Techniques for decoding repeated messages sent from a transmitter are improved with information obtained from the decoding of the first transmission and by augmenting Chase combining techniques with a voting-based combining method. In an example method, first encoded bits corresponding to a first instance of the repeated message and demodulated to obtain first soft bits, which are decoded to obtain first decoded bits. Second encoded bits corresponding to a second instance of the repeated message are demodulated to obtain second soft bits. The first decoded bits are re-encoded to obtain re-encoded bits. Sign values for modified soft bits are determined from sign values for the first soft bits, the sign values for the second soft bits, and the sign values for the re-encoded bits. The modified soft bits are combined with the first soft bits and decoded.