[EM] Pseudo-election reform in California

[Curt Siffert]

It seems clear to me that this would be worse than IRV.  IRV and this 
"French/Louisiana Runoff" method are identical in that there is a 
second round if there is no majority.

IRV then removes the last-place candidate.  So does French Runoff, 
except that French Runoff also removes several others; all of which had 
more first-place support than the IRV loser.

Since much of the flaw of IRV is that it eliminates the person with the 
least first-place votes, without looking at that candidate's 
down-ticket support, then eliminating *multiple* people based only on 
their first-place votes only exacerbates this.  IRV is better than this 
method because at least it allows a third-place candidate with greater 
consensus support to have a better shot in later rounds.

(This is assuming that the plan is for all *general election 
candidates* to run together in one single primary, and that if one gets 
a majority, the general is skipped.  And this is assuming that this is 
compared against another similar primary of all general election 
candidates, counted by IRV.)

Curt


On Jun 1, 2004, at 11:15 AM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote:

>>  I should add best-two-runoff to my sims to check that. I bet it's 
>> worse than IRV. It's probably analytically provably worse than IRV.
>
> But, I suspect you are using idealized consistent voters, and a 
> relatively uniform electorate.   Given the size and diversity of 
> California, an open final election would likely have very different 
> financial and political dynamics than an open primary.   I suspect it 
> costs a lot more money and organizational skill to try to appeal to a 
> general electorate rather than a well-defined core constituency, which 
> perversely plays -into- the hands of the dominant parties (as we more 
> or less saw during the Reca