Ranked Choice Voting with Different Elimination Procedures

Ranked choice voting (RCV) is one of the fastest-growing electoral reforms in the United States, yet few have considered whether RCV could be improved with a different elimination procedure. This paper examines RCV with three different elimination procedures: Fewest First Place votes, Most Last Place votes, and Least Borda Count. We examine how often RCV with each of these procedures violates four criteria: the Condorcet winner criterion, reversal symmetry, independence of eliminated alternatives, and monotonicity using data from RCV elections in the United States as well as simulated data from the Impartial Culture condition – both with complete and partial rankings. Our results show that eliminating candidates with the least Borda count, rather than the traditional fewest first place votes, can help RCV adhere to the Condorcet Winner criterion, the IEA criterion, and monotonicity. Results from reversal symmetry are more mixed. Discovering that another elimination procedure is at least as likely to adhere to three of four normative criteria may help improve RCV as a voting rule and boost its success as an electoral reform.*Corresponding Author: Keith Dougherty, University of Georgia, Department of Political Science, 180 Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA 30602, tel: 706-542-2057, fax: 706-542-4421, ORCID: 0000-0002-8689-1961.