Technically Exists

Consensus plurality voting

Introduction

Consensus plurality voting is a ranked method related to consensus ranked choice voting and plurality voting.

Description

Under consensus plurality, voters cast ballots by ranking all candidates. All candidates that did not receive the most first-choice rankings are eliminated, and votes are transferred to the highest-ranked candidate remaining, as in the last round of consensus RCV. The winner is the candidate with a plurality of votes.

Analysis

Because of first-round eliminations, the winning candidate will (barring exact ties) always end up with 100% support. Therefore, this method can be considered to pick the perfect consensus candidate, outperforming all methods which can only pick a candidate with majority support.

Since all eliminations occur in the first round, the strategy for picking who to rank first will be similar to the strategy for voting under plurality. However, there is no strategy for all other rankings, so voters are free to complete them honestly.