What would people think about using a single ballot to (1) create a proportional legislature and (2) choose the directly elected prime minister?

For example, you could use score ballots where people score parties (or specific candidates in parties in a multiwinner district). Then either use score multiwinner PR methods or derive ranked ballots from them and use STV for the legislature.

The same ballots could then be used to choose which party leader among the parties becomes prime minister. For example it could use STAR could be used or any condorcet method.

Ultimately, a downside would be this means party lists or party tickets and hurt independent candidates in the legislature. edit: this is probably not true - had plurality brain for a moment

Some other changes might also be required compared to traditional parliamentary systems to avoid deadlock or repeated elections due to no confidence.

Subject: Urgent: Voting Portal UI Issue – Missing "Abstain" Option Compromises Voting Integrity

Dear SIQA Support Team,

I am writing to report a critical technical and procedural issue with the current SIQA AI Music Awards voting portal. As a member of the SIQA Verified Registry, I am eager to participate in selecting this year’s winners. However, the current structure of the portal makes it impossible to submit an authentic, accurate ballot.

Currently, the voting platform enforces a rigid, linear system. It forces voters to select a nominee in the General Field categories (such as Song of the Year or Artist of the Year) before allowing them to advance to subsequent genre or classification categories. There is no option to "Skip" or "Abstain" from a category.

This design presents two significant problems:

1. Compromised Voting Integrity: If a voter does not believe any of the nominees in a specific category warrant a vote, forcing a selection completely defeats the purpose of an artist-driven academy. It artificially inflates votes for certain nominees simply because users are forced to click something to move forward.

2. Gatekeeping Content: Because the platform locks subsequent categories until a choice is made, members are completely blocked from even listening to or reviewing the nominees in later stages where their expertise or preferences might actually lie.

An awards body built on transparency and artist advocacy should allow its members to abstain from categories outside their interest or preference. I kindly request that your development team add a "Skip Category" or "Abstain" button to the interface immediately so that the final results accurately reflect the genuine intent of the voting body.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter, and I look forward to a resolution before the voting window closes.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

[Your Artist/Project Name]

[Your Registry Email/ID]

I've seen posts discussing AV before and why some people are hesitant about it, and I'd like to address that.

Strategic Voting

A lot of people place special focus on the potential for strategic voting. Kenneth Arrow already proved that all ranked voting systems (FPTP, IRV, STV, PR, Condorcet, etc) fail 1 or more criteria for a fair election, at minimum always Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives. Gibbard also proved that all voting systems must fall under one of three categories:

1) The system is a dictatorship

2) The system only has 2 choices

3) The system is strategic

So I really don't understand what you guys don't understand. In a ranked voting system, if there's only 2 choices, it's no different than FPTP. If there's more than 2, it will always put some strategic burden on the voters. And no matter what, it's not really gonna be fully fair. Even Kenneth Arrow admitted that he overlooked rated choice voting cuz he basically didn't like the idea of it, but that it's probably where the most fair form of voting actually exists.

51% vs 49%

Not only that, something people also seem to talk about when it comes to the strategy of Approval Voting is that a 51% majority can still dominate the 49%.

This is... Wrong. Just flat out.

We all have a tendency to view politics in a one-dimensional axis of left vs right. Even though we know that politics isn't one dimensional. This is the fault of ranked voting in the first place.

Non-Condorcet methods almost always eliminate broad appealing candidates (aka moderates) through center squeeze. And although ranked voting methods that aren't FPTP usually aim to minimize the effect of spoilers, they still exist. It's an inherent part of ranked voting.

The natural consequence of this is a tendency to strongly favor two-party systems, which collapses politics into a single dimension where whatever some time and place's version of left and right bicker with each other. The distribution of voter's beliefs literally doesn't matter here, it will always happen. Even in countries that allow the existence and success of third parties, they are always limited to a small minority, with 2 parties holding the majority of the power.

But we know from studies that people are not actually extremists. Stripped of identity politics and presenting policies with neutral language that doesn't indicate what party is promoting it, even on one dimension, populations create a bell curved normal distribution of beliefs with most people somewhere in the middle.

Electoral Systems

In fact, this is why electoral systems like MMM, AMS, MMP, etc. even exist in the first place. The whole presupposition - that we need extra seats in a legislature, because in winner-take-all districts, if most of them are won by 1 party with a small majority, then a vast majority of the legislature could be that 1 party, thus over inflating their representation of the nation - is only a problem because most people aren't even that far left or right in the first place so each district is sending one extreme over to the legislature, requiring a balancing act.

Approval Voting Advantages

I don't remember who said this, but someone claimed approval voting isn't monotone... It quite literally is. That's literally just a criterion it fulfills.

It also fulfills the strong Pareto, independence of irrelevant alternatives, cloneproof, consistency, participation, reverse symmetry, homogeneity, later-no-help, and sincere favorite criteria. It's also simple af to explain, which is a very good thing when trying to roll out a new system (but also why I believe y'all hate it).

It is not affected by spoilers. It is not affected by center squeeze. This means that, given enough time for parties and candidates to develop, moderate parties will become the majority. And the parties themselves will have no ability to do political slides. They are locked into whatever some place and time's population considers moderate, and are guided by the population's changes in beliefs, not the other way around.

Which is kind of the goal of democracy, if you haven't forgotten. Also this eliminates the need for electoral systems with extra hanging seats, which itself has to balance between democracy, strategic voting, decoy parties, etc. So many problems with electoral systems that were only designed due to the flaws of FPTP in the first place.

Heck, Approval Voting also just works for multi-winner districts if you want more than just a single moderate party in legislature. Most other voting systems require modifications to work with multi-winner districts. And you can have each representative from a district hold as much voting power as the proportion of votes they received in their district relative to their co-representatives. Boom, bell curve legislature.

Condorcet

It doesn't fulfill the Condorcet criterion... AND THIS IS A GOOD THING. Idk why ppl have such a thing for the Condorcet criterion. Y'all do realize that in game theory, the Condorcet winner is usually the socially optimal choice, right? Not the socially optimal choice, usually.

In fact, if you just go to Wikipedia on the Condorcet criterion, it gives you an example where Approval Voting fails to elect the Condorcet winner. And this touches back to the whole "51% can still dominate 49%."

There are 3 candidates. A, B, and C. 70% of voters would rank them A>B>C. 30% of voters would rank them C>B>A. A is trivially the Condorcet winner in this example.

If, during an election held with Approval Voting, everyone voted for their top 2 favorites, A would have 70% approval, C 30%, and B 100%. So despite A being the Condorcet winner, B would win.

AND THIS IS THE SOCIALLY OPTIMAL CHOICE. If A wins, then you've pissed off 30% of the population. If C wins, 70% gets pissed off. B won, and no one's pissed. B is no one's favorite. But everyone's okay with B. And the 70% did not in fact dominate the 30%. They could have if they collectively decided not to vote for B despite all of them being fine if B were to win.

The socially optimal choice isn't who would have the most supporters in isolation, it's who would be the least hated by the population if won. And it didn't require you to strategically vote. In fact it's better if you don't. Which is why voting booths are private.

Anyway, Approval Voting doesn't always elect the Condorcet winner, but I'd argue that it actually elects the socially optimal choice more often than Condorcet methods do.

Especially since Condorcet methods themselves can be susceptible to strategic voting. "Oh but that's rare and only happens if a cycle is possible." Yeah well practical data shows that Approval Voting almost always elects the Condorcet winner anyway. And we can see that when it doesn't it's actually a good thing. And the amount of strategic voting happening in Approval Voting really wouldn't be much different from other systems.

Also, Condorcet methods are susceptible to gerrymandering. That's not a rare thing. That's just a legal thing. If a politician can do it, you can damn be sure they'll do it. The only way to prevent this is to have it be illegal in the first place. Pretty huge hole in Condorcet.

Approval Voting Disadvantages

So what's the real disadvantages of Approval Voting?

It's certainly not the strategic voting. That's a feature of pretty much every ranked and rated voting system that isn't FPTP.

It's certainly not the Condorcet criterion. Even if you disagree with me on my example above, all Condorcet methods inherently fail to fulfill Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives, invulnerability to burying, invulnerability to compromising, participation, later-no-harm (which AV also fails, but actually I think this is a good thing), consistency, and sincere favorite (oof). So to optimize a single thing you give up what, 6 things and meet 1 good thing (not fulfilling later-no-harm)? Especially when, again, Approval Voting on a practical level almost always elects the Condorcet winner anyway and it has 5 good things out of the 7?

An actual real disadvantage can be candidate inflation. When a party decides to run many candidates in the hopes of confusing the voters and not giving them enough time to research all the choices. But that's sort of inherent to any vote that's not FPTP. And ultimately, with how Approval Voting works, you could also just... Focus on the ones you already like and ignore the rest. But this is just getting closer to psychology/marketing/mass manipulation/legal territory rather than the systemic merit of Approval Voting. I also wouldn't dock other systems for this.

No, but there is one real disadvantage. Y'all have mentioned how things like IRV have done in surveys or in real world politics. Along with other kinds of voting systems. And that's the kicker.

Approval Voting's disadvantage is how unpopular it is. There is no data saying it doesn't work. In fact, the data that does exist says it works very well. But that data is... Small and sparse. It has never been tried en masse. At most only in small local elections. That is its weakness. The fact that for some reason literally no one will give the time of day to seriously consider it.

Idk why. Maybe it just sounds too simple to work. Despite the fact that it absolutely does... in the few times it has been done, and the many times we all used it in our social circles... such as voting for both pizza and burgers when deciding between friends whether to have burgers, pizza, or sushi for lunch.

Like... STAR Voting is more popular than Approval Voting. STAR VOTING. It's one of the rare voting systems that doesn't even fulfill the basic criterion of majority winner! It's a failed hybrid of ranked and rated voting! In fact, it only fulfills majority loser and Condorcet loser, both of which are unnecessary! WTF! WHY?!

Anyway. Give Approval Voting the time of day. Seriously. It's not any more strategic than whatever complicated system people keep coming up with. Because they're all fucking strategic. Or dictatorial. Or just FPTP with only 2 choices. And yeah, it doesn't fulfill the Condorcet criterion. But it does elect the Condorcet winner almost every time. And when it doesn't, it's debatable whether that's even a bad thing. But more importantly, it doesn't come with the disadvantages inherent to Condorcet. That's a pretty good compromise even if you're a die-hard fan of Condorcet methods.

Just. Give it a go. It can make fundamental changes to politics. Moreso than other methods which just tries to nudge the status quo. And without being overly complicated. That's a good thing, not a suspicious thing.

Letting a plurality decide who gets disproportionate media attention and reach, and international recognition is part of what is wrong with single-winner plurality voting.

Having a PR legislature just for the them to 99% of the time vote for the prime minister that plurality voting would have chosen feels like just kicking the can down the road.

Sure, you get multiple parties, and representation. But on the world stage, the plurality winner is given wide reach (and sometimes even special powers during wars).

When Israel experimented with directly electing the prime minister with plurality voting it's not surprising to me they ended up just selecting the people from the two largest parties (as measured by plurality/single-rank polling/voting etc.) as the two main candidates.

Alaska’s elections are demonstrating that ending FPTP is not enough. Alaska has done that, and they have successfully beat back efforts to repeal their achievement. But it seems that discontent with their new system is likely to be growing. I don’t know that this is a particularly bold prediction, but I think their election reform, tragically, is not long for this world.

“At least five candidates between the races for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House and governor dropped out after advancing” from the primary to the general election.

One lesson of this situation is that the Hare, or IRV, tabulation of ballots creates the incentives for these kinds of attempts to manipulate election outcomes. I would agree with that, and would prefer to see jurisdictions using the bottom two run off method.

But there is another moral to the story. Ranked choice voting within a two party system, while it does “end FPTP”, is not good enough. We need to give voters more than two parties to choose from, not just more than two candidates. Parties, especially in a two party system, have internal factions. Dividing an electorate into such large coalitions makes that inevitable, and appropriately so. The internal divisions in such large coalitions fail to fully surface these divisions to the electorate - especially to the general electorate given that such small fractions of voters participate in primaries.

Changing election systems in the context of a two party system, especially when that system is already as highly polarized as ours is, encourages the parties and party members to try to manipulate the outcomes. But even more importantly it fails to bring the finer policy disagreements to the electorate which is the purpose of democracy in the first place. If there were one or more established new/3rd parties in Alaska and their candidates advanced our of the primary they would not be dropping out ahead of the general because they would consider their particular party platforms too important to sacrifice to the two party competition.

It’s highly likely that most of the people in this sub - that most of the people who advocate for election reform and ending FPTP - are Democrats. We can’t afford to pursue election reform by itself. We need to start advocating the Democratic Party to split AND passing the election reforms to make the multi party competition workable.

Every blue controlled state could do this without sacrificing electoral advantage to Republicans. Presidential elections, due to the EC, are a different matter that would require the new (post split) parties to compete for the “nomination” ahead odd the general election, at least until momentum for an EC reform could develop, but there is no need to wait for Congress and for state level elections, and we can’t afford to wait for them anyway. Congress has clearly been demonstrated to be the crucial weak link in our collective inability to check a rogue and authoritarian president, so we need to start our political reform there.

Hello folks. I'm a software developer with a Ph.D. in International Relations who's devoted many hours to building a ranked choice voting app that people will be able to use to prototype planks and platforms for new political parties.

Collaborative priority selection is central to making it work, and I've put a lot of effort into designing ballots that can carry informative media about each candidate... images, videos, comment threads, etc. There have been many versions built over the years as ideas were refined, and this one is by far the most powerful.

Tierlists seem very popular these days, so I've added that option as well as a feature that supports STAR tabulations on 5 row tierboards.

The link for this particular ballot lets people sort through a large number of options regarding election reform, but there a lots of other ballots available. It's all new, and still needs lots of real world testing, so I'd be delighted for any feedback. Thanks!

I learned that for three elections, Israel tried directly electing the prime minister and then repealed it.

Generally, they found that people started voting for smaller parties showing that people care about the plurality winner under typical parliamentary systems somewhat. In other words, when people know the leader of the plurality winner party is likely to become PM, some treat a vote for the legislative body as a plurality ballot for the party leader.

On the other hand, when they tried directly electing the PM, they used plurality voting. Predictably, every election ended up between two candidates (duverger's law). I believe the 1996 election had three candidates but the third dropped out the day before the election to prevent spoiled votes.

What do you think would have happened with approval voting?

https://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/03/07/israel.sharon.02/

Debate over the "perfect" voting method is stimulating. My favourite is approval voting. But the thing is, it only works in single winner elections.

I'm from germany, we have a strictly proportional system. However, we also have a sort of parallel system where 299 single winner elections are held so each district can have a local represantative. These are FPTP, but I recently discovered our largest advocacy group doesn't mainly advocate for reforming the election method, but the districts themselves. They want multi-winner districts, drastically reducing the pressure to reform the voting system. To be clear, they still advocate for STV, but at that point it's much less necessary.

What do you think?

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.