Talk:Instant-runoff voting/Archive 9

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:28, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Instant-runoff voting → Alternative Vote – reason: wp:commonname and more concise. There are a variety of official names. Though search tests aren't perfect they indicate this is the most common name by some distance: Alternative Vote ~ 2 million hits and Instant-runoff voting ~ 0.5 million hits   Tom B (talk) 11:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It looks like your results may be skewed by the fact that there's an upcoming referendum in Britain on the issue, and "Alternative vote" is the terminology used in that campaign. The term doesn't appear to be in common use in Australia, which is the only large country using the system.  Powers T 11:51, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * But even Australia doesn't use the term 'instant-runoff'. Their parliament states, "The Alternative Vote [their bold] is known to Australians as Preferential Voting and to Americans as Instant Runoff Voting,"  You're right the referendum has increased the hit count for AV but that still counts towards common name usage. Tom B (talk) 12:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I distrust raw Google counts, because one can imagine uses of the phrase that have nothing to do with the scheme in question. ("If candidate A is disqualified, my alternative vote is for candidate B" — admittedly contrived and awkward, but I'll be amazed if something of the sort doesn't come up in the search soon after the recent UK coverage.)  Instant runoff at least can't easily mean anything else. —Tamfang (talk) 05:46, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Even excluding referendum I didn't see anything other than the current British debate in the first hundred results. —Tamfang (talk) 05:51, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Let's wait whether alternative vote gets adopted in the UK on 5 May 2011. If it gets adopted, this article should be moved. Otherwise, it shouldn't be moved. Markus Schulze 14:41, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * That's a bizarre metric. Why would that have any effect on what the common name of this voting method is?  Powers T 18:15, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * If the alternative vote gets adopted for the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, then this use of this method outperforms every other use of this method by far. Therefore, it would make sense to move this article to "alternative vote". However, if this referendum fails, then it will be forgotten very quickly. Markus Schulze 18:38, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * If the referendum succeeds, then AV will be the term used in four elections to sovereign parliaments rather than three. The best "IRV" can claim is a bucketful of mayoral and city council elections, as best I can determine.  AV's claim to be the primary name is pretty strong whatever the referendum outcome. Happy‑melon 19:33, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I would agree with this being discussed, but think it should wait until after the referendum. If AV is not passed, it's not clear whether AV will be used much at all -- it's not used anywhere but the UK, as far as I know, and it not passed and not used there, I suspect won't get much use there. In lieu of AV< "Preferential voting" up to this point would really be the strongest contender as a term, but it - like "ranked choice voting,"-- is an umbrella term that has been used to describe very different methods... Bottomline ,however, is that if UK passes AV, making the change would seem to make a lot of sense. RRichie (talk) 20:05, 18 April 2011 (UTC)


 * It looks like History_and_use_of_instant-runoff_voting (and IRV in this article) might be good places to start some clarifying work, listing uses by country, so perhaps the section names should include the terminology used in that country. It might seem useful to identify if there's any key differences between names and implentations like variations contingent vote specifically.
 * I guess the main effect of a move would be ~50 renames of IRV in the article to AV? Tom Ruen (talk) 21:38, 18 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose IRV clearly represents what it is, AV is just muddy, and WP:ENGVARious in favour of British English. Proportional representation with a second ballot is an alternative vote. 65.94.45.160 (talk) 03:44, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Electoral systems with a second ballot go under many names, such as additional member system, but I've not come across any case of a country which uses them calling them "alternative vote" and none of the electoral systems references books I've seen use the phrase in that way either. So when you say a system with a second ballot "is an alternative vote", I'm not sure what you're basing that on - can you point me at examples of other people using the phrase in that way? Markpackuk (talk) 08:07, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * (Note - I have absolutely no opinion on the move request - the current name is fine, I think AV is fine too.) Just noting additional member is actually quite a different system - that's more like mixed member-proportional systems with "top-up" seats. IRV/AV is simply a system for choosing a member based on the eliminated preferences of voters for lower candidates. Orderinchaos 09:23, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose - stick with IRV, but I think it's worth putting "Instant-runoff voting, or, Alternative vote" or something similar in to the first sentence as the title of the article. I see Alternative Vote links here so that bit is already covered. Timeshift (talk) 12:15, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

tie-breaking rules is gone!?
It looks like there's a broken internal link here. In the election procedure process section, it says "If there is an exact tie for last place in numbers of votes, tie-breaking rules determine which candidate to eliminate. Some jurisdictions eliminate all low-ranking candidates simultaneously whose combined number of votes is fewer than the number of votes received by the lowest remaining candidates." But the link to the "tie-breaking rules" leads nowhere. This was removed here in the history.

This seems to me like it was valuable information, and its removal makes the article less consistent. I think we should bring it back. --TheAnarcat (talk) 01:09, 26 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree. The deleted section was tagged as unreferenced, and removal comment "Deleted unreferenced sections. Please locate a source before restoring any of them." Some of it is just common sense, stating the issues. For specific election rules I guess someone has to look up implementation, online, or reference from printed documentation. The key idea for me is to recognize that ties can happen, more often than simple single-vote elections, and an election implementation needs specific rules to face them before the election occurs! And something maybe not clearly discussed in what was deleted, that some tie-breaking rules will treat ballots unequally (like eliminating who was behind in a previous round), and that risks calls that it breaks "one person, one vote", and nearly all the rules, except random tie-breaking. Tom Ruen (talk) 04:20, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Mononicity helpful against tactical voting? ✅
The sentence "The failure to meet the monotonicity criterion is one of the reasons that IRV is resistant to strategic and tactical voting." was added to the article alongside two reference papers. But I can't find anything in these papers that support this opinion. In fact, the first of them state that cases of non-monotonicity are "hard to find" in IRV and thus non-monotonicity doesn't add up much for tactical voting, but don't making the problem worse is definitely not the same as raising the resistance against it.

So, I think this was just a misunderstanding and thus this opinion should be removed. --Arno Nymus 77.23.79.151 (talk) 15:54, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

✅ --Arno Nymus (talk) 18:53, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Phrasing in lead
"If a candidate secures a majority of votes cast, that candidate wins."

For a start, "majority" in the context of elections is ambiguous. It can mean more than 50%, or it can mean the highest number of votes - and metonymically, the margin by which a candidate has won the election. "Absolute majority" avoids this ambiguity, though since my last attempt to improve the wording I've discovered that this has a meaning of more than 50% of those eligible to vote. While I'm not sure to what extent I've seen/heard the "highest number" meaning in actual use, at least "more than 50% of votes cast" is unambiguous.

"This process continues until the winning candidate receives a majority of the vote against the remaining candidates."

One does not vote "against" candidates in IRV, unless you refer to not ranking a given candidate as voting against that candidate, but we aren't considering such non-votes in the IRV formula. Moreover, we can't continue the process until the winning candidate has a majority, since we don't know who the winning candidate is until the process has finished. — Smjg (talk) 18:37, 29 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with the second point and think, that your changes regarding this point is an advancement. Thank you for your efforts.
 * Regarding the first point: I usually use these words in the meaning that is described with the first words of the article majority: "A majority is a subset of a group consisting of more than half of its members. This can be compared to a plurality, which is a subset larger than any other subset". But, the article also remarks that in British english this useful distinction is sometimes ignored. However, an "absolute majority" is - as I think unambiguously - more than 50% of all electors, whereas standard-IRV requires only a simple majority of not exhausted ballots. Thus, "absolute majority" would not be a good choice.
 * So, I think, both, "majority" and "more than 50%" are fine. So, if you prefer the latter one, I would not object against it. (But I am not the IP-user from the article history). --Arno Nymus (talk) 23:47, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

tactical voting edit
The following language indeed is not accurate, so please do not re-insert: "If two candidates, P and Q, are the clear leaders, then voters who sincerely prefer P over Q have an incentive to rank P first and Q last on their ballots. This is because the other candidates are relatively weaker, so it is most probable that Q would defeat any opponent besides P. Ranking P below first place makes it more likely for P to lose in an early round, which increases the probability that Q wins the election."

The reality is that if P is your preferred candidate, you can do whatever you want with Q. IRV is consistent with the later-no-harm criterion. RRichie (talk) 17:08, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Explaining edit of skewed Tennessee example
The Tennessee example is portrayed as a "fair" example to compare voting methods, but as any single example would be, it is 'cooked' to generate a particular outcome. As an example of an unrealistic outcome, it has a traditional runoff example elect the Condorcet candidate, but have IRV elect a non-Condorcet candidate. In real elections, IRV is more likely to elect a Condorcet candidate -- both because it is much more likely to maintain consistent voter turnout between the first round and decisive round and because the Condorcet candidate is more likely to rise to the top during the IRV tally and win then fall into last place and get eliminated. Note that the Condorcet candidate has won every single Bay Area election with IRV, including several elections where the winner started off in second and one where she started off in third.

Furthermore it is fallacious to suggest that, in this example, any system that violates later-no-harm is going to elect the Condorcet candidate. From actual elections with approval voting, for example, we see that people stop indicating secondary preferences. It is extremely unlikely that Nashville would overcome a 16% deficit. The only system that guarantees election of the Condorcet winner is a Condorcet system.

With that in mind, let's keep the phony example, given how entrenched it is in the generally tilted discussion of voting methods in Wikipedia, but lets not use it for a lecture on comparative systems. And if other other editors insist on comparisons, the comparison should not be to range voting (which almost certainly would elect Memphis), but to condorcet voting. RRichie (talk) 01:30, 10 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Thx for your feedback and explanation.
 * Obviously, the Tennessee example is made in a way that for different voting systems different results occur. The reason of that is that it shall be used to see the differences of the voting methods. An example in which every voting system elects the same winner, would not be a good example for comparison.
 * If the standard example would elect the Condorcet winner with IRV, it would not be a good example for IRV, since there would be the question: "Why using IRV, when it elects Condorcet winners almost anytime? (Then I could just use a Condorcet method)" That question would be even bigger, when comparing to an (instant) two-round-system. So, for comparison an example is necessary, where the difference can be seen.
 * However, I see that this example is not perfect in respect to the other methods (e.g. that Two-round-system and Range Voting results int the same candidate winning and so on). Thus, if you are keen, I would appreciate if you go to the voting portal and initiate the creation of a better example by the community: an example where more different outcomes occur from different voting methods - but still one at least equally colorful and demonstrative. That would be great. However, since the community created this Tennessee example some time ago for this purpose, we should use it until a new better example finds consensus on the voting portal page.
 * This example shows the advantages and disadvantages of IRV as it does for e. g. Range Voting. One of the advantages of IRV is that it does not elect Memphis, the Condorcet looser, like first-past-the-post would do. It also shows that voters could come to a better result if they voted unsincerly under IRV. The same claim about Range Voting can be found at the Range voting page about this example.
 * However, I agree that there should be a comparison to a condorcet method, so I will add it as you said. Arno Nymus (talk) 16:24, 10 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Is there any sources for this info that was just added? -- Moxy (talk) 17:33, 10 September 2013 (UTC)


 * As the whole example section, the newly added comparison example for the Condorcet method Ranked pairs is routine calculation: WP:CALC Arno Nymus (talk) 20:10, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * A calculation from were? ... this article has lots of stuff that needs sources. We should add a tag to indicate this. Will see what i can find over the next few days then tag what i cant find. -- Moxy (talk) 22:48, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
 * As wikipedia guideline, routine calculations don't need a source, see WP:CALC. However, apart from that I appreciate your wish to upgrade the article with additional sources. Arno Nymus (talk) 16:02, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I dont think I am clear....where do the numbers come from that made this calculation. There not made up right...thus we should be able to locate them. The link you provided does not have any sources as there were the numbers come from. I agree we are allowed to make calculations..but we need to know where the original numbers come from. -- Moxy (talk) 16:31, 12 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Arno Nymus, for engaging with this. The example is interesting as a logical exercise, but it's not related to how elections really work. For example, the suggestion that range voting people would vote like machines without regards to tactical incentives grounded in human psychology creates a misunderstanding. In the real world, Memphis would in fact would win with range voting, because too many Memphis backers wouldn't want Nashville to win and give it no points. And again, it's just not "neutral" to have IRV elect this kind of example when you'd be hard-pressed to find an actual example of such a win in thousands of real-life IRV elections. See a few edits with this in mind.RRichie (talk) 16:42, 12 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Updated edit after previous one was undone. Really, any fair reading of this would make it clear the high-profile nature of this example is an alleged "neutral" way to present a highly unrealistic example that makes IRV look bad. There have been dozens of IRV elections in the Bay Area that have done to multiple rounds of counting, and the Condorcet winner has won every time. I've never seen an example of a real election with this kind of scenario (that is, candidate initially in third winning and in so doing knocking out the Condorcet candidate who initially started ahead, although it it's theoretically possibly and indeed may have happened somewhere in the thousands of meaningfully contested IRV elections. So while basically saying it's not "neutral" to use this example, the history of it being in the articles means that others should consider that basic question of fairness. In the meantime, it at least can be presented with some factual points -- such as the example of "tactical voting" would never happen in real life.RRichie (talk) 21:08, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Handling ties does not link to anything
Dead link — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:4898:80E0:EE43:0:0:0:2 (talk) 19:02, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Chart on other ranked choice systems
User Waldir reversed edit and wrote "sorry, your reasoning doesn't seem to justify the removal IMO. Please comment on the talk page so we can discuss this properly"

Such charts often go through revisions. Having it exist in two places will make that less likely to happen, meaning there will be conflicting judgments. Furthermore, having the whole chart fill up so much of the article is questionable, rather than simply linking to it for those who want to see such a comparison.

With that in mind, I will redo the edit, which includes a link to the chart. 71.163.240.226 (talk) 16:14, 23 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I understand the argument about space, but I still can't figure out what you mean by "Having it exist in two places" and "there will be conflicting judgments". First of all, the properties of the voting systems aren't, as far as I know, matters of opinion or judgment; there are clear criteria to determine whether a voting system belongs to a given class or not. Secondly, the table is a template, so it doesn't "exist in two places" (as a template, it may be included in several articles, but any change in the template is automatically reflected in every article where it is included). Can you please clarify what you mean? I assume I am missing something in your reasoning because (apart from the space issue) it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. --Waldir talk 22:14, 23 September 2014 (UTC)


 * That's good to know about the template -- thanks for clarifying. Even so, that's a huge amount of space/info to include in the article, primarily about other approaches to ranked ballots -- none of which are used in elections for government office as far as I know. I would think it makes sense to briefly summarize the availability of this info and create an easy link to it rather than insert it. Anther option would be to link to the chart in the voting systems section that is more relevant for comparing IRV/AV to other commonly used methods (plurality and runoff elections).71.163.240.226 (talk) 13:48, 25 September 2014 (UTC))


 * Those would all be viable options, but honestly I don't see why the table would comprise (to some degree) irrelevant information. This article is about the voting system, period -- it doesn't exist only because the system is in elections for government office. In that spirit, I believe it makes sense to provide a comparison with other voting systems, and I'd argue that for the reader it's more convenient to have this directly in the article than having to open a separate page to learn something about this system (namely, how it compares to others and which criteria it fulfills). Not to mention that (1) the article is already fairly large, so this table won't contribute a significant net change in that regard, and (2) there's a specific section about "Comparison to other voting systems" which is quite underdeveloped (it contains a single paragraph!) and would clearly benefit from the information on the table. If the table were somewhat compacted (a smaller font, perhaps?) would its inclusion be more amenable to you? --Waldir talk 12:25, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

OR or not OR?
Article lead contains: 'IRV has the effect of avoiding...the need for electors to vote "strategically" for candidates who are not their first choice.' I assumed that simply deleting this on the grounds that IRV is (verifiably) non-monotonic would count as original research (even thought that's just what non-monotonic means), and so demanded a cite for it. Was that the correct move? Dingsuntil (talk) 23:52, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Decided to WP:BOLD. Fuck it. We can talk it over if necessary. Dingsuntil (talk) 23:58, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Polling booth? or polling place?
The two uses of 'polling booth' in this article seem to refer to what outside Australia is called 'polling place' or 'polling station', and not to what the WP Polling booth article describes. A WP search finds a number of other articles, mostly Australian, with the same usage.

In the Polling booth article's Ref.1 the Australian Electoral Commission clearly uses polling booth in the privacy cubicle sense. But a Google search finds plenty of evidence that polling booth is Australian for polling place, and even official sites which seem to use the terms interchangeably:


 * Electoral Commission Queensland, http://www.ecq.qld.gov.au/voting.aspx?id=93:
 * "You can vote at any polling booth within Queensland on polling day between 8:00am and 6:00pm." "You can apply to receive a postal vote if you are unable to attend a polling place on polling day."


 * Elect.Comm of Sth.Australia, http://www.ecsa.sa.gov.au/voting/voting-at-the-state-election:
 * "You will need to find a polling place. We have a polling booth finder that we will publish in late January to show where you can vote." "Inside the polling place: You will see tables where election officials are sitting and giving ballot papers to voters."  "Completing your ballot papers: Enter a private voting screen to fill out your ballot papers."


 * ABC Gold Cost, Election 2013: Where to vote?, http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2013/09/04/3840919.htm, mentions booth in the heading but in the text only polling place.


 * A non-official forum, http://www.essentialbaby.com.au/forums/index.php?/topic/1107123-working-on-election-day-at-polling-booth/, mentions mostly booth, only once place.


 * In the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 itself, http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2014C00017, there seems to be only a subtle difference between booth and place but it is not clear what it is.
 * Part 1, Sect.4, Interpretation,
 * -Issuing point, in relation to a polling booth, means a place within the polling booth at which ballot papers are issued to persons voting at the booth.
 * -Polling booth means a building, structure, vehicle or enclosure, or a part of a building, structure, vehicle or enclosure, provided at a polling place,
 * -Polling place means a place appointed as a polling place in pursuance of section 80.
 * Part XVI, Sect.206 Separate voting compartments: Polling booths shall have separate voting compartments, constructed so as to screen the voters from observation while they are marking their ballot papers.

So, should the two uses of polling booth be changed to polling place? If no, an explanation of Australian usage would need to be added to the WP Polling booth article.

In Australia, what is the difference between a polling booth and a polling place? Can there be more than one polling booth at a polling place? What do Australians call the curtained-off cubicles depicted in WP Polling booth? Any references? BalCoder (talk) 12:02, 9 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Well yes as above. The polling place is the location (e.g. the local school) and the booth is the little cardboard bit where you vote. There are actually no curtains, you're pretty much out in the open with little cardboard wings dividing each "booth" to protect the secrecy of your vote. Tigerman2005 (talk) 01:39, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Variations of the same party
Preferential voting allows one to have several parties of generally the same leanings, but none the same field separate candidates. For example, over here, one has the country and liberal parties, which generally co-align yet hold different base groups. The country party tend to cater for the country electorates, while the liberals tend to be more metropolitan orientated.

You could then field three candidates, say C, L, and Labor, and while most of the people might agree with the general right-wing C/L parties, the labor would win FPTP. In preferential voting, the lesser of the C/L would generally spill to the larger, with some leakage. So the member who ran second would win.

It's also quite possible for the third highest vote to win, if there is a considerable flow of preferences from the C/L to a fourth party (eg Greens). This happened in the division of Melbourne in the 2010 elections.

The analysis given in the table does not account for this. It assumes that each of the several candidates are of radically different persuasions, and could be treated equally. Something like preferential voting allows one to divide a single party, like the UK conservitives, into several in a known coalitions, one might be able to vote on variations of the lesser of two evils.

--Wendy.krieger (talk) 07:30, 8 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Seems like a good point to make in the article, ideally grounded in a specific example for which you can show the numbers.RRichie (talk) 15:18, 9 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Country Party? Showing your age Wendy! But yes, and similar things just in the NSW election where the Liberals (Conservatives) poll first in inner city seats but whoever comes second of Labor and the Greens is pretty much guaranteed to win the seat based on interswapping of preferences. This I'd suggest is a decent argument for preferential voting - if the Libs snuck over the line based on a first preference vote hovering around 35% and the two "left" parties were around 30% there would be a lot of angst. Tigerman2005 (talk) 01:43, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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RCV?
The Negative campaigning section (among others) mentions "RCV" but there is no definition of this term anywhere in the article. What is it? Julesd 19:10, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
 * It is Ranked Choice Voting, which is essentially a synonym for IRV, so I changed the language in that paragraph. Good catch.  meamemg (talk) 19:37, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

IRV is a badly flawed voting system.
IRV has the effect of avoiding split votes in the case of irrelevant alternatives, but in the case of relevant alternatives, center-squease usually eliminates the Condorcet-Winner whose vote-transfers make 1 of the extreme candidates win. For this reason, one should choose the lesser of 2 evils and vote strategically for that candidate. IRV is susceptible to Duverger’s law. Here is an example:

We have 3 candidates:


 * Candidate Loony Lefty
 * Candidate Centrist
 * Candidate Right-Wing Nut

In an head-to-head contest, Candidate Centrist would beat either extremist by 2 to 1. In plurality-election, center-squease leads to this result:

  Candidate Loony Lefty:   35%   Candidate Centrist:   32%  <dt> Candidate Right-Wing Nut: </dt> <dd> 33% </dd> </dl>

Because of center-squease, Candidate Loony Lefty wins instead of Candidate Centrist.

Under IRV, the Condorcet-Winner, Candidate Centrist is the first eliminated. Vote-transfers make it almost impossible to predict whether Candidate Loony Lefty or Candidate Right-Wing Nut will win.

Examples of clone-immune voting systems are:


 * Approval voting
 * Condorcet
 * Range voting

These voting systems are clone-immune, e. g. they are resistant to both relevant and irrelevant alternatives. Of these the simplest to implement is approval voting. One need only remove the rule against overvotes. Assuming that all voters hedge their bets by approving 2 candidates, this is how approval voting would handle the example:

<dl> <dt> Candidate Loony Lefty: </dt> <dd> 50% </dd> <dt> Candidate Centrist: </dt> <dd> 100% </dd> <dt> Candidate Right-Wing Nut: </dt> <dd> 50% </dd> </dl>

¡Candidate Centrist wins with 100% of the vote! ¡Yay!


 * Clone-immune voting systems favor candidates with moderate centrist views on all dimensional axis, including conviction. A typical legislator elected using a clone-immune voting system has convictions, but is willing to compromise enough to work with others, as opposed to the 2 extremes of refusing to work with others, or not bothering to defend one’s positions at all.  For this reason, I shall delete the adjective  “Convictionless”  from the example in the article.


 * In retrospect, I see that I invited adjectival addition by using adjectives for the other candidates. For this reason, I shall rename the examples to adjectiveless nouns:


 * Candidate Lefty
 * Candidate Centrist
 * Candidate Righty — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.103.108.158 (talk) 01:03, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I reverted the large amount of text added to the intro, similar to above. The systems you must compare to are plurality and two round system, since these are the systems IRV proposes to replace. Duverger’s law may be considered a feature or flaw by personal opinion. There's plenty of material at Comparison_of_instant_runoff_voting_to_other_voting_systems if you want to make improvements after reviewing that material. SockPuppetForTomruen (talk) 01:36, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Note that the anonymous editor also said IRV will "frequently not elect the Condorcet candidate" without no factual information. As an example, consider that there have been more than 50 ranked choice voting elections in Bay Area cities of California, many of which were very contested in required multiple rounds of IRV counting. The full ballot image data is available, and in every single instance the Condorcet candidate has won, including one race where that candidate was third in first choice totals.


 * There also is no evidence whatsoever that IRV in Australia leads to people insincerely ranking a major party candidate first ahead of their "real choice" who isn't a major party. For instance, vote totals for minor parties in the IRV races for the house and PR races for the senate (where third parties win seats with relatively low shares of the vote) are very similar.


 * In short the hostility of this anonymous editor is unjustified about actual elections -- and concerns based on theory are already presented.RRichie (talk) 15:58, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Can you please post links to the full ballot image data of these elections? I would like to take a look at them. Thx, Arno Nymus (talk) 23:28, 15 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The cities make it available on their website where they post results.RRichie (talk) 01:34, 16 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Some summary of election round summaries are given at Instant-runoff_voting_in_the_United_States. I don't recall which ones have actual ballot data online. Tom Ruen (talk) 04:14, 16 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Thx, I will look there. Arno Nymus (talk) 20:58, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
 * IRV is a flawed system because it doenst follow even their own logic. According to IRV, JUST checking the most voted guy is not a valid system to say he is the prefered one, but JUST checking the ones with least amount of first place votes is a valid method of checking the least prefered person.
 * In theory IRV should be:
 * 1-Put all candidates on list A, and also put them on list B
 * 2-Check if the candidates, if he has the majority of first place votes, he wins, if not go to 3
 * 3-Remove the candidate that won previous step from list B
 * 4-Remove the one with most amount of first place votes from list B(if tied remove both)
 * 5-Go back to 4 until the list B has just one candidate and then remove him from list A and go to 6
 * 6-If someone on list A has the majority of the votes, he wins, if empty list B and add the candidates of current list A and go to step 3.
 * On the tenesee example, nobody has more than 50% of first votes. So, memphis is removed from list B, then nashville, then chatanooga.So knoxville is removed from "the game". Nobody has 50% of first votes yet, so we recreate list B and remove memphis, then nashville and so, with it, will be removing chatanooga of "the game". Now list A will have memphis with 42% of the votes and nashville with 58%, nashville is then the winner.
 * 201.79.75.93 (talk) 12:31, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
 * 201.79.75.93 (talk) 12:31, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Polynomial time
This paragraph was added to the Instant-runoff_voting section which didn't really fit there.

Polynomial time ✅/ The polynomial time criterion requires that the election outcome can be efficiently computed, i.e., in a number of computational steps that bounded by a polynomial in the number of voters and candidates. By following the tallying procedure defining IRV, it is possible to efficiently find one IRV winner. However, at several stages in the process it might occur that choices need to be made (for example, when several candidates are never first-ranked). It is NP-complete (and thus unlikely to be possible efficiently) to decide whether a given candidate can be made an IRV winner for some way of breaking ties along the way of tallying the votes.
 * REF:


 * Looking at the reference it says "This also gives a new perspective on how ties should be broken under STV. We leave some open questions." Perhaps something of this paper deserves to be in a new section about the problem of last-place ties in smaller elections? Tom Ruen (talk) 14:38, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

content aside, note that the green check and red x created by Template:tick and Template:cross are not for use in articles. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:35, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Our article on spoiler effect
Page watchers may wish to review large recent edits at Spoiler effect. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:45, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

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Confusing description in intro
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the intent of this introductory sentence but I found it very confusing: "'The top remaining choices on all the ballots are then counted again.'" Later in the article, it is said that the bottom candidate's ballots are distributed to the remaining candidates according to their voters' second-choice preferences. This would seem to suggest that it's not "all ballots" that get counted again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.71.176.22 (talk) 21:58, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
 * It is a little confusing. All the ballots can be recounted each round, ignoring all eliminated candidates and finding the top remaining choice for each, but in practice, especially hand-counting, where ballots are stacked based on the top remaining choice, the pile of the eliminated candidate can be redistributed to the next active choice on those ballots. Tom Ruen (talk) 02:21, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Summary analysis table in Burlington mayoral election section
User:Raellerby, thanks for adding the summary table to the Burlington election section. It helps visualize how the election went as runoff rounds were calculated. I copied the table over to Burlington mayoral election, 2009. I also added percentages to the round-by-round analysis table on that page because I thought it would help segue between the two tables. However, until my most recent edits, the summary didn't include the exhausted votes in the percentage calculation. I'm planning to add a yellow "Transfer Votes" bar to the "Exhausted votes" row, since 6.7% is a non-trivial percentage of votes, and I may add followup comments over at Talk:Burlington mayoral election, 2009. -- RobLa (talk) 03:34, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Can someone explain to me why the results of an extremely local election are relevant for an article on this much more general topic? Do you plan to include all elections ever worldwide that use instant-runoff? For instance, should we include tables of all the award categories for all the Hugo Awards for all the years it has been offered? —David Eppstein (talk) 04:21, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * There's other pages with examples, so one example is good here. IRV/RCV is mainly controversial for political elections, so an example is helpful. Which example is another question, but since Burlington was one first place in the U.S, I see a justification. Tom Ruen (talk) 05:15, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * It's actually not the first place in the U.S., but the 2009 Burlington election was remarkable for it's impact on the use of Instant Runoff in the U.S. (and triggered one of the first modern repeals of the system here). It seems reasonable to trim this example back as has already been done in the Instant-runoff voting in the United States article, and use Burlington mayoral election, 2009 for extra level of detail. However, I'm not sure that the summary in Instant-runoff voting in the United States is in good enough shape for copying into this article. -- RobLa (talk) 06:23, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * User:RobLa, thanks for the shout-out. The visualization of the "exhausted votes" in the table really helps to reveal their significance. I've also taken a look at the pairwise matrix shown at Burlington mayoral election, 2009, and am wondering whether it could benefit from visualization as well. I'll leave that for another discussion.Raellerby (talk) 14:33, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks Raellerby! I responded in a little more detail over at Talk:Burlington mayoral election, 2009. -- RobLa (talk) 17:44, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Explanation of debunked claim that IRV violates one person one vote
I live in a country that uses IRV for all government elections. I'm not aware of any serious debate that IRV is unfair. Complicated, yes, but not unfair. If there are three candidates - A, B, and C - and they get 25%, 40%, and 35% of the primary vote respectively, in a first-past-the-post election candidate B will win (despite 60% of the voters not voting for them), causing the voters who voted for candidate A to effectively waste their vote. 25% of the voters effectively had no vote. If IRV is used instead, their votes now count and are split between candidates B and C. If candidate C gets more than 60% of candidate A's preferences (an additional 15% of the total vote), they will overtake candidate B and win. Now every voter has cast exactly one vote for one of the two final candidates. This strikes me as more fair and democratic than single round, first-past-the-post. So what's the argument that voters of minority candidates get more than one vote? Is it because there are multiple simulated rounds? How does this differ from multiple actual rounds (apart from being less wasteful)? Danielklein (talk) 02:04, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
 * This page is for discussing article improvements based on [{WP:RS]].  Please don't hold a WP:FORUM. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 08:06, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @User:Danielklein, it seems like you're unaware of the electoral method used in Legislative Council (NSW, SA, Vic, WA), Tasmanian House of Assembly, ACT Legislative Assembly and Senate elections, as it isn't IRV, instead it is single transferable vote (which while similar, is not the same). But as NewsAndEventsGuy said, this talk page is to be used to discuss improvements to this article that are based on reliable sources, not merely discuss your own personal opinions (although I do agree, it is more fair than FPTP). Fuse809  (contribs · email · talk · uploads) 22:00, 11 August 2019 (UTC)


 * What I mean is that no evidence or line of reasoning has been presented for IRV giving voters multiple votes. I find this claim interesting (although ridiculous) and would like to know more about it. I.e. how could anyone think that it could be true? Danielklein (talk) 13:43, 12 August 2019 (UTC)


 * @User:NewsAndEventsGuy Please don't silence me. The section on plural voting needs expansion as currently all it says is party A thought it was unfair and party B said no it isn't. Neither party's arguments are presented, and a fair and balanced article should present both. I don't think the argument against is hard to follow and I'm not sure what the argument for is.

Danielklein (talk) 14:07, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Daniel, if it were me, I would have made the section heading read "section titled 'Plural voting'" and I would have started the first sentence of the first comment something like "Regarding the current section "plural voting", the article could be improved if we...." I'm going to depart from this and yourself for the time being (since I've irked you).  I hope others will be able to more quickle grasp the issue here and reach consensus with you. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:17, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I think the issue might be that opponents think it works this way:


 * It looks like voter 1 has one vote but voter 2 has three votes because candidates D, then C, were eliminated. However, it actually works like this:


 * Each voter gets exactly one vote per round. Voter 1 votes for candidate A each time, and voter 2 votes for candidates D, C, then B as each previous candidate is eliminated. It's not clear to me from the article that this is what the claim is about, and I've only come up with it after days of thought. If this is a faithful representation of the claim and its counter-proof, I'm happy to include it in that section. Improvements, suggestions, comments welcome! Danielklein (talk) 01:38, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Feedback? Danielklein (talk) 00:15, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
 * My feedback is that after being told about the WP:TPG, WP:FORUM, and the need for WP:Reliable sources.... that your opinion might have something to it. But no one cares, because all we really care about is what the reliable sources say.  If you keep going without citing any sources, you should probably add WP:DISRUPTSIGNS to the reading list. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:26, 15 August 2019 (UTC)


 * NewsAndEventsGuy (NAEG) is right, although my reason for not replying initially is that (1) you seemed to be speaking to NAEG, not so much me and (2) because I didn't really follow your explanation, as to me IRV isn't about rounds of voting, but a single round where the voter assigns preferences. Then the winner is decided based on the algorithm discussed in the lead of this article. Fuse809  (contribs · email · talk · uploads) 01:41, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Problem getting image to render at appropriate size and show caption simultaneously
Hi, I just added a diagram showing the non-monotonicity of IRV to the "Voting method criteria" section. However, I ran into a technical issue while adding it: I both want to have a caption for the diagram, and also have it appear at a useful size; the full size is much too large, it takes up too much space, while the thumbnail size is much too small, preventing the labels on the diagrams to be legible. As far as I can tell, a caption can only be shown under the image using the 'thumb' or 'frame' attributes, which default to the thumbnail and full size respectively, and the correct size can be achieved using the 'no-frame' attribute, but then the image will not show the caption (aside from in the roll-over text). Is there any way to get the image to both be captioned and appear at an appropriate size? Thanks, Ramzuiv (talk) 22:25, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * You can adjust the size by giving a multiplier to the "upright" attribute of an image with a thumb, i.e. Image name.png . Be aware that different people reading the article will have different default image sizes, and that this will adjust the size relative to their defaults; you should generally not use absolute image sizing. You should also not make the multiplier bigger than 1.35 for the lead image of an article nor bigger than 1.8 elsewhere, to accomodate people with narrow screens. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:17, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Alright, it's good now. Thanks for the help David -Ramzuiv (talk) 02:06, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Highest AND lowest
It occurs to me that it's possible -- though probably extremely unlikely -- for one candidate to have both the highest number of first-place votes (meaning that he stays for the next round) and the highest number of last-place votes (meaning that he is eliminated and votes for him are redistributed). How would this be resolved? Leave him in, and eliminate the person with the second-highest number of last-place votes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.255.165.198 (talk) 01:46, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The person who is eliminated in most versions of this system is not the one with the most last-place votes, it is the one with the fewest first-place votes. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:34, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Came back this morning hoping to be able to delete this before its being seen. (Ha!)  Note to Self: Make sure you're really awake when attempting to use logic.... 216.255.165.198 (talk) 16:10, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
 * All IRV elections eliminate by fewest first-place votes. Coombs' method does the opposite eliminates based on the most last-place votes. This requires fully ranked ballots to count. Tom Ruen (talk) 18:54, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
 * A candidate like this can be trouble in any forced-elimination runoff system since he can help eliminate candidates with more compromise appeal, while being less likely to win a final round. This can be considered a sort of "spoiler effect" if my vote is stuck on a candidate who can't win, while my vote can't transfer to a second choice who could have won without my first choice helping to eliminate my second choice. For comparison, Condorcet methods DO look at lower preferences through head-to-head comparisons, with no elimination, but adding confusing problems like the Rock–paper–scissors game, where there are cyclic majorities, where no candidate can beat all others head-to-head. Tom Ruen (talk) 18:46, 7 November 2019 (UTC)


 * No, you're counting it wrong. But it seems somebody already explained. Irtapil (talk) 11:59, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

How does Ranked voting (aka instant runoff) work if there are many candidates?
In London Ontario (Canada), for the first time in at least the history of Ontario (if not Canada), ranked voting will be used for a municipal election to elect the city's mayor and council. The mayoral race has 12 candidates, 4 of which are seen as "front runners" and for which pre-election polls suggest have equal support (around 20% each). With a choice of 3 candidates on a ranked ballot, how does this system (mathematically) work such that it can arrive at a result where a single winning candidate will emerge with 50% + 1 of the vote? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.168.0.108 (talk) 13:00, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
 * There's a good article that explains exactly how it works: Instant-runoff voting. Hope that helps! Danielklein (talk) 02:06, 11 August 2019 (UTC)


 * this is the talk page for Instant-runoff voting. Irtapil (talk) 12:13, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Exactly what I was pointing out to the person who left the comment! "I'm too lazy to read the article. Please explain it to me here!" No, the answer is to read the article! If they have already read the article, they should explain why the article is deficient and what needs to be improved. --Danielklein (talk) 22:15, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * that was not a good way to communicate that, it just sounded like you weren't even paying enough attention to even know what page you were on. Sarcasm does not come across well in written form.
 * If you actually want to help, refer to the specific section with that answer. You can use the hash key, or copy-paste the relevant part of the url after clicking the section on the table of contents, for example Instant-runoff_voting . (But i don't think that example section acctually covvers it. This article is a bit of a mess.)
 * If you just want to be sarcastic, go pick a fight on social media instead of the talk pages here.
 * Irtapil (talk) 02:06, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

shonky sources
i tried to move the "examples" section a and i got this notice: i'm going to save it as is then go check that. Irtapil (talk) 06:46, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * "An automated filter has identified this edit as containing references to one of the following blogging / web host platforms: Angelfire, Blogger (including blogspot.com), Geocities, Livejournal, Rootsweb, WordPress.com. Please be aware that self-published sources rarely meet Wikipedia's standards for reliable sources."

Merge Tideman's Alternative
I've expanded a few parts of the article to describe Smith/IRV and Tideman's Alternative (which is basically Smith-Repeatedly/IRV). Because these are so similar, they may not require separate articles. John Moser (talk) 15:39, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Dubious claims about spoiled and exhausted ballots
No2AV lists a bunch of stuff on the cited page, but has no citations, particularly about ballots being five times as likely to be spoiled. Further, the statement on its own is meaningless: if 1/100,000 ballots are spoiled, then five times as likely is 5/100,000. If it's 1%, the figure quickly becomes substantial. John Moser (talk) 16:42, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

the 'Non-satisfied criteria" section is full of nonsense
At least half of the claims in the "Non-satisfied criteria" are utter rubbish. If these are valid points, they are very poorly explained.

Some of them might be theoretically possible in a case of optional preferential voting, but that needs to be specified.

Some "criteria" are mathematically impossible to meet in any election with more than one candidate. So these points are somewhere between trivial and deceptive. For example "IRV demonstrates this exclusion of up to 50% of voters". Part of the key there is "up to", to get to actually 50% you would need an even number of voters and a perfect 50:50 split.

e.g. for 10 voters and 3 candidates (Liberal, Socialist, and Green):
 * 5 likes Liberal and their second choice is Socialist
 * 4 likes Socialist and their second choice is Green
 * 1 one likes Green and his second choice is Socialist

Depending on the details of the rules, the Liberal could win because he's got to 50% of the vote before anyone is eliminated. But usually they require 50% plus one vote. So in this case you have a dead heat and the only options are to chose a winner at random (which doesn't count as an instant run off) or re run the election and hope at least one voter changes their mind.

There's not a votibg method you could use for those 10 voters which leads to fewer than 50% of them being unhsaappy with the redult? If there is, it should be mentioned, with a link to the relevant wiki article.

Irtapil (talk) 11:56, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * IRV's "exclusion" means that their vote doesn't actually affect the election, unlike in a Smith-efficient election. For example, 74% could prefer Bobbie over Alex, but when Chris is in the election, many of these voters prefer Chris to Bobbie.  With a majority preferring both of Alex and Bobbie to Chris, the election is decided only by counting that majority's ballots—the voters who voted for Chris have no say in whether Alex or Bobbie is elected.  I'm not sure what your point was supposed to be there, or how that is deceptive. John Moser (talk) 18:57, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

"Ranked-Choice Voting" Redirects
"Ranked-Choice Voting" and variants redirects to this page. It makes more sense to redirect to Ranked voting. However, there are many pages that link to those redirect pages; many of which are better off going to here. I propose we sort through all the links to the redirect and replace them with pipe links if appropriate. Before changing the redirects, the instructions on Redirects for discussion should be followed. Quarter Glass (talk) 05:37, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Future editors would continue to link ranked-choice voting to the ranked-choice page, which under your proposal would redirect to ranked voting, which is not users likely want in most cases. We should continue to redirect ranked choice voting to the page most people intend to visit, which is this instant-runoff voting page. IMHO the hatnote for ranked voting should actually be removed. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 22:20, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's worth noting FairVote changed their Form 990 after 2009 to reference "Ranked Choice Voting" rather than "Instant Runoff Voting." The organization has aggressive and contradictory arguments against Condorcet systems:  they argue Condorcet is bad, but support IRV by claiming it almost always elects the Condorcet candidate; the data they use for this are dubious, and the mathematical arguments are well known among social choice theorists.  This is a common form of propaganda whereby a generic label is popularized as describing a specific thing, making it difficult for people to separate the two in their mind.  That is to say:  when discussing ranked systems and Condorcet systems with people who have been exposed to "Ranked Choice Voting," they become repeatedly confused and have difficulty following the concept; when discussing with those naive to the term, even those aware of instant runoff and not deeply studied in social choice, they rapidly understand systems such as Ranked Pairs.  Complaints about supporting this form of propaganda should be considered with care; this is why I went through Wikipedia and replaced "Ranked Choice Voting" with "Instant Runoff Voting"—well accepted as the name of this specific system—where it was used in such a manner.


 * It may be a better consideration to link to Ranked voting, with the standard note at the top of the page that if the user is looking for instant runoff voting, sometimes called "ranked choice voting" in the US, they can click the link.  FairVote once described IRV as "this form of ranked choice voting…" and I would very much support making ranked voting redirect to ranked choice voting, with instant runoff voting as an example and with the standard note at the top that the user may have been looking for a different thing. John Moser (talk) 19:08, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

OpenSTV does not appear to be open source software
Under Demonstrations and simulations, there is an entry:


 * OpenSTV – Open source software for computing IRV and STV

This leads to "OpenSTV is now OpaVote" (https://www.opavote.com/openstv). According to their terms (https://www.opavote.com/terms):

"3.2 You may not obtain or attempt to obtain the source code of OpaVote."

Can IRV be made Condorcet consistent?
The main facts are not in dispute, but I think the presentation in the article is misleading. Smith/IRV and Tideman’s Alternative will almost invariably elect the unique Condorcet winner straight off without bringing the IRV mechanism into play; IRV is simply a fail-safe. In an analogous case, Dasgupta and Maskin don’t describe their method as ‘making the Borda count Condorcet consistent’, but rather advocate Copeland’s method with a Borda fail-safe.

I propose rewording this remark along the following lines: "IRV is very unlikely to give rise to a tie when the number of voters is large. For this reason it is sometimes advocated as part of a tie break for methods (such as the Smith set) which do not have this property: see Smith/IRV." and then simplify the IRV algorithmic description, moving the Smith-specific parts to the Smith set article.

(And I appreciate that some people might allege that the Smith set (or for that matter the Copeland set) is unlikely to be a singleton... but there are better arguments the other way, and I don’t think the article rests its position on any claim of this sort.)

Now there are several mentions of Smith/IRV throughout the IRV article. Some of them repeat statements made earlier; some, if the presentation of Smith/IRV is moved, could be moved with it. Perhaps some could be left where they are. But there is one whose accuracy I would question: "The Smith/IRV and Tideman alternative method avoid this [sc. manipulation by ‘spoiling’] by first eliminating all candidates not in the Smith set or Schwartz set, adapting IRV to satisfy Condorcet and Independence of Smith-Dominated Alternatives. It is not possible for the addition of a Condorcet provision to make any rule more vulnerable to strategy,[72] so these forms of IRV—called Condorcet-Hare methods—bring this benefit with no trade-off." I think this is a misunderstanding. Tideman et al’s Proposition 2 shows that the voting rule ‘Elect the Condorcet winner if any, otherwise fall back on such-and-such an elimination method’ cannot be more manipulable than such-and-such an elimination method; but it does not show that an arbitary Condorcet method falling back on an elimination tie-break cannot be more manipulable than the tie-break. In fact the Condorcet elimination rules of Tideman et al’s paper have nothing to do with Smith/IRV and Tideman’s alternative. Colin.champion (talk) 15:56, 12 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I moved Smith/IRV and Tideman’s Alternative to Smith set; but then I realised that Tideman’s Alternative had its own article so I deleted some of it to avoid duplication. I hope these changes are considered satisfactory; I don’t think anything of value has been lost, and the organisation is more natural.
 * I also deleted the claim that Ware invented IRV since the article says that Condorcet had previously discussed it. Colin.champion (talk) 08:16, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Redirect from 'Ranked choice voting'
The page ‘Ranked choice voting’ currently redirects here. This has come in for criticism, not least from who proposed a reorganisation involving a rename and a new redirect. This proposal was rejected leaving some people, including myself, dissatisfied. I’ve suggested in the ranked voting talk page that replacing the current redirect by a disambiguation page might be a suitable resolution. No one has responded so far. Colin.champion (talk) 07:38, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Criterion which describes/includes center squeeze?
Apologies for posting here, was unsure where else to ask.

It's well known that one of the detriments to IRV is the center squeeze; I wanted to compare voting systems based on this criterion, but I'm not sure what it falls under; I've consulted other experts but have not found an answer.

It's valuable to compare systems which exhibit it vs don't exhibit it. Some questions:


 * Is there an existing criterion that is a superset of exhibiting/preventing center squeeze? What I mean is, is there a criterion that if met by a voting system, center squeeze can never happen?
 * If not, is "exhibits center squeeze" worthy of a criterion?

It's easy to imagine a slight modification to IRV which adds additional rounds for about-to-be-eliminated candidates to see how they perform to a previously-eliminated candidate:

Round N-1:
 * Left 49%
 * Right 45%
 * Center-right 5% (all these voters transfer to Right in round N, eliminating Left)

However, suppose that if Left had been eliminated (as we know they're going to lose in the next round), that results in:

Round N-prime:
 * Center-Right 54%
 * Right 45%

I'm sure there's some IRV modification that suggests this, but it's difficult to find without knowing what criterion it's meeting

--Marquinho (talk) 20:01, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

OK so I think the closest thing to it is that it satisfies the condorcet winner (as Center-right would be that), which then points us to Smith/IRV

But Smith/IRV does not meet later-no-harm; this is because in round N-1:

Round 2-Non-Smith:
 * Left 49%
 * Right 45%
 * Center-right 5% [in smith set] (all these voters transfer to Right in round N, eliminating Left)

Right will be eliminated, when it should be present in the final round.

But if we modify Smith/IRV to revert back to classic IRV at round 2-Non-Smith (where there are only 2 non-smith candidates remaining) to see which of the 2 non-smith candidates will lose, we can then go back to round 2-Non-Smith and eliminate the losing candidate to see how their votes transfer to the smith set candidates

This would then meet later-no-harm, because only the losing candidate's votes are transferred to the smith set.

IRV is not a "proportional system"
I don't know who wrote this, but it's a load of bollocks:

"IRV is a proportional system, technically single transferable vote (STV) electing one candidate. This prevents the election of a candidate with no majority support, which can happen under plurality voting by a common "spoiler effect"; however, this is achieved by mathematically discarding all votes cast by voters not in the mutual majority, a result of proportionality requiring IRV to only elect from a solid majority coalition."

The reason "proportional system" isn't linked is because its own wikipedia article contradicts this:

"The most prevalent forms of proportional representation all require the use of multiple-member voting districts (also called super-districts), as it is not possible to fill a single seat in a proportional manner."

The wikipedia article on proportional systems says multi member districts are required. It feels like someone has tried to twist logic to try to shoe-horn IRV in with a list of other, actual proportional systems.

In fact, if you go back further in the edit history, IRV's own wiki page used to explicitly say "IRV is not a proportional system" now it says it is??? There aren't any sources on this wild notion and Wikipedia's own article on Proportional Representation contradicts this, so I'm reverting it back for the time being.

--23.233.36.198 (talk) 01:56, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Should Bottom Two Runoff-IRV be added as a section?
Bottom Two Runoff-IRV is nearly the same as Instant Runoff, but with the added step of comparing the bottom two candidates head-to-head for elimination. This change allows IRV to function in a 3 way race, where vanilla IRV produces the same results as plurality voting. With BTR, compromise candidates are much more likely to succeed, making it particularly compelling in primaries as the top vote getter will get through and be set up against a compromise alternative. It's easy to explain and only adds only a small amount of complexity to IRV (none to the process of voting).

I'm a starry eyed fan of it, but I'm not seeing it listed anywhere here. Here is a really dense article about it on electowiki: https://electowiki.org/wiki/Bottom-Two-Runoff_IRV

Is there a suggested way to get BTR added to the article, or a suggestion that the topic should be covered elsewhere? Efbrazil (talk) 00:04, 19 December 2021 (UTC)


 * There’s a section on ‘Similar methods’ and it’s surprising that elimination methods similar to IRV (including Coombs as well as BTR) receive no mention there. But I also feel that the article is too long. Colin.champion (talk) 08:22, 20 December 2021 (UTC)


 * added a table to the diagram; I’ve modified it to split B’s second preferences. It might confuse the reader (as well as not being in the spirit of the spatial model) if the B voters at the left of his region were assumed to give their second prefs to C.


 * However I think the para he or she added showing BTR giving the right result should be generalised. All Condorcet methods (including BTR) elect B, as does the Borda count and Coombs’ method. As the text stands it gives undue prominence to BTR as an alternative to IRV. Colin.champion (talk) 08:52, 21 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I like your improvement to the table. I was trying to keep things as simple as possible, but it's good to capture that second place votes can be split, particularly for a middle ground candidate. I added the math to hopefully make things more clear to the math-challenged. Efbrazil (talk) 18:09, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Disputes at Talk:Ranked voting
Conversations have been ongoing over the past few days regarding the scope and contents of the page Ranked voting that at times have seemed relevant to the contents of this page as well, and might be of interest to watchers here. - Astrophobe  (talk) 17:37, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Who calls it IRV?
AFAICT, none of the countries that use IRV actually call it IRV. So who exactly calls it IRV? Just voting theorists? It might be worth adding a small section to the article just about the names. - Frankie1969 (talk) 12:46, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * "preferential voting" in Australia et al
 * "alternative vote" in UK et al
 * "single transferable vote" in India et al
 * "ranked choice voting" in US et al


 * This article should be moved to Preferential voting, or possibly alternative vote, as those are the formal terms used in the country that uses it the most. I've never heard anyone in Australia call it "IRV". Seems to be an intrusive Americanism. - ҉ Randwicked ҉ 07:49, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Many of the names that are used are pretty bad. "Preferential voting" and "ranked choice voting" properly refer only to the input format (i.e. rankings rather than a single choice) and don't really talk about the voting method used. It's almost like these terms have been coined by people who don't realize that there are many other ways of making a choice given rankings. "Alternative vote" is called like that only because it's an alternative to the UK status quo; again it doesn't really describe instant runoff voting. Reasonable names are "instant runoff voting" and "single transferable vote" because they refer to what's actually going on. In voting theory circles, the latter is typically used to refer to the multi-winner method. DominikPeters (talk) 08:57, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Neither the Australian Electoral Commission nor the Australian Parliament contain any reference to "instant runoff voting" on their websites, far as I can find with a simple search, which is odd if these are the accepted terms. APH calls our voting system (for the HoR) Preferential Voting. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/RP0708/08rp05. Perhaps it's called that in American voting theory circles, but America is not the home of preferential voting. The term does not appear on the website of Antony Green, without a doubt Australia's foremost educator on the topic of elections. Australia is the country that has most widely adopted the preferential voting system at all levels, and the one where this article would be of most immediate interest to the widest number of people. I consider it highly doubtful that "IRV" meets WP:COMMONNAME for this reason alone. I note a move was proposed in 2011, with no consensus. Perhaps it's time to revisit this. - ҉ Randwicked ҉ 11:33, 11 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Using instant runoff voting makes it not only more neutral, if different places use different name, but its much more descriptive.

there are many systems called preferential voting, it is a very broad term. Even open list PR is sometimes called preferential voting same with ranked choice voting. there are very many voting systems with ranked ballots, IRV is just one. I guess it is used in the US because for electoral reform movements, it is the first clear option, it has a single winner and it works on a majority basis an understandable next step from fptp single transferable vote, it refers to the multi-winner version. than that would have to be renamed "proportional representation via single transferable vote", which is to long and also wrong because most use simply STV. the two systems have very different implication, one is majoritarian, the other is proportional, they should not be merged alternative vote is at least concrete, but not very descriptive. it also shares an acronym with Approval Voting (AV), and I think the term is unknown in the US, so the more neutral wording still favours IRV imo IRV is descriptive name, worst case scenario, people confuse it with contingent voting (which is instant two round system while IRV is instant exhaustive ballot voting) Rankedchoicevoter (talk) 05:27, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Proportionality
IRV is referred to in the literature as STV electing 1 winner, with a Droop quota. It's proportional for solid coalitions and technically a proportional voting method electing 1. This is different from first-past-the-post, where less than a Droop quota can elect a winner, and the result may not be PSC. John Moser (talk) 21:14, 7 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Just because its literally STV (Droop) with 1 winner doesn't mean its proportional in the common meaning. It however, is "majoritarian" in multiple meanings, 1. it is single-winner (winner by definition takes all, therefore "majoritarian" by representation) 2. it is majority voting (as opposed to plurality) 3. it is not proportional for electing assemblies, since its single winner, such are also referred to as "majoritarian" as it favours large parties.
 * "proportional for solid coalitions" is also mainly for multi-winner systems, even if it is applicable for 1, it is very misleading to categorise IRV as a "proportional" method - even other technically proportional methods, such as STV or list PR with small district magnitudes without levelling seats are referred to as "semi-proportional" instead (like the "binomial" system) Rankedchoicevoter (talk) 14:57, 8 August 2022 (UTC)