[Coda]

People don't fall into neat categories so easily. You might find people who like A, B, and F, or B, C, and D. There can't be a candidate for every combination of issues.

So what you're really missing is that someone who likes A, C, and E would rather see the A, B, C candidate win than the D, E, F candidate, but every vote for the A, C, E candidate is one less vote towards their second-choice candidate.

There are other forms of voting besides single-vote ballots that solve this problem. The easiest to describe is Instant Runoff Voting, wherein you rank each candidate according to preference. Then when tallying votes, you first count everyone's first choice. Then you take out the lowest-scoring candidate, and then take everyone who voted for that candidate and count their second-choice votes. You repeat this until there are only two candidates left, and the winner is the one with more votes.

It's not a perfect system, but it's an improvement over a simple majority system.