80 BC, actually. When using +/- year numbering, remember that year 0 is actually 1 BC. The Catholic Church apologises for the inconvenience.

An old version of Maya OS, no doubt. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it; it's still widely used enough that the infamous year 2012 bug threatened to cause worldwide chaos, but they managed to rush an update through at the last minute.

More analysis! It's head-to-head time as we pit each candidate against each other candidate in a one-on-one contest for majority. For each match-up, only ballots which voted for one or both of the candidates are counted (ballots which voted for both count for whichever candidate was ranked higher). Here are the results:


As Mitchell has a majority over every other candidate, he is the Condorcet winner. Conversely, xandry is the Condorcet loser, being defeated by every other candidate. (Note that an election will not necessarily have a Condorcet winner and loser.)

This system always elects the Condorcet winner when one exists, so naturally Mitchell comes out on top. As with the other systems where #1 votes aren't as important, achow101 reaches 3rd place and HostFat drops to 5th. Notably, the result is perfectly linear, as each candidate loses to every higher-placed candidate and defeats every lower-placed candidate, ie, there are no non-transitive preferences.

Everything from counting the votes to formatting the charts was all by hand, with some help from a calculator and two cans of Red Bull. That's why it took so long to push out. If we're ever going to do something like this again, I really ought to write some code to automate this work; a hundred ballots is about the limit of what I can manage in a reasonable time frame.

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Bonus half-arsed analysis: Since two moderators might be promoted, I should note that under a two-winner single transferable vote (the multiple-winner version of instant run-off voting), Lauda and Mitchell would both win, regardless of what rules are used (if the Droop quota (33.3̅%+1) is used, they both win in round 3 above with 0.6̅ surplus votes each* (an exact tie), while if the Hare quota (50%) is used, Mitchell achieves quota in round 5, and Lauda wins by default being the only remaining candidate for Mitchell's 1.5 surplus votes to transfer to).

*These 1.3̅ votes would be subdivided further between the remaining candidates (HostFat and Dabs) based on the averaged preferences of all the votes for the winners, which means counting them all over again, which I'm not going to do because 1.3̅ votes isn't quite enough to bump Dabs into 3rd place, no matter which way they go.

Lauda got a couple of extra votes in the final day, but in the end it just wasn't enough. Congratulations to Mitchell.

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Here's how the result would have turned out under some other voting systems:
Lauda would have won under this system, though the rankings of the other candidates would remain unchanged.

Mitchell still wins by a narrow margin, but with no eliminations, achow101 takes 3rd place. With #1 votes not as helpful under this system, and not having much else to go on, HostFat drops down to 5th place. Last, and in fact least, there is no longer a tie for last place. Xandry loses having received only a single #3 vote.

Mitchell is the only candidate to reach the requisite 59 votes and is the clear winner. As with the Borda system, achow101 is in 3rd and HostFat is in 5th, with #2 votes being more decisive. Again, xandry is in last place, with the single #3 vote not counting at all.

It's worth noting that this election was close enough that under systems where ballot exhaustion is a possibility (instant run-off and Bucklin), the exhausted ballots could have decided the outcome had they counted. Most of them were cases of people not putting a #2 or #3 preference. The outcome might have been different had people known how to vote properly.

(Some percentages may not add to exactly 100.0% due to rounding errors.)

There are currently 4 exhausted ballots that had all 3 preferences (and presumably would have had more if they were allowed to), and only 3 votes separating the top two candidates. No offence, but your laziness is likely to call the outcome into question.

In my experience it usually happens to new ones. I've seen this before. Brand new hard drives sometimes have manufacturing defects and fail completely after just a few days or weeks of use. If a drive survives its first month of service, then there's nothing wrong with it and it'll likely last for years or decades.

Also, SMART doesn't joke around with its "imminent failure" warnings. If you were to back up your data right now, it's as likely as not the drive would start making horrible grinding noises before the backup is even complete. Though since the drive is new, I presume you don't have much data to lose.

You shouldn't have a problem returning the drive. The store will see for themselves that the drive is dead or dying and give you a new one, no questions asked.

Lauda and Mitchell each receive a single additional vote as we enter the last day of voting. Mitchell retains his lead. Does A!'s vote count? It's not on the spreadsheet yet. Whatever, it doesn't change anything.

Something is being done. It's called SegWit and increases the block size to 4MB. Perhaps you've heard of it?

That's why I asked achow101's permission before I started posting these results, but as I pointed out then, anyone can do what I'm doing. The problem, as I see it, is that since instant run-off voting isn't widely used outside of Australia, people might not understand it and think that votes for unpopular candidates won't count, which is exactly the situation that instant run-off voting is meant to avoid. You can safely give your #1 vote to any candidate you like, since if (and only if) they lose, your vote will go to your #2 choice (and finally to your #3 choice, if your #2 choice also loses).

So, you plan to commit further crimes to cover up your first crime? That really only gets you so far, though I suppose it's an acceptable risk if you expect to get concurrent sentences. Carry on.

The election race slows down with only a single additional vote since yesterday. There's not much to say about it. Mitchell looks set to win by a slim margin.

That's true. Every time an atheist steps into a church, he feels guilty for not believing and thinks a donation to the cause will make things right. Of course, the faithful know you can't just buy your way into Heaven, and so never give their money away for such foolishness. Tithing is for sinners. That's how it works, right?

How exactly are you planning to spend that kind of money? Are you just going to walk into, say, a Porsche dealership with a briefcase full of bills as though nobody's going to ask any questions?

What's an idiot like franky1 even doing in DT anyway?

Your transaction fees are extremely low, so those transactions will likely take several hours to confirm. What wallet are you using?

What are talking about?

The gap between Lauda and Mitchell continues to narrow, with just 4 votes separating them. But with only 3 days remaining in this election, will Lauda be able to catch up? It's worth noting that 4 of the exhausted ballots had all 3 preferences. These could have potentially changed the outcome had more than 3 preferences been allowed.

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No, I can't. It would have been easier if I could.

Yes, and that used to be case, but it isn't now.

Don't forget vindicare (electioneering).

I could have sworn I saw Yuuto's post earlier. But it's gone now. What the Hell's going on here?

Wait, that can't be right. Docnaster's vote isn't in my list of mprep preference flows. Neither of us were counting it in the first place. (Oops. ) Looking at the raw numbers, I see I have an extra primary vote for Mitchell that isn't on the spreadsheet (but it definitely was, because the numbers used to match). And I wasn't keeping track of the primary votes since I was relying on the spreadsheet for that. It must have been deleted from both the thread and the spreadsheet.

Checking. There are currently only 105 votes instead of 107, and there were definitely 107 votes on the spreadsheet when I posted (I do some checking). I counted a vote for Mitchell from redsn0w since he was allowed to change it. I remember this distinctly because it caused me a great deal of confusion when I didn't notice it was changed and my results were off by one vote. That vote is no longer on the spreadsheet, and there's no explanation of where it went, as there was the previous times votes were deleted. Another vote has vanished, and I'm still trying to determine whose, though it must have been a vote for Mitchell (after preferences) since I checked my results when I posted and they matched the spreadsheet at the time. EDIT: After manually recounting all the votes, I've discovered that Docnaster's vote has vanished, and, although unrelated to original discrepancy, the post with Seansky's vote has been deleted from the thread, though his vote remains on the spreadsheet.

I hope achow101 can shed some light on this troubling development.

The race is now closer than ever as Lauda gains a narrow lead in the primary vote, but it's not enough to overcome the preferences for Mitchell. A mere 5 votes stand between the top two candidates. Even though the election is nearly half over, it's still anyone guess who will win.

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Most of them weren't counting anyway. What difference is this rule expected to make?

You what? Are you sure you're cut out to be a global moderator?