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Highest median voting rules are cardinal voting rules, where the winning candidate is a candidate with the highest median rating. As these employ ratings, each voter rates the different candidates on an ordered, numerical or verbal scale.
The various highest median rules differ in their treatment of ties, i.e., the method of ranking the candidates with the same median rating.
Proponents of highest median rules argue that they faithfully reflect the voter's opinion, that they satisfy the independence of irrelevant alternatives and, not being ranked ballots, do not fall within the scope of Arrow's impossibility theorem. Critics point out that highest median rules violate the Condorcet criterion: a candidate can in principle be elected even if all voters but one prefer another candidate.