Two Thirds Threshold for IRV

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Samuel Nelson

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Mar 29, 2026, 8:25:25 PMMar 29
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Reading through the documentation for different counting methods, I'm not seeing a process that can modify ranked choice IRV to make the threshold 2/3rds instead of a simple majority. Has anyone else run into this use case before? What has your approach been? Is there a way to do this with opavote? 

Andy Anderson

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Mar 29, 2026, 9:27:35 PMMar 29
to Samuel Nelson, OpaVote Support Forum
Hi, Samuel,

Ranked choice is not guaranteed to have a 2/3rd majority, only a simple majority which is more votes than all others put together. It reaches that by eliminating candidates one by one. If there are more than two candidates remaining when one reaches a simple majority it is possible to continue eliminating candidates until there are only two candidates, which would maximize the winner’s vote, and one could have a 2/3 majority, but no guarantee. If I remember correctly, Opavote runs to two automatically.

— Andy

On Mar 29, 2026, at 8:25 PM, Samuel Nelson <nelson...@gmail.com> wrote:

Reading through the documentation for different counting methods, I'm not seeing a process that can modify ranked choice IRV to make the threshold 2/3rds instead of a simple majority. Has anyone else run into this use case before? What has your approach been? Is there a way to do this with opavote? 

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Greg Dennis

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Mar 30, 2026, 10:36:26 AMMar 30
to Samuel Nelson, OpaVote Support Forum
Hi Samuel,

There are instructions here:
https://blog.opavote.com/2017/12/ranked-choice-voting-with-supermajority.html

Is this for an endorsement process? If so, my full recommendations for conducting an endorsement process with RCV (IRV) are here:
https://fairvote.org/report/best-practices-for-using-ranked-choice-voting-to-endorse-candidates/

Greg


On Sun, Mar 29, 2026 at 8:25 PM Samuel Nelson <nelson...@gmail.com> wrote:
Reading through the documentation for different counting methods, I'm not seeing a process that can modify ranked choice IRV to make the threshold 2/3rds instead of a simple majority. Has anyone else run into this use case before? What has your approach been? Is there a way to do this with opavote? 

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Team OpaVote

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Mar 30, 2026, 2:16:21 PMMar 30
to Samuel Nelson, opavote...@googlegroups.com
Hi Samuel,

The link Greg shared earlier has a write-up of our recommended method: https://blog.opavote.com/2017/12/ranked-choice-voting-with-supermajority.html

You can set up a (free) test election with some fake votes to try this out and see if it meets your requirements.


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-- Ana
Team OpaVote
https://opavote.com
{#HS:3274500172-750#}
On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 6:10 PM UTC, Samuel Nelson <nelson...@gmail.com> wrote:
Reading through the documentation for different counting methods, I'm not
seeing a process that can modify ranked choice IRV to make the threshold
2/3rds instead of a simple majority. Has anyone else run into this use case
before? What has your approach been? Is there a way to do this with
opavote?

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Hi, Samuel,

Ranked choice is not guaranteed to have a 2/3rd majority, only a simple
majority which is more votes than all others put together. It reaches that
by eliminating candidates one by one. If there are more than two candidates
remaining when one reaches a simple majority it is possible to continue
eliminating candidates until there are only two candidates, which would
maximize the winner’s vote, and one *could* have a 2/3 majority, but no

guarantee. If I remember correctly, Opavote runs to two automatically.

— Andy
To view this discussion visit



Hi Samuel,

There are instructions here:
https://blog.opavote.com/2017/12/ranked-choice-voting-with-supermajority.html

Is this for an endorsement process? If so, my full recommendations for
conducting an endorsement process with RCV (IRV) are here:
https://fairvote.org/report/best-practices-for-using-ranked-choice-voting-to-endorse-candidates/

Greg

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Voter Choice Massachusetts

e :: greg....@voterchoicema.org
p :: 617.835.9161


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Samuel Nelson

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Mar 30, 2026, 2:20:30 PMMar 30
to Greg Dennis, OpaVote Support Forum
Hi Greg,

This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you! 
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