[EM] Compromise between IRV and Condorcet methods

[Richard]

> I am beginning to realize that to get legislation passed, we need the
> language of the proposed law to simply "say what it means and mean
> what it says." ....

I agree the wording should be clear.

The wording of Oregon's Measure 117, which would have adopted RCV/IRV 
for some Oregon elections, was well-written (although not ideal).

Part of the reason for the good wording is the League of Women Voters of 
Oregon were involved in writing that version, and they have some 
election-method experts.

Two years earlier in the Oregon legislature a proposed RCV bill 
basically came from the FairVote folks and the Ranked Choice Voting 
Resource Center (RCVRC).  That wording was awful.  I gave verbal 
testimony against it, saying the wording was flawed.

Although the Measure 117 wording would have implemented IRV, the wording 
was clean enough that the following two sentences could have been added 
later:

"Pairwise losing candidates are eliminated when they occur.  A pairwise 
losing candidate is a candidate who would lose every one-on-one contest 
against every remaining candidate."

Of course this is not BTR-IRV.  Rather, it's Ranked Choice Including 
Pairwise Elimination (RCIPE).

This simple refinement would overcome the flaw that the candidate with 
the fewest transferred votes is not always least popular.  This 
refinement would almost always elect the Condorcet winner, but without 
losing the clone independence of IRV.

As an added advantage of the Measure 117 wording, it did not specify how 
so-called "overvotes" are to be counted.  This flexibility would allow 
RCVRC, via their RCTab software, to add a third option for correctly 
counting "overvotes," and allow states or cities to choose this better 
overvote-handling option.  (The existing two options only allow skipping 
overvote marks, or dismissing those marks when they are encountered).


Richard Fobes



On 8/21/25 14:38, robert bristow-johnson via Election-Methods wrote:
> You mean BTR-IRV?
> 
> How about straight-ahead Condorcet with Top-Two Runoff in the case of a 
> cycle?  It's sorta like IRV in the contingency of a cycle.
> 
> I am beginning to realize that to get legislation passed, we need the 
> language of the proposed law to simply "say what it means and mean what 
> it says.". To me, that means a "Two-method system ", that is straight- 
> ahead Condorcet along with a completion method that, to the pedestrian 
> voter or policy maker, makes simple sense.  Top-two delayed runoff is 
> what we do now in jurisdictions that use FPTP ballots but require a 50% 
> (or sometimes lower, like 40%) vote for the winner.
> 
> r b-j
> 
> Burlington Vermont
> 
> /Powered by Cricket Wireless/
> 
> ------ Original message------
> *From: *Richard via Election-Methods
> *Date: *Thu, Aug 21, 2025 17:18
> *To: *election-methods at lists.electorama.com <mailto:election- 
> methods at lists.electorama.com>;
> *Cc: *
> *Subject:*[EM] Compromise between IRV and Condorcet methods
> 
> On 8/21/25 11:37, Chris Benham via Election-Methods wrote:
>   > *Elect whichever of the Hare winner and the most approved candidate
>   > pairwise beats the other.*
> 
> Here I'll put in a plug for refining IRV by eliminating pairwise losing
> candidates when they occur.  It's a simple compromise between IRV and
> Condorcet methods that isn't "clunky" and yields lots of "bang for the
> buck."
> 
> A pairwise losing candidate is a candidate who loses every one-on-one
> contest against every other remaining candidate.
> 
> Only when a counting round lacks a pairwise losing candidate does the
> combined method fall back on eliminating the candidate with the fewest
> transferred votes.
> 
> Richard Fobes
> 
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