In large public elections, ties between candidates are rare. However, in the small-group decisions that RCV123 is designed for—like a school club or civic organization—ties are much more common.
The standard way to break ties in ranked-choice voting is with a random draw, like flipping a coin. We believe this can be unsatisfying for small groups, as it leaves important outcomes to chance.
To provide a fairer and more deterministic outcome, RCV123 uses a custom tiebreaking system before resorting to random chance.
Our system calculates a "tiebreaker score" for each candidate based on how voters ranked them across all ballots. A higher score wins the tie. The calculation works like this:
This method ensures that a candidate's full ranking profile is considered when breaking a tie. A detailed table showing this calculation is available on every election's results page.
A key difference between our tiebreaker and normal vote counting is the data used.
This means a candidate who was eliminated early might still win a tie against another eliminated candidate if they had stronger 2nd, 3rd, or 4th-place support across all ballots.
In the rare event that two candidates have the exact same tiebreaker score, we then use a random draw to break the tie. This is our "tiebreaker of last resort." The randomly generated order for all candidates is available on the results page.
When a tiebreaker is used, several visual cues appear on the results page:
You can also see the detailed math by clicking the "Show tie breaker calculations" link below the results graph.
Our goal is to honor the preferences of as many voters as possible. This tiebreaking method provides a robust, data-driven way to resolve ties that we feel is a good compromise between simplicity and fairness.