Consensus Choice, a new (2024) and simple Condorcet voting method
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Better Choices for Democracy offers Consensus Choice as an alternative to plurality voting and Ranked Choice Voting.
Like BTR-Score, Consensus Choice combines Condorcet fairness and reliability with simplicity and a reasonable argument for state constitutional compliance.
The creator of BTR-Score, Nicolaus Tidman, is on the Better Choices board of directors. Former Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is a key backer.
How it works: Consensus Choice flier
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Candidates from all parties compete in an open blanket primary. The Better Choices website gives little detail about the primary. Perhaps it will favor wealthy and well-financed unaffiliated candidates like the Top Four and Final Five primaries (more below).
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Voters rank all candidates
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Candidates are compared head-to-head, like a round-robin tournament. Pairwise wins and losses are determined from each ballot.
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The results from all the ballots determine who wins each match of the round-robin tournament.
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Most Wins, Smallest Loss - If a candidate beats all the other candidates one-on-one, that candidate wins. If there is no “beats all” winner, the candidate with the most wins is elected. In case of a tie, the candidate with the smallest head-to-head loss versus other tied contestants wins. Thus, the candidate closest to a Condorcet win is elected.
For me the big question is - Would the “smallest loss” tie breaker comply with state constitutions that require election winners to have the “largest,” “greatest,” or “highest” number of votes or a “plurality of the votes”? Would love to hear your opinion.
Most Wins, Most Wins on the Ballots - An alternative to the “smallest loss” tiebreaker: go back to the ballots and elect the tied candidate with the most head-to-head victories against the other tied candidates. This method considers every head-to-head match of tied candidates from every ballot. Would this better comply with state constitutions?
As a hybrid Condorcet method, Consensus Choice will fail some voting criteria. Please comment if you see a particularly troubling failure.
Concerning primary elections:
More info on Top Four and Top Five primaries. For a blanket primary designed to be fair to all candidates, check out Neutral Open Primaries. That should be enough shameless plugs for my website. -
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@gregw hm I’m just not sure how well-studied this method in particular is, as in, why it needs to be “most wins, fewest losses.” It makes as much intuitive sense as anything else, and it’s Condorcet so that’s fine.
Also it’s obviously susceptible to potentially unfortunate results when the Condorcet winner does not exist (which the above has ignored in their last step of the “how it works” section as “the candidate who beats all the others wins.”)
I still think rank-based methods are going to be much more difficult to gain firm ground on than approval. IRV got some traction but now it’s facing backlash (some rightfully so). Approval on the other hand seems relatively hard to argue against. I think it would yield a more lasting forward step.
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Concerning
Most Wins, Smallest Loss
VS
Most Wins, Most Wins on the Ballots;We need a tiebreaker that can pass constitutional muster. Can either pass?
In our divided times a voting method needs Condorcet fairness and reliability to survive. One mistake can create a lot enemies for a voting method. Both rating and ranking give voters a stronger voice. We learn more about the voters’ intentions.
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@gregw I think Condorcet is great when a Condorcet winner exists, but when one doesn’t exist it’s really troublesome. Ideally, we would have a method to check whether one exists without unearthing the Condorcet cycle that reveals the jilted majority upon the choosing of any winner, but that is essentially impossible.
I think it makes sense to do Condorcet//Approval, in two separate rounds, the approval round restricted to the Smith set. But two round voting outright is a difficult sell in the USA (even though two-round voting is pretty common all over the rest of the world…).
People try to put the two together in a single round vote, but the strategic incentives of casting rank and approval/score indications on the same ballot cause issues.
My personal belief is that this system of two-round voting for single winner elections, I.e. approval conditional on already knowing the Smith set, would be most ideal. I think actually implementing the approval aspect first however is an easier sell than implementing the Condorcet aspect first. I can envision a natural progression as: (1) implement straight approval, (2) eventually indicate the shortcomings of approval in guaranteeing election of Smith set candidates, (3) reform to include a ranked primaries to restrict to the Smith set before the final approval vote.
I feel even having rank/Smith-based primaries makes way more sense than what we have if the subsequent system is approval. There’s no issue with vote splitting in that instance, and it fits at least partially into the political system we already have (although this would also require substantial changes).
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Is this as similar to Ranked Robin (https://www.equal.vote/ranked_robin) as it sounds?
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@poppeacock yes it seems to be a rebranding of Ranked Robin; from your link:
“Carmen won the most match-ups against other candidates, so she is elected the winner.”
I do notice often that these pro- rank-based voting sites almost never address the issues with reconciling the possible nonexistence of a Condorcet winner.
Is the main advantage of Ranked Robin over other Condorcet methods that it is precinct summable?
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@cfrank I think the page I linked addresses these issues. "On ties:
In the event of a rock-paper-scissors type tie where there isn't a single candidate preferred over all others, there are a number of logical tiebreaker options supported by the Equal Vote Coalition. A jurisdiction could simply break the tie in favor of the tied candidate who won the most match-ups (Copeland Tiebreaker), or elect the tied candidate who was top-ranked on the most ballots (Favorite Tiebreaker), or elect the tied candidate who lost their worst match by the smallest margin (Smith-Minimax Tiebreaker). The key is to pick something practical and transparent in advance and stick with it. "And while it doesn't specifically compare to other Condorcet methods, it does describe the advantages, e.g., that it's comparatively simple/easy to explain to voters: "Ranked Robin Advantages:
Simple. Ranked Robin allows voters to rank candidates however they like. All rankings are counted, and the candidate preferred over the most others wins. This makes Ranked Robin easy for voters and easy to understand conceptually. The fact that all rankings are always counted makes it relatively easy to tally and audit.
Expressive. Allowing voters to give equal rankings helps voters express more nuanced opinions and ensures voters can rank as many candidates as desired, even if there are more candidates than available ranks on the ballot.
Honest. Candidates are compared head-to-head, like an election with only two candidates. Voting honestly is always the best choice in that scenario, so voters can rest assured that it’s best to rank candidates honestly.
Accurate. Ranked Robin always elect the most preferred candidate if one exists. This is the gold standard for measuring accuracy for ranked elections. Peer review and other studies consistently back up claims by advocates. Despite its relative simplicity, Ranked Robin’s accuracy is top tier, especially when paired with a robust tiebreaker.
Equal. Ranked Robin eliminates vote-splitting and ensures an equally powerful vote for each and every voter by allowing voters to rank candidates freely and then counting all voters' rankings. There are no wasted votes, and whether or not your favorite can win, your vote will make a difference.
Secure. Ranked Robin ballots can be tallied locally as they come in and ballots are batch summable. This is a vital component of election security, auditability, and election integrity especially in jurisdictions that run geographically-spread or high-profile elections.
No primary needed. Ranked Robin is highly accurate even in races with a large number of candidates, which means that it can be used without a primary election if desired. This can save taxpayers, candidates, and voters the headaches and expense that comes with holding two separate elections each cycle." -
@poppeacock I see, so the site is using “Ranked Robin” as the umbrella term for any Condorcet method?
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@cfrank I don't know that much about the range of methods called Condorcet. Are there Condorcet methods that are different from what it describes as Ranked Robin?
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@poppeacock a “Condorcet winner” is a candidate that beats every other candidate in a majoritarian head-to-head match up, also called a “beats all” winner. There can be at most one Condorcet winner in an election; however, there are pathological cases when a Condorcet winner does not exist at all, caused by what are known as Condorcet cycles.
The classic example is three voters using rank ballots over three candidates:
V1: A>B>C
V2: B>C>A
V3: C>A>BYou can see that A>B 2:1, B>C 2:1, but C>A 2:1. So A>B>C>A is a Condorcet cycle, which is a generalized “rock-paper-scissors” situation. Whichever candidate you choose as the winner, there is some majority of the voters who would have preferred a different candidate. That’s the unfortunate thing that happens when a Condorcet winner doesn’t exist…
Regardless, a Condorcet method is any method that guarantees electing the Condorcet winner when one exists. Condorcet methods differ in how they reconcile choosing a winner when the Condorcet winner does not exist, I.e. in effect how they determine which majority group(s) to jilt.
So for example, if Ranked Robin doesn’t specify how it resolves when there is no Condorcet winner, then it’s really a blanket term for Condorcet methods in general. Or maybe it’s a label for a particular curated subset of Condorcet methods.
