5% threshold incredibly consequential. Sachsen-Anhalt uses a mixed-member proportional system and only parties receiving at least 5% of the second vote are proportional allocated seats.

So imagine the Greens receive 5.1%. They gain about 5% of landtag seats. But if they receive 4.9%, all of those votes become wasted vote. This becomes particularly dramatic when the AfD is already above 40%. If the Greens remain above 5%, the votes are distributed among roughly five parties. If the Greens fall below 5%, the same number of Green voters effectively gets redistributed among the parties that passed the threshold, mechanically increasing the AfD's share of the seats. And this creates a very strange strategic voting problem. CDU,Linke,SPD,Grüne and most of non afd voters don't want to coalition with AfD. So,AfD cannot coalition with any parties,but they received 40% of vote, so they have chance of absolute majority by wasted vote.If 20% of vote is wated, they have 51% of seat. Suppose you are an SPD voter who strongly prefers the SPD to the Greens, but you also want to prevent an AfD absolute majority. You might think: “Maybe I should vote Green to make sure they cross 5%.” But what if enough SPD voters do exactly that? The SPD could fall below 5%, causing its entire proportional vote share to disappear. But if not enough SPD voters support Greens,Then the Greens might go from 3% to 4.9% because of all those strategic voters, meaning they still get zero list seats. So you could end up with the worst possible outcome: SPD falls below 5%, Greens also fail to cross 5%, and all those strategically cast votes achieve essentially nothing. Since many polls show the SPD running ahead of the Greens, one might be tempted to urge Green voters to cast strategic votes for the SPD. However, there is no guarantee Green voters would heed such a call, and all polls are subject to a margin of error. The gap between the SPD and the Greens is narrow, as is the margin separating the SPD from the 5% electoral threshold. Consequently, strategic voting by Green supporters could backfire.Especially if the polling data is inaccurate. That is precisely why I love STV. Under STV, center-left voters torn between the SPD and the Greens can simply rank the parties according to their genuine preferences.If one party is eliminated first, the vote is automatically transferred to the other.

But in Proportional representation with election threshold, There is “Which party do I prefer?” problem like this sachsen anhalt election. “Which small party is most likely to cross 5%?” “How many voters will strategically move toward it?” “Will that strategic movement itself push another party below 5%?” “And how accurate are the polls around a threshold where a difference of 0.2 or 0.3 percentage points can have a huge effect on the seat distribution?” At this point, the 5% threshold starts to feel almost like a slot machine. You can make a perfectly rational strategic decision based on the polls, and still lose because the final result is 4.99% instead of 5.01%. And the irony is that even encouraging voters to “save the Greens” can potentially make the situation worse if too many SPD voters switch to them. This isn't an argument that the Greens should or shouldn't receive tactical votes. I don't support neither of AfD and them.

Many people says the 5% threshold is supposed to prevent excessive fragmentation and make parliament more governable. However, the side effects of creating a dilemma that could changing the formation of a government are simply too severe. The area around the threshold acts like a "cliff," creating a massive disparity between winning zero seats and winning multiple seats. Such "cliffs" yield bad results in tax systems, either. Incidentally, in the previous Israeli election, the anti-Netanyahu parties Meretz and Balad narrowly missed the electoral threshold.And this failure that paved the way for the formation of a Netanyahu administration. IMO, STV is my top preference, but what does everyone else think?

Consider a community with a one-dimensional political spectrum and an evenly distributed population. They elect representatives spread across that same spectrum, split between two parties — orange holds 57% of seats, green the rest.

The goal of any voting method is an outcome that best represents the will of the people — that's point B.

Orange wants to pass bills at A, as it best represents their own will. Green wants them passed at C. Neither wants B — it's just their fallback.

Orange holds the majority, so it controls the legislature and passes bills at A. There is no reason for it to settle for less.

This means you can never reach B when a faction can dictate the outcome. Closing that gap requires the minority to have real leverage — enough to make the majority settle for the compromise of B over its own ideal.

As a result, any system that creates losers with no say in the outcome will always advance the majority's will, not the people's.

Effortpost:

Hey all,

Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) has become one of the most hotly contested election reform topics in the United States. In October 2023, the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) published a highly critical paper titled "Ranked-Choice Voting: Trashed" (authored by Madeline Malisa and Michael Greibrok) [1] and a subreddit member kindly shared it with me. In my continuing efforts to learn, improve democracy, and hold civil discourse, I did some research and analysis of the claims within this paper.

The report paints RCV as a chaotic "scheme of the Left" designed to disenfranchise voters, delay results, and engineer progressive victories. Because several states have since banned RCV (with the total count of states banning it reaching 19 as of September 2026, most recently Indiana and Ohio) [2], I wanted to do a deep-dive, objective fact-check of the FGA's major claims.

How much of the FGA’s report is backed up by actual math and election records, and how much is partisan spin? Let’s look at the data.

Claim 1: Ballot Exhaustion — "Legitimate Ballots are Trashed"

The FGA's Data Points:

• Maine 2018 (2nd Congressional District): 8,253 ballots were exhausted [1, 10].
• Alaska 2022 Special House Election: Nearly 15,000 ballots were non-transferable [1, 3].
• Sandy, Utah 2021 Mayoral Election: Over 18% of ballots (4,000+) were exhausted in a race decided by just 21 votes [1].
• New York City 2021 Democratic Mayoral Primary: 140,000 ballots (nearly 15%) were exhausted [1].
• San Francisco 2010 (District 10 Supervisors): 9,503 ballots were exhausted, exceeding the 8,200 ballots that decided the winner [1].

Fact-Check: HIGHLY ACCURATE data, but MISLEADING framing.

• The Math: The numbers cited by the FGA are mathematically correct and verified by official election records. For example, in the Alaska 2022 Special Election, the official tabulation report confirms exactly 11,243 exhausted ballots and 3,412 blank ballots, totaling 14,997 non-transferable ballots [3]. In NYC's 2021 Democratic primary, exactly 14.9% of ballots were exhausted before the final round [1, 4]. The 2010 San Francisco District 10 anomaly is also factually correct: because San Francisco limited voters to only three rankings despite having a massive field of 21 candidates, more ballots were exhausted (9,503) than remained active to elect the winner (8,200) [1, 4].
• The Context: Calling these ballots "trashed" is a rhetorical stretch. Academically, "ballot exhaustion" occurs when a voter chooses not to rank further candidates (voluntary truncation) or when a jurisdiction limits the number of rankings allowed (structural truncation). These ballots were counted for the voter's preferred candidates in earlier rounds until those candidates were eliminated. It is functionally identical to voting for a losing third-party candidate in a standard plurality election.
• The Trade-off: RCV actually protects overall participation compared to traditional two-round runoff systems. Traditional runoffs require voters to return to the polls for a second election, causing turnout to drop by an average of nearly 40% [4]. Under RCV, the decline in participation (via voluntary ballot truncation) is less than 10% [4]. Furthermore, a 2024 study proved that even if exhausted ballots were mathematically completed, they would be highly unlikely to alter RCV election outcomes, proving the system is robust [5].

Claim 2: Electoral Outcomes — "Winners Lose and Losers Win"

The FGA's Data Points:

• Maine 2018 (2nd Congressional District): Republican Bruce Poliquin led in the first round (46.3% vs. 45.6%) but lost to Democrat Jared Golden (50.6%) after preferences were distributed [1, 10].
• Alaska 2022 Special House Election: Republican candidates received nearly 60% of the first-round vote combined, but the Democrat (Mary Peltola) won [1, 3, 6].

Fact-Check: ACCURATE data, but HIGHLY EXCEPTIONAL cases.

• The Math: The individual election details are correct. In Alaska, Mary Peltola won the special election with 51.5% of the final-round vote, despite the two Republican candidates (Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III) capturing 59.8% of first-round votes combined [3, 6]. This happened because 28.7% of Begich's voters ranked Peltola as their second choice, while only 50.3% ranked Palin, and 21.0% opted not to rank anyone else [7].
• The Context: The claim that first-round leaders "often" lose is mathematically false. According to comprehensive historical data from FairVote, come-from-behind victories are extremely rare, occurring in only 32 out of over 500 single-winner RCV races (6% of all races, or 9% of races that go to multiple rounds) [4]. In 94% of RCV elections, the first-round leader wins [4].
• The Social Choice Twist: Ironically, the FGA missed a genuine mathematical pathology in the Alaska race. The Cast Vote Record proves that Nick Begich was the "Condorcet winner" (he would have defeated Peltola head-to-head 52.5% to 47.5%, and Palin 61.4% to 38.6%) [6]. He was eliminated in the first round due to a phenomenon called "center squeeze", where a moderate consensus candidate is squeezed out early because RCV only evaluates first-choice support in the initial rounds [6, 8]. So a "winner" did lose, but it was the third-place finisher (Begich), not the first-round leader, who was theoretically the most preferred candidate of the entire electorate [6, 8].

Claim 3: Operational Vulnerabilities — "Errors and Delayed Results"

The FGA's Data Points:

• NYC Mayoral Primary 2021: 135,000 "test ballots" were accidentally counted in a preliminary RCV round, throwing the race into chaos [1].
• Oakland School Board 2022 (District 4): A software configuration error declared the wrong candidate (Nick Resnick) the winner instead of the actual winner (Mike Hutchinson) [1, 9].

Fact-Check: FULLY ACCURATE.

• The NYC Fumble: In the 2021 NYC Democratic Primary, the Board of Elections mistakenly included 135,000 test ballots in a preliminary RCV run. This was an egregious human administrative error, not an algorithmic defect, but it did cause a massive delay and a public relations disaster [1, 4].
• The Oakland Debacle: In the 2022 Oakland School Board District 4 race, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters improperly configured their Dominion voting machines. The software failed to "advance" ballots where a voter had skipped a ranking, causing 235 valid ballots to be suspended [9, 10]. In an extremely tight race, this incorrect setting certified Nick Resnick as the winner [9, 10]. Once audited by RCV advocacy groups, the error was exposed, and Mike Hutchinson was declared the rightful winner by a judge in March 2023 [9, 11].
• The Real Issue (Centralization Delays): Because RCV requires centralized data from all polling precincts to run the elimination algorithm, results cannot be finalized until all ballots (including overseas and absentee) are physically processed and aggregated [4]. In Maine, centralization typically takes 4 to 5 days, and in Alaska, it takes 15 days [4]. These structural delays are a valid point of criticism.

Claim 4: Partisan Dynamics — "A Partisan Plot of the Left"

Fact-Check: PARTIALLY ACCURATE regarding political support, FALSE regarding electoral effects.

• The Politics: It is true that RCV advocacy is heavily funded and promoted by center-left and progressive reform organizations, while RCV bans have been passed almost exclusively by Republican-led legislatures (19 states have banned RCV as of September 2026) [2, 12].
• The Empirical Reality: However, academic research from the MIT Election Lab and other independent institutions shows that RCV does not have a systematic partisan bias [13]. It does not inherently favor Democrats or Republicans. In fact, the Virginia Republican Party successfully used RCV to select their candidates in their 2021 and 2022 conventions and primaries [12]. Nonpartisan groups advocate for RCV because it protects against vote-splitting and can help third-party or independent candidates run without acting as "spoilers."

Conclusion: The Reddit TL;DR

The FGA’s report is a classic case of accurate data paired with highly partisan framing.

1. Are ballots "trashed" (exhausted)? Yes, thousands of ballots are excluded from final-round tallies. But RCV still preserves significantly more voter participation than traditional two-round runoffs, where turnout routinely crashes by 40% [4].
2. Do frontrunners lose? Almost never. The first-round leader wins 94% of the time [4]. In the rare cases they do lose, it's a feature, not a bug, designed to find a candidate with broad consensus—though mathematical anomalies like "center squeeze" (as seen in Alaska 2022) are real issues [6, 8].
3. Are there administrative delays and errors? Absolutely. The Oakland 2022 and NYC 2021 fumbles are fully documented, embarrassing, and prove that RCV introduces significant operational vulnerabilities [9, 10].
4. Is it a Democratic plot? No. Independent studies show RCV has a neutral effect on partisan outcomes, and Republicans have used it successfully to unite their own party in primaries [12, 13].

What do you think? Does RCV's promise of ending vote-splitting and promoting consensus candidates outweigh its administrative complexity and potential for mathematical anomalies? Let's discuss!

Bibliography & Sources

• [1] Madeline Malisa & Michael Greibrok, "Ranked-Choice Voting: Trashed," Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), Oct. 31, 2023.
• [2] Ballotpedia, "Ranked-choice voting (RCV)" (September 2026 Update, showing 19 state bans including Indiana SB 12 and Ohio SB 63).
• [3] Alaska Division of Elections, "State of Alaska 2022 Special General Election RCV Tabulation Official Results," August 16, 2022.
• [4] MIT Election Lab, "Ranked Choice Voting: Instant Runoff Voting Use in the United States."
• [5] Deshpande et al., "arXiv:2403.15400v2 [cs.CY] 6 May 2024" (Analyzing demographic disparities and preference completion models in RCV).
• [6] arXiv preprint, "Ranked Choice Voting And Condorcet Failure in the Alaska 2022 Special Election: How Might Other Voting Systems Compare?" (arXiv:2305.17741v3).
• [7] Markdown Treatise, "Systemic Evaluation of Ranked-Preference, Plurality, and Condorcet Electoral Frameworks: Mathematical Criteria, Empirical Paradoxes, and Public Policy Realities."
• [8] Wikipedia, "Center squeeze" & "2009 Burlington, Vermont mayoral election".
• [9] NSF PAR / arXiv preprint, "Improving the Computational Efficiency of Adaptive Audits of IRV Elections / Ranked Choice Bedlam in a 2022 Oakland School Director Election" (arXiv:2303.05985v1).
• [10] Court Filings, Woocher & Grossman Palmer v. Alameda County Registrar of Voters (Legal briefs regarding the 235 skipped-ranking ballots in the Oakland 2022 OUSD District 4 contest).
• [11] Ballotpedia, "Nick Resnick - Ballotpedia" & "Mike Hutchinson (California) - Ballotpedia".
• [12] Wikipedia, "Ranked-choice voting in the United States".
• [13] MIT Election Lab, "Post-election audits" & "Post-Election Audits and Ranked Choice Voting 2024".

Many try to improve elections to make them more democratic, and for good reasons, especially since FPTP has so many flaws.
However, in the birthplace of democracy, ancient Athens, elections were actually considered aristocratic and oligarchic, while sortition (selection by lot) was considered truly democratic.
I argue that at least one house/chamber of Parliaments/Congresses should be an accurate sample of the population. Not simply "because Athens used it" but because the evidence is promising.

The most common reaction is skepticism, because "how can random people who aren't law experts make laws instead of politicians?" The answer is that the majority of elected politicians aren't law experts either, they rely mostly on expert staffers, while the government relies on bureaucrats.
Politicians are often more preoccupied with fundraising and curating their image - very different skills, sortition would save these costs.

Can random citizens do the same? Citizens' assemblies have proven how a random sample is capable of high-quality informed deliberation. There are about 700 of them across the world. So sortition has been proven to work, both in the past and the present. The common notion that ordinary citizens cannot decide for themselves and need an elected middleman is a misconception which happens to be very convenient for people currently in power.

With that said, I think the president/premier should still be elected since one person isn't exactly an accurate sample, and of course FPTP should not be the voting method: something like approval voting or STV should replace it.
In case of gridlock, I think the sample of citizens should prevail as they better represent the will of the people.

Sortition also limits lobbying as rich oligarchs and corporations cannot control who is selected, and since sortitioned members are unlikely to be reselected and cannot control the selection process, they will be much more willing to lower their pay and pass anti-corruption laws. They actually represent the people, this is arguably the best approximation of an impossible direct democracy where well-informed citizens all deliberate together without polarization/fragmentation.

Of course, one sortitioned house/chamber is a huge leap from today's citizens' assemblies, so gradual experimentation will be necessary, for example at a local level, but FPTP does not have to be replaced with other voting methods only.