Consensus Choice Voting System

Better Choices for Democracy offers Consensus Choice as an alternative to traditional primary elections and plurality voting.

Former US Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is a key backer. Nicolaus Tidman, the creator of BTR-Score voting and several other voting methods, is on the Better Choices board of directors.

1st Round - Open Blanket Primary

Consensus Choice starts with an open blanket primary election that advances four or five candidates to the second round. Suspiciously, the Better Choices website gives little detail about this primary.

Our current system of primary elections favors major parties, other parties are left out. Some states offer "open" or "semi-open" primaries. Open primaries allow voters who are not party members to help select a party's candidates. This is unfair and perhaps unconstitutional. The justification for open primaries is the dysfunctional duopoly of power enjoyed by the Democratic and Republican parties.

For a blanket primary fair to all candidates; check out our Neutral Open Primaries. A blanket primary can also be designed to favor wealthy and well-financed independent candidates like the Top Four and Final Five Primaries.

2nd Round - Ranked Robin voting method

A Ranked Robin (also known as Ranked Pairs) voting method is used for the final vote. As a Condorcet method, it will always elect the candidate who “beats all” the other candidates one-on-one, if there is such a candidate in the election. Like BTR-Score voting, the Ranked Robin is an easy to understand voting method that offers Condorcet fairness and reliability.

How it works

Open Primary - Candidates from all parties compete in an open blanket primary. Four or five candidates advance to the general election.

Ranked Robin final election - Voters rank the all the candidates who advanced from the open primary. This version of the Ranked Robin voting method allows ties.

Ballot Tabulations - Candidates are compared head-to-head, like a round-robin tournament. Wins and losses for each pair of candidates are determined from each ballot. The results from all the ballots determine who wins each one-on-one match of the round-robin tournament. If a candidate beats all the other candidates one-on-one, that candidate wins.

If there is no “beats all” winner, the candidate with the most wins is elected.

Most Wins, Smallest Loss tiebreaker - In case of a tie, the candidate with the smallest head-to-head loss versus all other candidates wins. Thus, the candidate closest to a Condorcet win is elected.

State Constitutional Compliance

The Better Choices for Democracy site does not discuss complience with the forty state constitutions that require election winners to have the “largest,” “greatest,” or “highest” number of votes or a “plurality of the votes”. Both the round robin tournament and the “smallest loss” tie breaker must comply.

An amendment to the state constitution may be required to enact Consensus Choice in many states.

Consensus Choice flier