election_title: "A three-way cycle has a deterministic answer — and BetterVoting draws lots for it"
scenario_description: >-
  Eleven voters, three candidates, one rock-paper-scissors cycle: Dre beats
  Edith 7-4, Edith beats Frank 6-5, Frank beats Dre 9-2. All three tie at one
  matchup win, so all three are finalists and Ranked Robin reaches for its 1st
  Degree tiebreaker — the sum of each finalist's win margins over the other
  finalists:

    Frank  (+7) + (-1) = +6      <- elected
    Edith  (-3) + (+1) = -2
    Dre    (+3) + (-7) = -4

  Frank is elected, deterministically, from the ballots alone. Note how lopsided
  it is: Frank's +6 on 11 ballots is a 54-point swing, and he is the only
  finalist with a positive sum, which the protocol argues is what "majority
  preferred among finalists" means.

  BetterVoting elects nobody in particular. Its tabulator has a rung for exactly
  two tied candidates and nothing for three, so this count falls to the random
  rung and returns whoever happens to sit first in the shuffled candidate order —
  enter the same election with the candidates listed as Edith, Frank, Dre and the
  page reports Edith. That is bettervoting#1469, and it is not a corner case:
  with three candidates and no drawn matchups, EVERY Condorcet cycle is a
  three-way Copeland tie, so the two-way rung can never fire on one.

  This engine has answered Frank since 2026-08-19; before that it used total
  margin over the whole field, which on three candidates is the same pool as the
  finalists and happens to agree. The case that separates the two pools is the
  companion, rr_degrees_finalists_vs_field.yaml. Lesson: degrees_of_ties.md
voting_method: RankedRobin
num_winners: 1
# Copeland 1 each. 1st Degree: Frank +6, Edith -2, Dre -4 -> Frank.
#   Individual ballots rather than three blocs: eleven rows, small enough to read.
ballots: |-
  Dre>Edith>Frank
  Dre>Edith>Frank
  Edith>Frank>Dre
  Edith>Frank>Dre
  Edith>Frank>Dre
  Edith>Frank>Dre
  Frank>Dre>Edith
  Frank>Dre>Edith
  Frank>Dre>Edith
  Frank>Dre>Edith
  Frank>Dre>Edith

expected_winners:
  - Frank

# file: rr_degrees_three_way_cycle.yaml