Talk:Instant-runoff voting

intro paragraph on process
I suggest this Voters in IRV elections rank the candidates in order of preference. Ballots are initially sorted by the first preference marked on them and that is used to establish the number of votes for each candidate. If a candidate has more than half of the first-choice votes, that candidate wins and the vote count is finished. If not, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and the vote cast for that candidate is transferred to the candidate marked as their next choice. That process continues until one candidate has more than half of the votes, and that person is declared the winner. During the process some ballots may run through all their marked preferences in which case they are declared "exhausted" - the winning formula then becomes more than half of the votes still in play. 174.3.203.119 (talk) 21:13, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Paid employee contributions
@Efbrazil See here; it's not clear at all how much this has affected the article, but better safe than sorry while we work that out and go over it. (Notices have been added to FairVote and other related articles.) –Maximum Limelihood Estimator 22:02, 2 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I just didn't see a basis for the issue being posted, that wikilink is what I was looking for. Efbrazil (talk) 15:00, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

RCV term in Australia
@David Eppstein when you said this isn't unique to the US, did you mean conflating ranked voting and IRV isn't unique to the US? Or that the term "Ranked-choice voting" in particular is common in Australia? I was under the impression that the term "Ranked-choice voting" for IRV was limited to North America, with Australians making the similar mistake of calling it "preferential voting". Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 01:14, 24 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I meant that using the term "ranked choice voting" (incorrectly) to refer to instant-runoff voting isn't unique to the US. See e.g. this example by an Australian academic researcher. Here's another example in the Sydney Morning Herald and in the Brisbane Times using the term but calling it an Americanism. They do not point out that the correct use of the term means something different, saying only that it is a term used for IRV. I only checked for Australia but I suspect other English-speaking countries would show similar patterns. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:42, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * THis AUstralian never heard of Ranked Choice Voting before reding about it on Wikipedia. HiLo48 (talk) 05:09, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Despite using it? The proper use of the terminology is: ranked choice voting = how you fill in your ballot. IRV = how the winner gets determined from the ballots. The issue we are discussing, though, is that many sources don't make a distinction between those two stages (regardless of what they call them). I think the main term used in Australia is "preferential voting"? But I'm less sure which of those two stages should be the main meaning for that term. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:34, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's known as preferential voting here. `HiLo48 (talk) 08:38, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Right, so I think "Ranked-choice voting" is mostly limited to North America, albeit not completely exclusive. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 15:54, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Neither of you have answered whether "preferential voting" means ranked-choice balloting or instant-runoff winner selection. And the geographic distribution of the use of the term "ranked-choice voting" is not particularly relevant to this article except as it concerns the more specific issue of who is likely to confuse RCV and IRV, to which the correct answer is probably "everyone". —David Eppstein (talk) 17:49, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * "Preferential voting" is in the same boat as RCV of being a popular misnomer. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 18:23, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Here is a link to an Australian explanation of "preferential voting". HiLo48 (talk) 01:39, 29 June 2024 (UTC)