Anyone know exactly how the New York City ranked-choice vote counting is supposed to work?

[Steve Freeman]

Voters are to mark up to 5 choices. 

But what happens if after 5 ballots no one still has a majority? 

[Kathy Dopp]

Steve, the IRV method of counting rank choice ballots almost never elects a majority winner out of all persons who cast votes in an RCV/IRV election.  It simply elects the candidate that a majority of voters whose ballots have not been exhausted (whose ballots are still being counted) in the final counting round.  An analysis of IRV/RCV elections in California found the normal case is for the IRV method of counting RC ballots to elect a winner with significantly fewer than 50% of all votes from the original voters - usually somewhere in the 30 to 45 % of voters decide the final counting round because IRV method often eliminates many voters' subsequent choices prior to when their prior choices are counted.

I.e. in RCV/IRV a voter's lower ranked choices can never hurt their higher rank choices but a voter's higher rank choices commonly hurt the chances of winning of their lower ranked choices.  It's part of what causes non-monotonicity.

That said, I do not know the specific method NYC is using to pass any remaining lower choice votes when the upper choices are eliminated, so I've forwarded your question to another person who is more involved in what's happening in NYC.

On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 8:52 PM Steve Freeman <sffr...@gmail.com> wrote:

Voters are to mark up to 5 choices. 

But what happens if after 5 ballots no one still has a majority? 

--
To post, send email to Election...@googlegroups.com. Please review the "Posting Guidelines" page.
 
Please forward EI messages widely and invite members to join the group at http://groups.google.com/group/ElectionIntegrity/members_invite.
 
If you're not a member and would like to join, go to http://groups.google.com/group/ElectionIntegrity and click on the "join" link at right. For delivery and suspension options, use the "Edit my membership" link.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Election Integrity" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ElectionIntegr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ElectionIntegrity/a218583b-ab27-4103-8865-11661a4c2972n%40googlegroups.com.

--

Kathy Dopp, Natick, Mass., MS mathematics

http://www.kathydopp.info/COVIDinfo

SSRN: http://ssrn.com/author=1451051
Science is my passion, politics my duty (Thomas Jefferson, paraphrased)

[Derek Hunsberger]

I believe they eliminate one candidate at a time until there is a majority.  It’s recalculated after each candidate that’s eliminated.  I could be wrong, but that’s how I understood what I read. 

On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 8:52 PM Steve Freeman <sffr...@gmail.com> wrote:

Voters are to mark up to 5 choices. 

But what happens if after 5 ballots no one still has a majority?