[the phantom]

Personally, I'd like the last person to reach the vote total to be lynched. That leaves open more voting possibilities in my mind. If you need to surpass the vote leader rather than simply tie them in order to get your candidate lynched you are obviously less likely to be successful, and therefore less likely to try it.

I've always thought one of the most telling things about voting behavior is when people swoop in to "save" someone from the chopping block. And making the last person to reach the count be the one who gets the axe would encourage that sort of saving behavior.

Or you could also have a situation like this-
Person 1- 5 votes
Person 2- 4 votes
Person 3- 4 votes

There are still a couple people left to vote who would like to see Person 2 or 3 lynched, but if the rules say the first person gets lynched then their votes are essentially worthless. But if the last person gets lynched their votes are still very powerful and then they will have to compete with each other to be the last to cast their vote, and how hard they try at it might be an indicator of how badly they want to lynch their candidate (or save the other candidate).

In my opinion the longer you can keep the decision up in the air and the more room you leave for multiple candidates to be under the gun, the better.