Survivor needs to tweak how voting works at the Final Tribal Council

In every season of Survivor except one, the players who were voted out of the game get the opportunity to, then, vote for the player they think should win the game, $1 million, and the title of Sole Survivor.

Despite all of the changes to the way Survivor has been played, that has remained a constant for each season. While the format of Final Tribal has changed over the years, voting has not. The players on the jury vote for the person they think should win. The person who gets the most votes wins that season of Survivor.

The only season, that I can remember, where a player who wasn't voted out of the game voted at Final Tribal Council was when Laurel Johnson cast the tie-breaking vote between Wendell Holland and Dom Abbatte after the jury was deadlocked in Survivor: Ghost Island.

So, here's what I'm thinking: To add a new wrinkle to the game in a number of areas, Survivor should allow each person, including the players in the final three and the jury, to cast a vote at the Final Tribal Council. The players in the final three, just like in the regular part of the game, can't vote for themselves.

Why the Final Three deserve a vote at the Final Tribal Council

It's almost shocking to me that the players in the final three don't get to vote at the Final Tribal Council. The players get to vote in every other tribal council. They've played the game just like the rest of the jury, so they should have some say in who wins the season. It shouldn't just be turned over to the players who got voted out.

Why shouldn't Charlie Davis in Survivor 46 get to vote for the person he thinks should win? Charlie couldn't vote for himself, of course, but he could cast a vote for Ben Katzman if he thinks Kenzie Petty is the bigger threat to get votes. In the end, it might not matter because Kenzie still wins with five votes. So, it doesn't have a huge impact on the actual outcome of the game, but it does, in my opinion, have a big outcome on the strategy. It doesn't penalize players who work together to make it to the final three.

In Survivor 46, Charlie and Maria Shrime Gonzalez worked with each other all season. They basically ran the game from a strategic perspective, but the problem was that each player knew that eventually they'd have to take each other out. Then, it became a cat-and-mouse type game to get rid of their biggest ally in the game.

Would that need to happen if Charlie and Maria knew they had each other's vote at the end? Maybe, they'd keep running the game and then have a "may the best person win mindset." Maybe, they'd make it to the final and vote for the third person they brought with them, and then that person would have two votes for them and only need a few jury votes to win.

It adds another layer of unpredictability to the game that I think is needed, especially when the players removed from the game gather and talk about the game, what happened, and who they would vote for at Ponderosa.

It also opens up the possibility for one of the players in the final three to accidentally cast the winning vote against themselves. Can you imagine?

The obvious issue is that, first, that's not how Survivor has worked, so there are probably some purists who hate this idea. That's fine. The second issue is that if everyone votes, there's no person to cast the "Laurel Johnson Tie-Breaker Vote" to crown the winner.

Well, I think they should do what they do all season long if there's a tie. You have everyone re-vote except the two (or three) players who are tied. So, the entire jury would re-vote, and they can obviously change their vote if they want to try to break the tie on their own. Plus, the second runner-up (assuming they aren't also tied as well) would cast a vote. That would, in most cases, break the tie.

If the game is still tied after that, you draw rocks at the live Survivor finale. There would be nothing more dramatic than that!

It's cruel in some ways, but is that more cruel than having Laurel Johnson cast the tie-breaker in Survivor? I think that is actually more fair!

This might not be the full solution to fix some of the issues I have with the Final Tribal Council, but it would be fun. And, it would definitely change how alliances work and how players choose who they want to go to the the end with. That'd be worth it to me!

Survivor 47 airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on CBS! Stay tuned for more news about the new season.