They don’t ever pay attention to the long term strategy. Trum winning is enough for the REd team. They don’t get it. THe Blue team doesn’t get it either.

I obviously am well aware that it’s not literally a second vote, as in “vote once one day, vote again another day” or “fill out two ballots.”

But I am speaking in the practical sense. And it is in that sense that I think it is unfair. In the practical sense, votes in the US are binary in terms of parties, except in extremely rare occasions.

And I already explained it this way: “by voting for their main candidate (third- or fourth- or fifth-party) they get to deny the majority candidate his or her clean victory, the victory that person would ordinarily get as the person with the plurality of votes. So the third-party people can thwart the will of the majority. Once they do that, the third-party people get to vote again in a meaningful manner, for their second-choice candidate, because (unlike the other voters) they really do have a meaningful second-choice candidate.

Again, it isn’t a second vote. There is only one vote. The vote has a contingent value. Eveyone’s vote has a contingent value. Some contingencies are more likely than others.

they get to deny the majority candidate his or her clean victory,

Your assumption here is that a strictly binary contest is the only fair contest. I don’t know why you’d make that assumption.

In a strictly binary contest, your vote advances one side or another. In a multiparty contest undertaken under first-past-the-post tabulation, the force of your vote is circumstantially contingent and your decision subject to dilemmas. The ranked-choice method resolves that particular dilemma.

The Democrat attempt to interpret invalid ballots struck me as trying to change the rules in the middle of the game. If Democrat voters were confused by the ballots, and did something to render ballots invalid, that is the responsibility of the Democrats who designed the ballots. They should have tried out their ballots on some test group of prospective voters BEFORE the election.

Democrat attempts to invalidate military ballots also influenced my decision.

The supporters of the main parties’ candidates get the option of a second vote, but it’s a fake option, a meaningless option, because they have no one left to vote for. Just the same person they voted for in the first place.

Those who have chosen to vote for the other candidates (third-, fourth-, or fifth-party) don’t merely have a vote that “is deployed one way in a given contingency and another way in a different contingency” but is still only one vote. Instead, by voting for their main candidate (third- or fourth- or fifth-party) they get to deny the majority candidate his or her clean victory, the victory that person would ordinarily get as the person with the plurality of votes. So the third-party people can thwart the will of the majority. Once they do that, the third-party people get to vote again in a meaningful manner, for their second-choice candidate, because (unlike the other voters) they really do have a meaningful second-choice candidate.

Your not voting your dreams. Your vote is deployed one way in a given contingency and another way in a different contingency. It’s still only one vote.

I think the utility is better understood in a primary contest, when you may be choosing between programmatic alternatives but are more commonly choosing between personal qualities.

Another way of looking at is to imagine a Canadian-style political convention. You have the first ballot, then the trailing candidate is eliminated and you have the 2d ballot (eliminating the trailing candidate thereafter) and so forth until you have a menu of surviving candidates and one has a majority. Each round of tabulation undertaken in the Condorcet method is like a round of balloting at a convention. The initial supporters of the leading candidates restate their support with each successive tabulation, while supporters of losing candidates transfer their support. It’s just that the decision on the direction of transfer is made ab initio rather than at the time of tabulation. No one gets any more votes than anyone else, it’s just that some support is transferred and some is not. However, each party has the same option and opportunity to transfer, it’s just that the supporters of the leading candidates do not have to avail themselves of the option.

In areas completely dominated by liberals, it allows for the emergence of 3d parties reflecting different shades of liberal opinion. Conservatives in that set up can make their contingent choices to advance the shade of liberal opinion they find less injurious to their interests. An alternative is to have Democratic primaries and then pro-forma general elections, which grants the minority viewpoint no voice at all.

No one knows that.
* * *
Ah, well, that’s true of a lot of political theories.
I don’t know the state of the research on this subject, and, given how biased the academies are, wouldn’t trust a lot of it anyway, but the appeal of the process is captured here.

https://www.fairvote.org/rcv#rcvbenefits

The Maine candidate who said that must have relied on the idea that his supporters don’t get the math, because it only works that way if no single candidate receives 50% of the vote. If anyone receives 50% of the vote, the second-choice votes are ignored.

I am very skeptical of this innovation, and I don’t think it will work out well.