If there are exactly two candidates tied after your convoluted calculations, just elect the one who beats the other head to head.

This seems stupendously obvious to an almost condescending degree, but I feel like this concept is often ignored when getting into the weeds with crazy Condorcet methods.

"If the they tie for the least greatest margin of loss, then elect the tied candidate with the least greatest number of winning votes from their pairwise oppositions." - a Minmax variation

It feels excessive at a certain point. Sometimes, the math for some methods creates more ties rather than fewer (see Schulze). I can't imagine being a voter knowing that a tie between my favorite and another candidate my favorite beat was broken in favor of the other candidate because of some crazy math algorithm I don't understand. I know most of these methods are more theoretical than practical, but to me, any tie-breaking method that doesn't naturally comply with this concept every time is fundamentally broken.

@rob I'm down to keep working on ballot language. I think we need to come up with several different versions and do real field testing because every voting enthusiast seems to have a different idea about how to shift it. The shortest explanation of the tally is actually a single sentence with two clauses:

Among the candidates who tie for winning the most head-to-head matchups, elect the candidate with the best average rank.

There's some ambiguity in there in my opinion because the word "among" is being leaned on heavily, and I don't like using the mathematically equivalent "best average rank" explanation because I think it's misleading to voters despite the line saying that skipped ranks are ignored. The point is there's definitely a range of how descriptive we can be with it.

@jack-waugh It fails Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives. Unlike Ranked STAR, Ranked Robin (the official name of this method) is not a score method disguised as a ranked method -- that's what Ranked STAR is for. Ranked Robin fills a different need.

@jack-waugh It's really weird reading a Score advocate claim that voting behavior should be based on hatred and fear. Score is all about consensus.

Also, "Tongue Kiss" is super f****** gross. I'm genuinely repulsed and knowing that it's from the person who manages this site makes me want leave the entire forum.

Anyway, 3-2-1 was really designed with with the delegation case in mind, not the undelegated case. Quinn is expecting many voters to rate a single candidate "Good" and then let most of their ballot be filled out by that favorite. You seem to argue in favor of favorites anyway, so I'm not sure what you issue with it is.

Voters tend to use the scores 100, 99, 50, 1, and 0. That corresponds to favorite, backup, meh, lesser evil, greater evil. Your scale is super lopsided. Really, you should just use those 5 terms and then find the two semi-finalists with the fewest "evil" ratings, regardless of whether they're lesser or greater.

@jack-waugh Here's the process I wrote for NUTIC:

Preference matrices aren’t difficult either. There are three different ways to make them, so poll workers can use whichever they are most comfortable with. The most efficient procedure is to have the poll worker simply add one for each pairwise win on a ballot in the corresponding box in a matrix. This takes a bit of training, but for those with a sharp mind, it will likely be the preferred procedure. A middle approach is to list each pair of candidates and have the poll worker go through each ballot and add one to the winner between each pair, if there is one. The longest way that is probably best for recounts is to pick one pair of candidates and sort each ballot into one of three piles: one pile for the first picked candidate’s pairwise wins, the second pile for the second picked candidate’s pairwise wins, and the third pile for ballots that show no preference between the two picked candidates; then, count how many ballots are in each pile.

For STAR specifically, the question is are we making an entire preference matrix or just finding the winner based on the ballots we have? For the latter, it's two rounds of (hand) counting. First, go through and add up scores. Then, declare your 2 finalists. Then, regather the ballots and go through them one-by-one putting them each into one of 3 piles: one pile for ballots preferring the first finalist, one pile for ballots preferring the second finalist, and one pile for ballots showing No Preference between the finalists. The finalist with the biggest pile is elected.

Adding up scores (by hand) would actually probably be the longest portion, especially if the order of candidates on those ballots is random.

Full preference matrices for sure take longer, but the more counters you have, the more you can creatively break up the work in efficient ways. For example, you could have one counter for each candidate plus 1 or 2 counters managing the stack of ballots. The ballot counter looks at one ballot and says out loud "Ava beats everybody. Bianca beats everyone except Ava. No preference between Cedric and Deegan, but they both beat Eli. Eli loses to everyone." Then the candidate-assigned counters record their respective candidate's tallies for each matchup on their own sheet. This also provides redundancy for each matchup so no one can get away with fudging numbers for a particular matchup.

I don't have a number of staff seconds, but I don't think this is the biggest burden. As you noted, people really care about election security. If a community really wants to hand count, I don't think this would be a deterrent.

@jack-waugh It's really weird reading a Score advocate claim that voting behavior should be based on hatred and fear. Score is all about consensus.

Also, "Tongue Kiss" is super f****** gross. I'm genuinely repulsed and knowing that it's from the person who manages this site makes me want leave the entire forum.

Anyway, 3-2-1 was really designed with with the delegation case in mind, not the undelegated case. Quinn is expecting many voters to rate a single candidate "Good" and then let most of their ballot be filled out by that favorite. You seem to argue in favor of favorites anyway, so I'm not sure what you issue with it is.

Voters tend to use the scores 100, 99, 50, 1, and 0. That corresponds to favorite, backup, meh, lesser evil, greater evil. Your scale is super lopsided. Really, you should just use those 5 terms and then find the two semi-finalists with the fewest "evil" ratings, regardless of whether they're lesser or greater.

@rob All of the data was counted to arrive at a set of 2 tied candidates. Data will necessarily need to be double-counted to methodically break it.

Ranked Robin uses the tournament-style of Borda applied only to the tied candidates, which is equivalent to electing the tied candidate who beat the other in the 2-candidate case.

@multi_system_fan Your complaint is about a technical page meant for people who want all of the details. The details will remain. When there is a page ready for marketing, then your concern can be applied to that for evaluation.

If there are exactly two candidates tied after your convoluted calculations, just elect the one who beats the other head to head.

This seems stupendously obvious to an almost condescending degree, but I feel like this concept is often ignored when getting into the weeds with crazy Condorcet methods.

"If the they tie for the least greatest margin of loss, then elect the tied candidate with the least greatest number of winning votes from their pairwise oppositions." - a Minmax variation

It feels excessive at a certain point. Sometimes, the math for some methods creates more ties rather than fewer (see Schulze). I can't imagine being a voter knowing that a tie between my favorite and another candidate my favorite beat was broken in favor of the other candidate because of some crazy math algorithm I don't understand. I know most of these methods are more theoretical than practical, but to me, any tie-breaking method that doesn't naturally comply with this concept every time is fundamentally broken.

@jack-waugh Like most criteria, looking at Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives through a pass/fail lens is reductive. The question is how independent of irrelevant alternatives is Ranked Robin? I think the answer to that, in practice, is "enough". The finalist set (typically just 1 candidate) is based on how many other candidates are beaten. If you add a weak candidate into the mix, then all of the top candidates who would make it into the finalist set each gain exactly 1 more win, which doesn't change anything meaningful. Only when we start getting into a 2nd Degree tiebreaker (see the electowiki page) that an irrelevant alternative could realistically swing what would be an unrealistic election.

@jack-waugh It fails Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives. Unlike Ranked STAR, Ranked Robin (the official name of this method) is not a score method disguised as a ranked method -- that's what Ranked STAR is for. Ranked Robin fills a different need.

@jack-waugh To me, a Borda strategy is more like filling the upper middle ranks with unknown fringe candidates. This backfires horribly when everyone does it.

I thought about it more today, though. There are five differences between my method and traditional Borda:

• The Borda calculations are performed only within the finalist set, which is extremely restrictive
• Equal ranks are allowed
• Skipped ranks are ignored
• There's no ballot completion requirement
• It uses tournament-style Borda count, which is a bit different

I think all of this combined is what allowed my method to hold up so well against Marcus' Borda strategies (which I didn't mention earlier). Regardless, the more rigorous testing, the better.

@rob I'm down to keep working on ballot language. I think we need to come up with several different versions and do real field testing because every voting enthusiast seems to have a different idea about how to shift it. The shortest explanation of the tally is actually a single sentence with two clauses:

Among the candidates who tie for winning the most head-to-head matchups, elect the candidate with the best average rank.

There's some ambiguity in there in my opinion because the word "among" is being leaned on heavily, and I don't like using the mathematically equivalent "best average rank" explanation because I think it's misleading to voters despite the line saying that skipped ranks are ignored. The point is there's definitely a range of how descriptive we can be with it.

@Marylander

I like your note on unranked candidates.

Saying "in most elections" is an appropriate prediction that I think would help to put many voter's minds at ease about understanding how the method works.

"Margin" is not well defined here, i.e. voters may think it means that a bigger difference in ranks affects the calculation. Even with the note about skipped ranks, it's important that we make it clear that the focus is simply on finalists being ranked higher or lower than each other and that the magnitude (greater than 0) of the distance between their ranks is irrelevant. My latest language is as follows:

• Rank as many candidates as you would like.
• You are free to rank multiple candidates equally.
• Skipped ranks are simply ignored and will neither hurt nor help your vote.
• Ranked candidates are considered better than candidates left unranked.

<candidates and rankings>

• Candidates are compared in one-on-one matchups against every other candidate. In most elections, a single candidate will be preferred over all others, in which case that candidate is elected.
• Otherwise, all the candidates who tie for having won the most matchups become finalists; all other candidates are eliminated.
• For each finalist, subtract the number of times they lost to each other finalist from the number of times they beat each other finalist. The finalist with the highest total difference is elected.

While I like short and concise language, I think the extra clarity (redundancy) sprinkled throughout would be helpful voters.

I only mentioned Copeland to get people on this forum to click.