[EM] CWO may be worth fighting for

[James Green-Armytage]

Dear election-methods fans,

	Here is one possible progression for single winner elections (to decide
on representatives):	

1. plurality and runoffs
2. IRV
3. CWO-IRV
4. ranked pairs(wv), with CWO
5. cardinal pairwise (with CWO?) 
(Note: When I say "IRV" in general, this includes versions of IRV that
allow equal rankings (which I obviously prefer).)

	Perhaps if IRV becomes widespread, and a major spoiler effect occurs, it
will be possible to mount a major campaign in favor of the candidate
withdrawal option (CWO). If CWO provisions are written into the IRV laws,
it becomes very likely that a Smith set member will always be chosen. This
could be a substantially good method that I wouldn't mind lasting a
relatively long while. 
	Over time, awareness of alternative ranked ballot methods will grow. It
will become relatively clear that the method is already choosing the
Condorcet winner most of the time, so it will be logical to switch over to
a good pairwise method, keeping the CWO as an anti-burying device. This
method could happily last for several generations.
	After a long while, people might develop an interest in integrating
cardinal information into the tally, and end up with something similar to
cardinal pairwise. It's not clear to me whether it would still make sense
to hold onto CWO at this point.

Multi-winner:
	At some point during this progression, STV-PR will hopefully be adopted
for legislative elections. If this happens after the single-winner CWO
movement, it will be logical enough to write CWO into the STV laws.
CWO-STV should approximate CPO-STV (comparison of pairs of outcomes by
STV) just as CWO-IRV approximates Condorcet. After a long while with
CWO-STV, voters might switch over to CPO-STV (with CWO), and perhaps even
CW-CPO-STV (cardinal-weighted CPO-STV).

	This is just one possible progression among many. I have posted different
progressions previously, and I will post others in the future. Maybe we
should make some tables to compare the different possible progressions...

my best,
James Green-Armytage