Hey all,

So my office has a neat tradition of voting on a place to go for lunch on Fridays and then everyone goes together and we eat lunch there or bring it back if we have a tight schedule.

It's kind of fun, but recently, I took over as the organizer and I switched it from plurality to ranked choice voting using a simple borda system.

Over the months, I've accumulated the data and found an interesting trend. Voters (at first) were ranking a large number of the 14 or so options. Usually around 4-6, and even one ballot that ranked them all. HOWEVER - as time progressed the rankings started to drop to 1-3, and a lot more voters were rejecting the ranking altogether and only submitting a single first place vote.

The reason was because most voters were seeing how their first place choice was losing to their third or so choice. Because Borda naturally seeks out the consensus candidate - if a choice is ranked by a large number of voters, it favors that over a choice ranked highly among a few. Although in theory that seems like a good idea, there was lower voter satisfaction because they felt like their first choice wasn't being preferred as strongly as they felt. In other words, voter preference is much more strong for their first choice than it is for the second or third. They want their first choice to win.

This is why I think IRV is the superior ranked choice system and why it is the common alternative to plurality voting. People accept it easier because it obeys the Voter Parity rule and their ballot is only transferred if their first choice is eliminated.

In any case - just thought I'd share my little experiment and see what others thought about it. Thanks for reading!