Dropping the Primary Election

[Steve Eppley]

Donald D wrote:
-snip-
>     We should think about not having primary elections because of
>the low turnout of voters.  A low number of voters should not be
>selecting the candidates for the general election.  That is the main
>reason for not having primary elections but there are other reasons.
>No primary means no cross party voting.  No primary means that
>candidates of the same party can run against the candidates of other
>parties and not against each other. The way it is now a candidate is
>hurt by members of his own party in the primary and that damage
>carrys over to the general election.  I would think that the
>political parties would want to take the lead to do away with the
>primary election. Money is another reason.
-snip-

Like other "iterative elimination" methods (MPV, Coombs, etc.),
primaries are inherently flawed and ignore the true preferences of
the voters.

The main reason parties want primaries is because the existing "vote
for only one" voting method used in the general election has a strong
spoiler dilemma: if two or more "similar" candidates compete in the
general, they will fragment their voters and elect a "greater evil"
from a rival party. 

Switching to a method like Condorcet or Smith//Condorcet would
eliminate the spoiler dilemma, letting the viable parties run more
than one candidate.  Switching to MPV would not. 

There are some tradeoffs involved, from the point of view of a party.
By eliminating the primaries and nominating many candidates, it
would save the money spent in the primaries, but it would need more
money in the general election.  It would have to share or divvy labor
resources during the general election as well.  

On the other hand, turnout of voters who favor the party would
increase, and since number of voters is the bottom line I think
parties would have a significant incentive to nominate more than one
candidate if the ballot access laws permit that, and an incentive to
splinter into smaller parties if the ballot access laws only allow
one nominee per party. 

---Steve     (Steve Eppley    seppley at alumni.caltech.edu)