Right…I’ll preface all this by saying I live in an RCV country which used to have a 2 party system way back when. The question was genuine because I’m very happy with our voting system and if there were flaws I’m interested to explore better options.

The hypothetical you’re discussing there never happens. I’ve been voting for 30 years and have never come across (or myself done) the kind of shenanigans you mention. There’s just no need for it.

You go in, rank your options in order and the fairest option for you (with some small caveats) comes out on top. Our recent European elections in my district are a good example. There were 4 seats up for grabs and 8 parties and a bunch of independents up. The larger parties will frequently field 2 candidates. In that election, the 5th place candidate overtook 4th on eliminations from the 6th place preferences to take the last seat.

In the case of the nazi’s, they get eliminated first round here then 90+% of their votes will pass to some other right wing party with 10% not counting because they are the end of the line for that voter.

One example I’ll give is for a centre left voter. They would hypothetically vote some combination of labour, greens and centre left independents. Once those options had run out on the ballot, you’re looking at whether they’re more likely to go far left or centre right. Where I live, a large number of the votes will actually fall centre right as they’re closer idealogically than far left.

For what it’s worth, here’s how the breakdown of voting was in my district:

https://www.rte.ie/news/elections-2024/results/#/local/fingal-county-county

The counting thing actually adds a bit of spice and voter excitement because you’re keen to see how votes transfer in each round. Certainly I was checking in regularly and was keen to see if the pundits were right on the final elimination I mentioned above (they were).

Recounts are rarely necessary but do happen in the event that it’s looking close for an actual seat and not who’s going to be eliminated next.

I have heard of star voting and must read more on it, but I am very happy with RCV for now and I’m not sure Star would represent any meaningful change in a country that moved from 2 party to many party with a strong independent voice in our parliament.

Edit: One thing I like about RCV is voting for a candidate even though I feel they’re likely to get eliminated simply because they match my views closely, knowing that my further down preferences will count and if they are elected well all the better. That is just not really an option with FPTP. It’s a horrible system.