[EM] Maine RCV

[Richard]

On 4/30/26 02:59, Etjon Basha via Election-Methods wrote:
 > This whole situation led me to think of how might someone dead-set on
 > IRV get around this, which would obviously be through runoff voting.

Simple.  Eliminate pairwise losing candidates when they occur.  (A 
pairwise losing candidate is a candidate who would lose every one-on-one 
contest against every remaining candidate.)

This approach allows as many candidates as desired.  The runoff election 
can include two candidates from each party.  Even if four political 
parties are able to meet the threshold requirement.

Or, if the primary election is "open," the "top" 5 or 6 candidates can 
be in the runoff election, even if plurality voting is used in the open 
primary.

Besides dramatically increasing the likelihood the winner will be the 
Condorcet winner, this method resists tactical/strategic voting.  Its 
strategy resistance is similar to Benham's method, which is much better 
than most other Condorcet methods.

Here is election-grade software that already offers this option to 
eliminate pairwise losing candidates:

https://github.com/cpsolver/rctabplus

This RCTabPlus software is a fork of the RCTab software maintained by 
the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center (RCVRC), which is aligned with 
the FairVote organization.  In other words, RCTab is the official 
software used as the basis for IRV elections in the United States.

For the benefit of voters who dislike math details, and who prefer 
videos, here's a video at r/EndFPTP that demonstrates this improvement 
over IRV using representative ballots for the Alaska special election 
between Peltola and Begich and Palin.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1sw9as7/pairwise_vote_counting/

These 35 animated ballots nicely summarize the actual proportions of 
ballots in that actual election -- after omitting minor candidates. 
Claude AI helped me find that 34 or 35 ballots is a sweet spot for 
matching proportions with that election's real election percentages.

As a reminder, this Alaska election was a top-four runoff after an open 
primary.  The second Democrat dropped out to shift votes to the 
remaining Democrat, who won based on IRV counting.

Importantly, Sarah Palin was the pairwise losing candidate.  If she had 
been eliminated instead of Begich, the Condorcet winner, Begich, would 
have won.

The name "Ranked Choice Voting Plus" separates pairwise-counted methods 
(including Condorcet methods and this modification of IRV) from the 
"basic" version of Ranked Choice Voting that FairVote promotes (which we 
call IRV).

This refinement is easy to explain to voters who strongly want IRV.  Use 
a sports metaphor.  When a soccer tournament has a team that has lost 
against every other team still in the playoffs, that pairwise losing 
soccer team clearly deserves to be eliminated.

The result is a method that does not need to be constrained to a top-two 
runoff in order to avoid unfair results (vote splitting, center squeeze 
effect, non-Condorcet winner, etc.).

Most importantly, although billionaires can control which candidate from 
each party gets the party's first spot, the candidate who gets the 
party's second-most votes will be a candidate who is likely to be 
favored by the majority of voters.  One of those second-nominee 
candidates is likely to win.

Bonus: Ranked choice voting (either "plus" or "basic") strongly resists 
voter-suppression tactics.

Expressed in terms of the 2024 US presidential election, the second 
Republican candidate would have been Nikki Haley because she got the 
second-most votes in the Republican primary.  Assuming Kamala Harris was 
the second Democratic candidate, either Haley or Harris would have won 
because a majority of voters would have ranked them higher than either 
of the billionaire-backed front-runners.

In summary, eliminating pairwise losing candidates (when they occur) 
ensures the winner is virtually always supported by a majority of 
voters, which is the basis for fair single-winner elections.

The word "virtually" allows for the fact that it's mathematically 
possible to identify a scenario that violates this claim.  However, such 
a scenario has to involve the majority-supported Condorcet winner 
appearing as the first choice on a relatively small percentage of 
ballots.  IRV fans are trained by FairVote to distrust such a result.

This simple solution meets the needs of both IRV fans and Condorcet 
fans.  Also it meets the most meaningful needs of Approval fans and STAR 
fans.

Although you didn't mention the IRV issue of "overvotes," note that 
RCTabPlus adds an overvote-counting rule that is far better than any of 
the overvote rules in RCTab.

Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy


On 4/30/26 02:59, Etjon Basha via Election-Methods wrote:
> Good evening gentlemen,
> 
> This whole situation led me to think of how might someone dead-set on 
> IRV get around this, which would obviously be through runoff voting.
> 
> Which in turn made me think of runoff itself, and how it's an 
> inefficient way to parse a crowded field of candidates in round one. 
> Once you get to round two, there's no games left to play, and a contest 
> between two parties only is at least immune to on-the-day voter strategy.
> 
> Of course, if we let more candidates than two survive the first round, 
> we would suffer from potentially fewer failures on round 1, but 
> potentially more on round 2.
> 
> So, which is the optimal way to minimise the total strategizing across 
> two rounds?
> 
> Three candidates? However many top-voted collectively clear half the 
> votes cast? Any other ideas? Or is "top two" likely the best compromise 
> anyway?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Etjon
> 
> On Wed, 15 Apr 2026, 8:59 pm Etjon Basha, <etjonbasha at gmail.com 
> <mailto:etjonbasha at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Greetings gentleman,
> 
>     And thanks Rob,
> 
>     So, not even approval would pass? Nothing beyond plurality?
> 
>     On Wed, 15 Apr 2026, 6:08 pm Rob Lanphier via Election-Methods,
>     <election-methods at lists.electorama.com <mailto:election-
>     methods at lists.electorama.com>> wrote:
> 
>         Hi folks,
> 
>         Interesting report by Sara Wolk on votingtheory.org <http://
>         votingtheory.org>:
>         https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/606/rcv-found-
>         unconstitutional-in-maine <https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/
>         topic/606/rcv-found-unconstitutional-in-maine>
> 
>         In short: the Maine legislature decided to expand RCV/IRV beyond
>         federal offices to state and local offices, but worried about
>         both a governor's veto, and/or an overturn from Maine's high
>         court (the "SJC" or "Supreme Judicial Court").  So, rather than
>         sending it to the governor (whose veto could be for many
>         reasons), they sent it to the SJC first.  The SJC said "/The
>         Maine Constitution, construed as a whole, treats a 'vote' as a
>         single choice, tallied by a municipality/"  That not only has
>         implications for RCV, but many other systems too.  A brief
>         explainer with direct links the SJC opinion and some key quotes
>         from them is available on electowiki:
>         https://electowiki.org/wiki/Maine#2026_advisory_opinion
>         <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Maine#2026_advisory_opinion>
> 
>         The "/tallied by a municipality/" caveat is interesting, since
>         it implies precinct summability is important to the SJC.
> 
>         Thoughts?
>         Rob
>         p.s. my cursory investigation of this topic was in preparation
>         for the ElectoramaCall, which is happening in a few hours:
>         https://electowiki.org/wiki/ElectoramaCall <https://
>         electowiki.org/wiki/ElectoramaCall>
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