You've oversimplified what they advocate. Their website says:

"In almost all large-scale elections, the process of comparing pairs of
candidates will identify the Consensus Choice, a single candidate who
wins all their head-to-head matchups. In the unlikely event that no
Consensus Choice exists, the ultimate winner can be determined by one of
the following resolution methods:

    "Margin of Loss Resolution: If there is no Consensus Choice, the
candidate whose largest head-to-head loss is smallest is declared the
winner.

    "Number of Wins & Margin of Loss Resolution: The candidate with the
most head-to-head wins is declared the winner. In the event that
multiple candidates tie for most head-to-head wins, the tie is broken in
favor of the one whose largest head-to-head loss is smallest.

    "Instant Runoff Resolution: If there is no Consensus Choice,
Instant Runoff Voting is used to determine the winner."

My biggest question is why they included instant runoff as one of the
resolution methods, especially because on their FAQ page, they explain
why it isn't a good method:

"Instant Runoff Voting

"Under Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), voters rank candidates in order of
preference. Initially, only first-choice votes are counted. If no
candidate has a majority (>50%), the candidate with the fewest
first-choice votes is eliminated, and votes for that candidate are
transferred to the voters’ next-ranked candidates. This process repeats
until one candidate receives a majority of the remaining votes.

"Under Consensus Choice, voters rank candidates similarly, but instead
of using sequential elimination rounds, we use rankings to directly
compare each candidate against every other candidate in head-to-head
matchups. The candidate who wins against every other candidate
individually is declared the winner.

"Consensus Choice selects the candidate with the broadest support across
the entire electorate.

"As a result, Consensus Choice discourages divisive campaigning because
winners must appeal broadly, not just to a faction or a particular base
of supporters.

"Example:

    "IRV: Candidate A initially leads but doesn't have a majority.
Candidate C is eliminated, and votes transfer primarily to Candidate B,
making B the winner—even if Candidate D (already eliminated) could have
beaten B head-to-head.

    "Consensus Choice: Candidate B might have the most pairwise wins
against all others directly, immediately making B the winner without
needing multiple rounds of eliminations.

"Why it matters:

"Because it eliminates candidates one at a time, Instant Runoff may
eliminate a candidate early who would have broader appeal overall.

"Consensus Choice encourages candidates to build broader support among
voters to reduce toxic polarization. Under Instant Runoff Voting, the
winning candidate only needs to beat the last remaining competitor
head-to-head, which doesn't necessarily mean that the IRV winner has
majority support when compared to other candidates.

"In short, IRV focuses on sequential elimination rounds, while Consensus
Choice evaluates comprehensive head-to-head comparisons to select the
candidate most broadly supported by the electorate."

-Ralph Suter

On 6/19/2025 3:02 PM, election-methods-request@lists.electorama.com wrote:

It would be neat if they set out an actual theory of change instead of just
“tell your friends about our cool idea.”

On Thu, Jun 19, 2025 at 5:13 PM Ralph Suter via Election-Methods <
election-methods@lists.electorama.com> wrote:

This grew out of a meeting that Nic Tideman organized in 2023 (September or October, I can't remember) at Virginia Tech.  I attended the meeting.  We (or they, I hadn't been asked to play any role here) are trying to set up an organizational structure similar to FairVote (and its large number of satellite orgs), Center for Election Science (the Approval vote folks), and the Equal Vote Coalition (the STAR folks).  I really wish we got the domain for Equal Vote, because that term belongs with Condorcet and no other method (unless that other method is Condorcet-consistent).  "Better Choices" is the name, that was available, that we sorta glombed onto.

My input is less scholarly and more about advocacy and activism.  Living in Burlington Vermont, I was around in one of the two U.S. RCV elections in which a Condorcet winner existed but was not elected.  Bad shit happens following but 13 years later we got IRV back again, under a new-improved label: RCV.

We Condorcet advocates must not allow FairVote and the like to appropriate the term "Ranked-Choice Voting" to mean only Hare RCV or Instant-Runoff.  Borda is RCV.  Bucklin is RCV.  Condorcet is RCV.  If it's a ranked ballot and the most-preferred candidate is marked with a #1 (not a #5 like in Score or STAR), it's Ranked-Choice Voting.  It's not just Hare RCV.  We must not let them take RCV from the lexicon and say it only means IRV.

And we must confront other lies (literally lies) coming outa FairVote and satellite orgs.  Like right on the front page here: https://voterchoicema.org/ there are two significant lies.  They're lies and should be identified as such.

I think that Better Choices can be done better to focus on legislation and to point out, to policy makers and the general public, why Condorcet is better than Hare but affirm why a ranked ballot is better than FPTP or even the other (cardinal) alternatives; Score, STAR, or Approval.  But we gotta point out the FairVote lies because Hare RCV advocates (and writers) lie with impunity.  The anti-reform crowd pick up on it and use it to discredit any ranked ballot reform.

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r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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That's a pretty ridiculous put-down given that they're just getting
started. I can't imagine, judging from the descriptions of the people on
their staff, board of directors, and advisory board, that they're so
stupid as to think that "tell your friends" is anything but the
beginning of a much more sophisticated and well-planned long-term
strategy. One way they're likely to promote their efforts is with op-ed
articles in New York Times, Washington Post, and other major
publications, as Rob Richie of FairVote and other IRV advocates have
often done. My guess is that we'll begin seeing such articles very soon,
maybe in the next week or two.

-Ralph

On 6/19/2025 4:17 PM, Michael Garman wrote:

“Writing a few op-eds” isn’t much better. What’s the plan for building a
grassroots movement?

I’m not impressed by a slick website or a list of names. Appealing to
credentials isn’t a theory of change, Ralph.

On Thu, Jun 19, 2025 at 5:37 PM Ralph Suter RLSuter@aol.com wrote:

Ralph,

In the YouTube video Marcus linked to, only the "Instant Runoff
Resolution" is mentioned:

https://youtu.be/tMVLU63Ws9A?t=201

Presumably they will (or on the evidence of the video already have)
settle on a single resolution method for their public proposal. Of the
three they list I consider the "Instant Runoff Resolution" to be the
least bad.

The first (judging by what they call it, because that is the only clue
they give to exactly what they mean by "smallest")  is presumably
Margins, which fails the Plurality criterion and has especially
egregious failures of Later-no-Help.

The second is Copeland//Margins. We know that Copeland fails Clone
Independence and when there is no CW is usually indecisive.

Their criticism of  "instant runoff" is essentially that it can
eliminate a "Consensus Choice" (aka CW).  But since they way are using
it here that can't happen, that criticism is redundant.

Chris Benham

https://www.betterchoices.vote/faqs

On 20/06/2025 6:42 am, Ralph Suter via Election-Methods wrote:

On 2025-06-19 23:12, Ralph Suter via Election-Methods wrote:

The best explanation I can figure out is that they're going for absolute
simplicity. Minmax and Copeland have a reasonable claim to being as
simple as possible for (a pairwise matrix-based) Condorcet method; and
then Condorcet//IRV would be there as the simplest augmentation to IRV
that makes it Condorcet, for those jurisdictions that already use or are
familiar with IRV.

I agree that it's not ideal, though. As far as IRV hybrids go, I would
imagine Benham to have a stronger claim on retaining the desirable
aspects of Condorcet even in troublesome (cyclical) elections, since it
passes Smith; while not being all that much harder.

Something like:

"Instant Runoff Resolution: If there is no Consensus Choice among
candidates not eliminated, perform one step of Instant Runoff: eliminate
the first preference loser, and try again."

-km

...

I think the simplest augmentation to IRV that makes it Condorcet is BTR-IRV.  The augmentation is just the stuff in the [brackets] in step (4).  Take that out and you have Hare IRV.

All elections of [office] shall be by ballot, using a system of ranked-choice voting
without a separate runoff election. The presiding election officer shall implement a
ranked-choice voting protocol according to these guidelines:
(1) The ballot shall give voters the option of ranking candidates in order of
preference. Lower ordinal preference shall be considered higher rank and the
candidate marked as first preference is considered ranked highest. Equal ranking of
candidates shall not be allowed. Any candidate not marked with a preference shall
be considered as ranked lower than every candidate marked with a preference.
(2) If a candidate receives a majority (over 50 percent of all marked ballots) of
first preferences, that candidate is elected.
(3) If no candidate receives a majority of first preferences, an instant runoff
retabulation shall be performed by the presiding election officer. The instant runoff
retabulation shall be conducted in sequential rounds. A "continuing candidate" is
defined as a candidate that has not been defeated in any previous round. Initially,
no candidate is defeated and all candidates begin as continuing candidates.
(4) In each round, every ballot shall count as a single vote for whichever
continuing candidate the voter has ranked highest. The [two candidates with the
fewest votes in a round, herein denoted as "A" and "B", shall contend in a runoff in
which the candidate, A or B, with lesser voter support shall be defeated in the
current round. If the number of ballots ranking A higher than B exceeds the
number of ballots ranking B higher than A, then B has lesser voter support, B is
defeated, and A continues to the following round. Likewise, if the number of
ballots ranking B higher than A exceeds the number of ballots ranking A higher
than B, then A has lesser voter support, A is defeated, and B continues to the
following round. In the case that the aforementioned measures of voter support of
A and B are tied, then the] candidate with fewest votes is defeated in the current
round.
(5) The aforementioned instant runoff retabulation, eliminating one candidate
each round, shall be repeated until only two candidates remain. The remaining
candidate then receiving the greatest number of votes is elected.
(6) The [governing jurisdiction] may adopt additional regulations consistent with
this subsection to implement these standards.

I used to sorta like this method since it was a Condorcet-consistent "single-method system" and is the least possible modification to Hare IRV.  But I have since become convinced from state legislators and the legislative counsel (these are the lawyers employed by the state legislature that assist legislators in writing law) that "the law should say what it means and mean what it says".  So we're doing a "two-method system"; straight-ahead Condorcet and a "completion method" to deal with the contingency that there is no Condorcet winner.  That is simple and straight-forward code and everyone can see, simply, what the intent of the law is and how it pans out in unusual situations.

--

r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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On 2025-06-24 19:49, robert bristow-johnson via Election-Methods wrote:

What do you mean by that "the law should say what it means and mean what
it says"?

Consider a method like IRV. Procedurally, it is simple: repeatedly
eliminate the Plurality loser until somone has a majority. But in
practice, it can exhibit chaotic behavior, nonmonotonicity, and so on.
How its procedure works doesn't seem to tell you much about how it behaves.

So if IRV is the standard, then the required connection between what the
law says (the procedure it defines) and what it means (what happens as a
consequence) doesn't seem very strict, and it doesn't seem like BTR-IRV
would be any worse in that respect.

-km

This is how I interpreted it when this was said to me by my state rep and the legislative counsel.  This is as pertains to this bill, (which went nowhere, unfortunately) in the previous legislature: https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2024/Docs/BILLS/H-0424/H-0424%20As%20Introduced.pdf

Now, the sponsors of the bill (both state reps in my district, which is in Burlington Vermont, the city with an infamous IRV failure to elect the CW in 2009) understood that we were proposing Condorcet RCV and also to make sure that ballots are tabulated locally, at the polling place.  Those were the two principal purposes of this bill.  So then, of course, the question was which Condorcet method and how will the actually legislative language be drafted?

We were looking at BTR-IRV as one possibility, simply because everyone knew about IRV and this was the simplest modification to IRV that people were familiar with.  There were two problems, we could still get pairwise tallies that are summable to see who the CW is, but the BTR-IRV method didn't rely on all of these tallies but only the pair tallies for the bottom-two candidates in each elimination round.  And, it seemed to the lawyer (the legislative counselor) and the state rep that this language was an "end-around" to sorta disguise or obscure the true purpose of the bill and that people will trust our intentions more if we just say clearly what it is we want to accomplish.

What we want is the Condorcet criterion to be adhered to whenever possible and when it cannot, the simplest and fair resolution to the election that most people, as a whole, would accept is fair and makes sense.  This basically told us that we needed to codify the straight-forward "two-method system" Condorcet language and put in a good completion method that is easy to understand and to sell to other policy makers:

§ 2691d. RANKED-CHOICE VOTING SYSTEM; IMPLEMENTATION
(a) Implementation. A town, city, or village that has adopted the ranked choice voting system pursuant to section 2691b of this title shall implement its elections of candidates running for single-seat offices in that town, city, or village in accordance with this section.
(b) Tabulation at polling places. All elections using the ranked-choice voting system shall be tabulated at polling places by the presiding officer.
(c) Initial tabulation. Upon tabulation of the ballots, if a candidate receives a majority of first-ranked preferences, that candidate is declared the winner of the election.
(d) Additional tabulation.
(1) Upon tabulation of the ballots, if no candidate receives a majority of first-ranked preferences, the ballots shall be tabulated again by paired comparison and examining every possible paired comparison. In each paired comparison, the presiding officer shall note the winning candidate in each paired comparison or if there is instead a tie.
(2) Condorcet winner. If a candidate is the winning candidate in every paired comparison, the candidate shall be declared the winner of the election.
(3) No Condorcet winner. If there is no candidate who is the winning candidate in every paired comparison, then the candidate having the plurality of first-ranking preferences is declared the winner.

Earlier in the bill they define what a "paired comparison" is.  We started to get a little hesitant to make it too complicated and we settled on Condorcet-Plurality.  But, if we do this again, I will try to persuade the sponsoring rep to do it a little better (Condorcet-TTR):

    § 2691d (d)(3)  No Condorcet winner.  If there is no candidate who is the winning candidate in every paired comparison, then the winning candidate of the paired comparison involving the two candidates having the most first-ranking preferences is declared the winner.

This is what we got to, to spell out to everyone in the room, in simple and plain English, what the proposed legislation is meant to accomplish.  This is what they meant when they told me that "the law should simply say what it means and mean what it says."  If it were Schulze or even Ranked Pairs, that language would be unclear to most people reading it what, in principle, the legislation is intended to accomplish.  (Sorry Markus, sorry Nic.)  Perhaps Minimax could suffice for legislative language.

Of course, sometimes that doesn't happen.  This is one of FairVote's lies.  48% is no majority.

I agree with all of that, but I read that as a problem for IRV.  The technical thing that we want RCV to do for us is to prevent the Spoiler Effect by granting to voters that their 2nd-choice vote will be counted in lieu of their 1st-choice when their 1st-choice candidate is defeated.

Ostensibly IRV appears to do that, but it really doesn't.  IRV does not grant to the voters primarily supporting the loser in the IRV final round, their 2nd-choice vote.  Their 1st-choice candidate is defeated, but their 2nd-choice vote is not counted.  (Usually, not counting those particular 2nd-choice votes makes no difference in the outcome of the election, but it certainly does make a difference when the CW is eliminated before the final IRV round.)

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r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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