The Post-it RCV example — Equal Vote's whiteboard demo, live (BV2176 / BV2177 / BV2178)¶
The 20-voter election from Equal Vote's video "Updated: How does RCV work? — With Post-its!", reproduced, stress-tested, and extended as three live BetterVoting elections. RCV-IRV elects Purple, exactly as counted on the whiteboard — but Blue, eliminated in round 2, beats Purple head-to-head 10–9, and STAR elects Blue by actually holding that runoff. From there the set widens: all seven BV methods on the same ballots elect four different candidates, and a two-ballot flip makes the video's round-2 hypothetical real.
Start here → Is the video fair and balanced? — the claim-check lesson: what the video gets right (the count; the ignored 10–9 head-to-head), where a critic pushes back (the electorate is a Condorcet cycle with no rightful winner; the 0–5 scores are invented — order-consistent with the ranks, verified, but the gap sizes decide STAR's answer: generous 5/4/3 → Blue, stingy 5/2/1 → Purple), and five portable lessons.
▶ Live on BetterVoting:
- BV2176 (the video's election, 3 races) — vote · results ↗ (election
p8dp28) - BV2177 (all seven BV methods, 7 races) — vote · results ↗ (election
v8r66y) - BV2178 (the round-2 switch, made real, 4 races) — vote · results ↗ (election
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| Case page (read these) | What it shows |
|---|---|
| BV2176 — the Post-it RCV example | The video, live: IRV → Purple (7/6/4/3 → 8/7/4 → 9–8); STAR → Blue (44–44 finalist tie breaks head-to-head, runoff 10–9 — a Runoff Reversal); Ranked Robin → the first live sighting of the LH-vs-BV tiebreak-ladder divergence (Green on BV, Blue in LH) |
| BV2177 — the single-winner methods, side by side | The same 20 ballots under STAR, Ranked Robin, Approval, RCV-IRV and Choose-One: all four candidates win somewhere — incl. Approval's threshold trap (approve ≥1/≥4/=5 → Pink/Blue/Purple). (STV and STAR-PR also run at 1 seat as completeness footnotes: STV(1) = IRV; STAR-PR(1) = Score voting, no runoff.) |
| BV2178 — the switch, made real | Two of six Green>Blue>Pink voters flip their top two → IRV really does eliminate Green in round 2 and lands the video's exact hypothetical (Blue 10, Purple 9); Blue becomes a clean 3–0 Condorcet winner; only Choose-One still says Purple |
Races and sources¶
| Race | Page | src | LH winner | BV winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BV2176/77 — STAR | page | .yaml |
Blue | Blue |
| BV2176/77 — RCV-IRV (& STV 1-seat) | page | .yaml |
Purple | Purple |
| BV2176/77 — Ranked Robin | page | .yaml |
Blue | Green |
| BV2177 — Approval (any support) | page | .yaml |
Pink | Pink |
| BV2177 — Choose-One | page | .yaml |
Purple | Purple |
| BV2177 — STAR-PR, 1 seat | (BV-only: LH's allocated needs ≥ 2 seats) | — | — | Purple |
| BV2178 — STAR | page | .yaml |
Blue | Blue |
| BV2178 — RCV-IRV | page | .yaml |
Blue | Blue |
| BV2178 — Ranked Robin | page | .yaml |
Blue | Blue |
| BV2178 — Choose-One | (in the STAR mirror's divergence block) | — | Purple | Purple |
Related: LH vs BV on Ranked Robin ties · center squeeze (the same "eliminated the head-to-head winner" mechanic with a clean Condorcet winner) · up: method_comparisons — same ballots, different methods