Here are problems with RCV from Grok
- Violates âOne Person, One Voteâ and Monotonicity
. Non-monotonicity: Paradoxically, ranking a candidate higher can cause thatcandidate to lose, or ranking them lower can cause them to win.
Example: In the 2009 Burlington, Vermont mayoral race (widely cited by voting theorists), raising the Progressive candidate from 2nd to lst on some ballots would have made him lose instead of win. Estimates suggest 5â15 % of real-world RCV elections exhibit non-monotonicity strong enough to potentially flip the result.
This breaks votersâ intuitive expectation that supporting a candidate more should never hurt them.
- Ballot Exhaustion and Effective Disenfranchisement
. Voters who only rank one or a few candidates can have their ballots âexhaustedâ (discarded) in later rounds if all their choices are eliminated.
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Center-Squeeze and Elimination of Consensus Candidates
RCV tends to eliminate moderate or broad-appeal candidates early if they lack enough passionate first-choice support, even if they would be the Condorcet winner (beats every other candidate head-to-head).
.Famous example: 2018 Maine gubernatorial race â moderate independent Eliot Cutler was eliminated early despite polling evidence he would beat both the eventual winner (Democrat Janet Mills) and the Republican in pairwise matchups.
- Complexity and Voter Confusion
Voters must understand ranking strategy, and errors (overvotes, undervotes, or unintentional bullet voting) are higher than in plurality.
.Tabulation is far slower and more expensive: San Francisco and NYC have taken weeks to declare winners, compared to same-night results in most plurality elections.
Low-information voters are more likely to bulletâvote (rank only one candidate), which effectively turns their ballot into a plurality vote and increases exhaustion risk.
- Strategic Voting and âBuriedâ Candidates
Sophisticated voters can still manipulate outcomes by bullet-voting or ranking insincerely (e.g., ranking a weak opponent higher to knock out a stronger rival).
In Australia (which has used RCV/IRV for a century), âhowâto-voteâ cards distributed by parties encourage disciplined ranking that often overrides votersâtrue preferences.
- Spoiler Effect ls Reduced but Not Eliminated
- While RCV largely prevents classic third-party spoilers, a weak candidate who stays in longer than expected can still distort later rounds (the âturkeyâraisingâ or âzombie candidateâ problem).
- Partisan and Ideological Bias Concerns
.In practice, RCV has sometimes helped Democrats in the US (e.g., Maine 2018 House race, Alaska 2022 Senate and House races where Republican votes split and were redistributed toward Democrats), leading Republicans in several red states (Florida, Tennessee, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, etc.) to ban or restrict it since 2020.
.Critics on the right call it a âleft-wing reformâ pushed by well-funded NGOs; critics on the left complain it still favors major parties in multiâwinner versions (STV) and doesnât go far enough toward proportional representation.
- High Implementation Costs and Central Count Dependency
.Requires centralized tabulation (no precinct-level results on election night), new voting equipment or software, and extensive voter education.
Audits and recounts are much harder than in plurality systems.
- Does Not Guarantee Majority Winners in All Cases
. Because of exhaustion, winners can receive less than 50 % of original ballots cast (e.g., 2021 NYC mayoral primary: Eric Adams won with 50.4 % of the remaining ballots, but only ~40 % of total ballots cast).
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