But what voting system do you default to?

When you have a preference ballot you have 4 (popular) different methods of analyzing the ballot

• Plurality: Candidate with the majority of first place votes wins.
• Borda Count: Each candidate gets a point for each ranking ( 4pts for first, 3pts for second, etc.), whoever has the most points wins.
• Pairwise Comparison: Each candidate is compared head to head with each other candidate, if a candidate wins a matchup they get a point. Whoever has the most points wins
• Instant Runoff Voting (IRV): Candidate with the least number of first place votes gets stricken from all the ballots everyone moves up and the election is re-run until a candidate has a majority of first place votes.

The important thing to note is that they all fail somewhere. I've done a good bit of research on data gathered from elections across the country where cities used IRV. During my research not one election has suffered from a monotonicity issue.

• Bordacount fails the Majority Criterion .
• Pariwise fails the Irrelevant Irrelevant Alternatives Criterion.
• Runoff fails the Montonicity Criterion

For a more indepth look checkout the chart here.
Based on Arrow's Impossibility therom: "There does not exist a votying system that satisfys all of the fairness criterion and always produces a winner." it's safe to say there is no perfect answer.

So it really becomes a question of which voting system will be the most fair and you can't count out IRV.

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