Inconsistency in Tie-Break Rules

[Rick]

We had always been told that on a tie vote in TC, the tribe re-votes but
the two people who were tied did not get to re-vote. On this week's
episode, Jeff apparently claimed this was never an actual rule and that
the only reason tied people don't normally re-vote is because their
votes would cancel out as they could only vote for one another. In this
week's episode, Sam and Sierra were tied, but Sierra was allowed to
re-vote because Sam had lost his vote.

Christian Hubicki pointed out an inconsistency with this on Rob C's
podcast. He said that whenever there were three-way ties in the past
(and he counted seven times this has happened), the three tied players
were never allowed to vote on the re-vote, even though their votes
didn't necessarily cancel each other. That is, it is possible if not
likely that two of the three tied players might gang up and vote for the
third person. So Christian says it really was a hard and fast rule that
tied players don't re-vote and that Jeff got it wrong.

Christian also said, interestingly, that if there is an actual Survivor
"Rules Book" that spells out all the rules that cover these kind of
situations, he was never shown it.

I personally can't recall a time there was a three-way tie in TC
requiring a re-vote, but I'll take his word that it happened seven
times, though that number sounds a bit high to me.

[Brian Smith]

Post by Rick
We had always been told that on a tie vote in TC, the tribe re-votes but
the two people who were tied did not get to re-vote.  On this week's
episode, Jeff apparently claimed this was never an actual rule and that
the only reason tied people don't normally re-vote is because their
votes would cancel out as they could only vote for one another.  In this
week's episode, Sam and Sierra were tied, but Sierra was allowed to re-
vote because Sam had lost his vote.
Christian Hubicki pointed out an inconsistency with this on Rob C's
podcast.  He said that whenever there were three-way ties in the past
(and he counted seven times this has happened), the three tied players
were never allowed to vote on the re-vote, even though their votes
didn't necessarily cancel each other.  That is, it is possible if not
likely that two of the three tied players might gang up and vote for the
third person.  So Christian says it really was a hard and fast rule that
tied players don't re-vote and that Jeff got it wrong.
Christian also said, interestingly, that if there is an actual Survivor
"Rules Book" that spells out all the rules that cover these kind of
situations, he was never shown it.
I personally can't recall a time there was a three-way tie in TC
requiring a re-vote, but I'll take his word that it happened seven
times, though that number sounds a bit high to me.

I sure wasn't expecting to hear what Jeff said as I thought it was a
rule that in tie votes that the people who received the most votes
didn't get to vote in the revote. Jeff's logic does make sense.

As for three-way ties, I don't recall that ever happening. I just
checked Rob's Fact Checker X account and I see no tweets about it. I'm
with you that seven times sounds wrong. Someone out there is probably
fact checking him right now.

Concerning the rule book, I'm pretty sure it states that the producers
can change the rules whenever they want. I doubt that happened here as
letting Sierra vote had no chance of impacting the game.