Back in 2019, there was an overhaul to contest voting, because the old system often led to a huge number of voting rounds, which is a lot of work for the organiser and puts a heavy burden on voters if they want to commit to taking part in the whole thing, which can lead to excluding those who don't.
The current voting system, while definitely better, is still flawed. We now have only one vote for each rule; that's great. But if the numbers fall out unluckily, we can end up with a situation like that in
Contest #29, where a mixed group of six levels needs five or even six voting rounds to establish a winner.
So what's the solution? Well, first we need to decide what the goals of the voting system are. At the moment, they seem to be:
* To establish an overall winner -- obviously the most important goal.
* To establish a winner for each rule, since this carries a certain amount of prestige in itself, especially for rules like "Make a Tame level" where entries have no chance of winning overall.
* To establish overall 2nd and 3rd place -- is this still felt to be important? There are no prizes for these places, but do those who regularly take part in contests care about them?
* To separate out the top three and then rank them, so that the overall winner is not decided until the last voting round.
If all of these are still felt to be necessary, my suggestion would be:
* As in the current system, each rule has one vote only, no tiebreakers.
* The first round of the mixed group aims to establish a top 3. If this isn't possible because of ties, a tiebreaker is held.
For example, with the votes from contest #29 (6 for A, 2 for B, 3 each for C, D, E, F), A would be into the final, B would be out, and a tiebreaker would be held to find the top two of C, D, E, F.
Ideally, this system limits the mixed group to three rounds plus one possible tiebreaker. Unfortunately, because of the requirement that an
exact number of entries qualify for the top three, it's still possible for the tiebreaker to need a tiebreaker (e.g. C, D, E, F get 7, 4, 4, 3 votes respectively). I would suggest that in that case, we could just be okay with not having a third place (or having a tied third place), so that the mixed group
cannot have more than four votes.