Why would you not use radio buttons? And what pattern would you use instead? I don’t get it …

Radio buttons are the correct metaphor for picking one option among a list of options. Why use something else? What use interface element do you think exists that works for this kind of interaction?

I’m honestly confused why you think radio buttons are the wrong type of interface element for this interaction. What‘s the reasoning as to why this seems so obvious to you? I’m honestly just trying to understand you.

Because voting is a multi-step process often involving more than one action. I have experienced all the below votes at governmental level, they are not hypothetical to me:

Sometimes the voter has the ability to add arbitrary options to the ballot.

Sometimes multiple values are allowed.

Sometimes there are positional votings.

Sometimes there is ranked-choice.

Sometimes you do not even want to submit the vote.

Looking only at "these are the options available, choose one and only one" is not a valid strategy for reaching the conclusion on what UI idiom to use.

I protest against the default assumption that radio buttons (no matter how much I like them) should be the default go-to for voting interfaces because of the context of voting is too complex.

That is such a weird perspective not at all relevant to this discussion.

Obviously all the examples you named are not a good fit for radio buttons. Except maybe the last one where you can just add an “invalid vote“ radio button choice.

But that doesn’t mean that for a fairly standard “pick one” vote radio buttons aren’t a good choice! You don’t have to be consistent within the concept of voting, you just have to be consistent for the one relevant use case!