Instant Runoff Voting - Elections with 2 or fewer candidates

[Eluvatar]

Section 4.3: The Election Commission
...
17. The Election Commission will have the power to make rules for the supervision of elections. Where no rules exist, the Election Commissioners supervising a given election may use their discretion.
18. Any citizen may petition the full Election Commission to review a decision made by the Election Commissioners supervising a given election. If necessary, the election may be halted while the Election Commission decides how to proceed.
19. If the full Election Commission determines that the actions under review are not in compliance with the law or their adopted rules, they will have the power, by majority vote, to overrule them. If deemed necessary, they will also have the power, by majority vote, to restart the election, or designate different commissioners to supervise the election.

...

Section 4.5: General Elections
29. The election of the Delegate, the Vice Delegate, the Attorney General, and the Speaker will begin on the first day of the months of January, May, and September.
30. If there are more than two candidates for an election, voters may rank the candidates, with the candidate ranked 1 being the first preference, the candidate ranked 2 being the next preference, and so on.
31. All first preference votes shall be counted first. If no candidate achieves a majority, the candidate with the least votes shall be eliminated, and the next preference of all voters who had voted for the eliminated candidate as first preference shall be counted, with the process repeated until a candidate achieves a majority.
32. If all of a voter's preferences have been eliminated, the voter's ballot shall not be used in further counting.

Section Five: Irregular Ballots
1. If a voter does not vote Yes or No to a question to re-open nominations for a given office, their vote for that office will not be counted.
2. In all other cases, any portion of a ballot that is properly completed will be counted, even if other portions of the ballot are not.
3. If a voter selects more candidates for a given office than are allowed, their vote for that office will not be counted.
4. If a voter selects fewer candidates for a given office than are allowed, their unused selections will be treated as abstentions, and their votes for that office will be counted.
5. If a voter misspells the name of a candidate on their ballot, their vote will be counted unless it is unclear which candidate they intended to vote for.
6. Any time a voter is at risk of having a portion of their ballot go uncounted, they must be promptly contacted by the Election Supervisors by private message and telegram.

One could read rule 5.3 as requiring that votes ranking more candidates than can be ranked in the vote for that office are invalid. I would argue, instead, that that rule is addressing ambiguous votes such as:

Speaker: Gorundu | Dreadton

Such a vote should not be counted because there is no way of unambiguously reading it as one vote. A vote like this however, is clear:

Speaker:
1. Gorundu
2. Dreadton

The voter is expressing a preference for one of the two candidates over the other, so their vote can be counted as simply a vote for their first choice.

Even clearer would be a vote like this:

Vice Delegate:
1. Artemis

One cannot even argue that it runs afoul of rule 5.3. It is a vote for Artemis, that simply has a superfluous "1." in there. We should similarly count a vote like this:

Delegate:
McMasterdonia

As a vote that ranks McMasterdonia first and has no further preferences indicated. We should not discount it for failure to include a "1."

Whatever the decision, we should apply it consistently to the several ballots in question.

 

[Siwale]

I agree with Elu's arguments. So long as the ballot clearly identifies the voter's top pick, it should be counted.

 

[Crushing Our Enemies]

Yes, when the voter's preference of candidate is unambiguous, I believe they have cast a valid ballot even if they have submitted a ranked list of candidates in a two-candidate race, instead of selecting a single candidate.

 

[Owenstacey]

I agree, if they rank a 2 candidate race, it is still clear that their first pick is their preferred option, so should still be counted.

 

[Just a Lore]

I also agree with everyone here. As long as it clearly dipicts what first choice is then i see no harm.

 

[Robespierre]

So long as their ranking remains unambiguous I see no reason as to why we wouldn’t be able to count that part of the ballot as being valid. If there’s two candidates running for the same office and no more than two candidates then whoever is ranked number one is still the preferred option and clearly who the voter is intending to place their support behind. It’s good that we’re having this discussion though as it means we’ll remain consistent seeing as to how this is the first election this system is being used in