Condorcet can certainly be counted by hand, and STV can as well (although it's a bit more complicated). No computers are required, although a calculator and/or a computer would certainly be helpful for STV.
What version of choice voting was recently implemented in some US cities? Can you rank as many candidates as you like, or only two?
Explain?
Explain how they work and votes are transferred in one sentence to be understood by someone with a grade 8 education who can barely add.
I have has nothing against different models except we have found them to be more difficult to explain and as such get more resistance and voters can be mislead by those who oppose all changes.
Our main goal with this site is to promote the changes that we believe will be easiest to implement and receive the least resistance based on our experience in recent referendum campaigns.
We welcome more complex variations of them, but feel that the priority must be to remove first past the post (and strategic voting) and as thus it is preferable to promote the most basic changes rather than to debate which system is theoretically best within an academic context. For instance, some may argue that while Condorcet may elect the most centralist candidate, it may also elect those with no effective governance skills within a polarized election and who are not indeed the first preference of any voter. Runoff systems, on the other hand, eliminate those with no personal support first.
In the US, they have brought in some versions of choice voting with multiple seats (STV) and others with a simple run off vote. Some allow all candidates to be ranked and some may have limitations. The London Mayoralty elections are the best example of a straight two vote elections.
The difference between a two vote and a full rank preference are likely more academic than practical for most elections.
If used for internal elections where there may be a lot of candidates with similar views and no clear front runners (such as a leadership race), a full ranking system has benefits to find the consensus candidate. This usually involves a highly aware voter base familiar with all the candidates.
In places where party politics exist and most voters will likely choose a mainstream party as their first or second choice such as is the case for MP and MLA elections now, there is very few advantages to have multiple rounds except in insuring the candidate is absolutely not the least preferred candidate of more than 50% of the voters. In most votes, we would likely find that a two round versus an exhaustive round system will deliver nearly identical results.
There is a "perceived" draw back to having a full ranking system in which a candidate may get elected on transfers from the third or fourth preference of voters. In BC, we had numerous objections raised to that as well when we campaign for a full STV. Whether or not these concerns are valid, some voters did balk at the idea of having fourth preferences electing candidates.
1-2 Voting ensures voters can be honest with their first preference.
This is the most important thing for voters to feel they can express a clear preferences. Very few voters are likely to rank all the candidates, especially outside of internal contests. In Australia, for instance, voters have the choice of either voting for a party list (for Senate) or to rank all of the candidates. 95% of voters in that case opt to choose the party ticket.