Tournament Elections with Round-Robin Primaries: A Sports Analogy for Electoral Reform
![handle is hein.journals/wlr2021 and id is 1217 raw text is: TOURNAMENT ELECTIONS WITH
ROUND-ROBIN PRIMARIES:
A SPORTS ANALOGY FOR ELECTORAL REFORM
EDWARD B. FOLEY*
Round-robin voting uses ranked-choice ballots but differs from instant-
runoff voting in how to calculate which candidates are most preferred by a
majority of voters. Like a round-robin sports competition, round-robin voting
determines how each candidate fares against every other candidate one-on-one,
tallying the number of wins and losses for each candidate in these one-on-one
matchups. If necessary to break a tie in these win-loss records, round-robin
voting looks to the total number of votes cast for and against each candidate in
all of the one-on-one matchups-just as round-robin sports tournaments look
to an equivalent total point differential statistic to break ties. When used in a
primary election as the method to identify the top two candidates deserving to
compete head-to-head as finalists in the general election, comparable to the use
of round-robin competition as the preliminary stage of a sports tournament,
round-robin voting is the electoral system best able to implement the
democratic idea of majority rule.
Introduction.........................................................................................1188
I. The Basics of Round-Robin Voting.........................................1194
A. Simple, Four-Candidate Illustration of Round-Robin
Voting ............................................................................... 1196
B. Tiebreaker Five-Candidate Example ................................1201
II. Round-Robin Voting and the Maximization of Majority Rule 1205
III. Some Technical Details in the Implementation of TERRP...... 1212
A. How Round-Robin Voting Handles Incomplete Ballot
Rankings ...........................................................................1213
B. The Number of Candidates in a Round-Robin Primary.... 1220
C. Two Separate Round-Robin Primaries Instead of One? ... 1224
Conclusion ..........................................................................................1227
* Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law, The Ohio State University; Director,
Election Law at Ohio State. Many thanks to the research assistants for this project: Luke
Klage, Cam Wade, Jason Wilhelm, and Kiera Zacher. Many extra thanks to Gillian
Thomson, Program Administrator of Election Law at Ohio State, for her tireless work on
all aspects of this endeavor. I'm grateful, too, for comments received at the Public Law in
the States conference, where the first draft of this Essay was presented, as well as for
feedback from Steve Huefner, Mike Parsons, Rick Pildes, and Rob Richie. A fifteen-
minute video explaining key points of this paper, with useful graphics, is available here:
The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, Round Robin Voting, YoUTUBE (June
30, 2021), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvvE-R55g8s [https://perma.cc/27NB-
WH5Z].](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/wlr2021&div=44&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Tournament Elections with Round-Robin Primaries: A Sports Analogy for Electoral Reform
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