Tiebreakers, Subcycle Rules

[Mike Ositoff]

Sequential Dropping, admittedly, can return a tie when 2
candidates have the same vote-count in pairwise comparisons.

But there's no such thing as a method that will never return a
tie when 2 candidates have the same numbers, in terms of vote-counts.

So I'd say that the terms "decisive" vs "indecisive" have to be
used to distinguish between methods that can return a tie
only when 2 voters share a vote-count total, vs methods that
can return a tie without that happening.

In even a city-size public election, it's improbable that
a method that's decisive, as defined above, would return a tie.

Maybe, somewhere in the electoral laws, it says what to do when
Plurality (First Past The Post) returns a tie. If that isn't
currently in the electoral laws where we propose reform, then
it needn't be included in the reform--if it isn't considered needed
now, then it needn't be considered with the new decisive method.

If, on the other hand, such a tiebreaker _is_ included in
current electoral law (draw lots, let the mayor, governor or
President break the tie, or hold another election, etc.),
then that provision should be left as-is, and all that we'd
be proposing to add would be the new method, not the tiebreaker,
since we already have one on the books (by assumption).

So there's no need to complicate the rule of the methods that
are decisive, as defined in this letter, by addding a tiebreaker
to their rules.

Mike Ossipoff