America's Got Talent's finale has 10 contestants and the winner is chosen by fan voting and the one with the highest % of votes wins. Isn't it a fallacy to presume that this process actually represents whom America thinks is the best or the one who should win? Is there a word for this fallacy?

TL;DR -- Is the America's Got Talent process for determining the winner -- awarding the contestant with the most votes among 10 contestants -- a fallacy (or something similar)? Is there a name for the fallacy? There are plenty of problems with this process of choosing a winner, since the winner will likely receive less than 50% of the votes, meaning most of the viewers think that the contestant shouldn't have won.

Another problem is that there's no guarantee that this #1 contestant in the Round of 10 would win if those who voted for contestants #3 through #10 had to re-vote between #1 and #2.

Lastly, there's no guarantee that even anyone in the top 3-4 in the round of 10 would finish in the top 2 if they eliminated contestants one by one, with the voters for the eliminated contestants instead voting for, say, contestants #5 and #6 to the point that #5 and #6 end up in the top 2, and the initial #1 and winner of the 10 finishes 6th.

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America's Got Talent is a talent show that awards a winner at the end of the season. They use fan-voting to determine who should advance and eventually make it to the final 10 contestants, and the final 10 contestants represent the 10 highest vote-getters. Then, they have a night where viewers vote for their winner, and then the finale reveals the contestant who received the most votes, and that person WINS simply by getting a plurality, not majority, of the votes..

This format raises a lot of problems:

• Problem #1: The "winner" is likely someone whom most of America (as in, most of the viewers) thinks shouldn't win out of the 10

Sure, there's the mathematical possibility that out of 10 contestants, there's one who gets over 50% of the votes while the other 9 get less than 50%. But let's ignore that extremely unlikely situation.

Ignoring that scenario, that would mean the winner would have most of "America" thinking "I didn't think he should have won," since they all voted for someone else.

For example, let's say the winner (let's call him Bob) is crowned because he got the most votes, with 25% of the votes. Obviously, that means 75% of the viewers thought that Bob shouldn't win.

*** Problem #2: We don't even know if the winner, Bob, would win in a head-to-head voting match-up with the runner-up**

So, during the voting of 10, let's say the percentages ranged from a high of 25% to a low of 3% for the 10th-place finisher. The runner-up (Alice) has, say, 20%. Just for this example, let's assume that #3 though #10 are out of the picture, and now America must vote for Bob or Alice. Even though Bob was the winner of 10, there's no guarantee he'd be the winner against Alice in a pool of 2.

Those who voted for contestants #3 through #10 can't vote for those contestants anymore and are now stuck with Bob and Alice. What if all those voters now vote for Alice? That means Bob, who won with 25% in the round of 10, would become the runner-up in the round of 10 with still 25% while Alice wins in a landslide with 75% of the votes. That's an extreme example, but it's still very possible that Alice still wins with something like 55% of the votes, since there's no telling as to whom the viewers who voted for #3-#10 would vote for, Bob or Alice.

But that's a problem that's not even an automatic problem...

*** Problem #3: We don't even know if Bob and Alice -- the top 2 vote-getters in the round of 10 -- would be the final 2 if they eliminated contestants one at a time. Heck, we don't even know if #3 and #4 would finish in the top 2, either.**

Let's say instead of a finale of voting for 10, they extend it 10 weeks so that every week a contestant is eliminated by eliminating the one with the absolute lowest number of votes. #10 is eliminated.

Now, it's just #1 through #9. Those who voted for #10 now vote for either #3 (Dave) or #4 (Cathy), and roughly half of #10's votes now go to Dave and Cathy each.

Week 2, #8 is eliminated. The #8 voters now vote for Dave and Cathy, with 50% and 50%.

This is repeated all the way down to 5 contestants. #5 is eliminated, and like all the other voters, #5's voters vote for Dave and Cathy.

That means with 4 contestants remaining, we have Bob with 25%, Alice with 20%, and Dave and Cathy with around 26-29% each. This could continue until Dave and Cathy, who weren't even in the top 2 during the round of 10, are now the final 2 while #1 Bob and #2 Alice don't even make it to the finale.

Of course, there's no guarantee that even 2 of the top 4 make it to the final 2, as #5 (Erin) and #6 (Frank) could make it, depending on the initial voters for #3 and #4. For example, same situation except Dave and Cathy had only 8.1% and 8% of voters, respectively, while Erin had 7.9% and Frank 7.8%, respectively during the round of 10. This time, as people get eliminated, their voters vote for Erin and Frank such that Dave and Cathy get eliminated, and now Erin and Frank have around 26% to 29% of the votes in the round of 4. Bob and Alice eventually get eliminated and Erin and Frank -- who were #5 and #6 in the round of 10, actually finish #1 and #2.

There's a chance that the "winner" and #1 vote-getter of the official process and round of 10 ends up #6 if they did it by a round-by-round elimination process.

I'm sure there are other similar problems I haven't brought up, but the bottom line is that there's no way that a final vote to decide the champion among 10 contestants would yield the "true people's choice" for the winner.