Not quite. The tallying algorithm is `while (no candidate > 50% of votes): pop min(candidates), reallocate_votes(min(candidates))`. On the other hand cardinal methods are `argmax(sum(candidates))`. For comparison, FPTP is `argmax(sum(candidates))` too. The only difference is that FPTP is a one-hot vector. I'd argue that the average person intuitively understands cardinal methods without any training.
I do wonder if many people actually care to work through that step; in all of the public discourse around the Alaska vote, it's simply presented as a table with the reallocations already summed. For example, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-democrats-win-in-a....
The general algorithm of "reallocate the votes from the candidate that is being eliminated" is conceptually simple, even if it's annoying to tabulate. I do stand by my claim that it would be very easy to build a website that can visualize this process without getting bogged down in the tabulation. See every site that's giving analysis on the Alaska results for examples.
I want to see actual UX studies on this; for example has anyone polled in Alaska to see whether people understand the result?
I agree that it isn't hard, but I'm glad we both agree it isn't trivial.
> I do wonder if many people actually care to work through that step
I don't think most people care to be honest. But I think what does matter is recount events. I often point to what happened in Arizona as a perfect example. It would be substantially easier to create a narrative that an election is rigged if the tallying is more complicated. Malicious people like to hide in complexity and will often oversimplify a complex topic. Because of this, I think one of the most important factors in creating a secure election is ensuring that the tallying system is simple. While malicious actors will always act maliciously, we can reduce their effectiveness through this simplicity.
I'm puzzled by this. You can do it with pencil and paper in a few minutes? It's simple addition. You can easily build a website that visualizes each step if you think addition is difficult for people. It's trivial to compute in a spreadsheet.
> might leave people disillusioned
This is speculative; if it is true, you can find evidence by talking to, e.g. Alaskan voters. (IOW, Citation Needed.)
> clearly a straw man
I'm simply painting a picture by recounting my experience of what happened in the last thread on HN where voting systems came up, not making a strong claim about these specific systems being the runners up. My point still stands if you substitute any other systems, in this thread for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33111242. The point I was making had nothing to do about the merits of those specific systems; the point was that a big technical can of worms gets opened, and the average voter has no interest in digging in to compare N solutions on M technical axes, Arrow's theorem, etc. This is what people mean when they say "alternate voting systems are complicated".