[EM] Primaries?

[Dave Ketchum]

On Mon, 29 Mar 2004 14:03:18 -0800 (PST) Forest Simmons wrote:

> On Sat, 27 Mar 2004, Dave Ketchum wrote:
> 
> 
>>-------- Original Message --------
>>From: Bart Ingles <bartman at netgate.net>
>>To: EM List <election-methods at electorama.com>
>>Subject: [EM] Argument for Approval Primaries
>>Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 09:49:40 -0800
>>
>>It occurs to me that one place where ranked ballot methods are entirely
>>unsuitable is in party primary elections.  Here neither the CW nor the
>>SU maximizer are necessarily winnable choices, which seems to moot those
>>criteria.  A similar statement applies to any determinate system.
>>
>>...
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>Disagreed!  If a method is "good enough" to select a single winner in the
>>general election, then it must be good enough, and most logical choice,
>>for use in related primaries.  While the details are a bit different in
>>primaries, the basic issue is to select the best candidate as seen by the
>>voters.
>>
>>
> 
> Suppose that the Democrats use Condorcet to select the candidate that has
> the best chance of winning against Bush. ["Any Democrat is Better than
> Bush."]
> 
> A Condorcet method might well be the best method to pick such a candidate,
> if the voters are willing to (and remember to) rank the candidates
> according to winnability (over Bush) rather than in order of actual
> perceived merit.
> 
> It seems to me that any time a general election without a primary would
> result in a Smith set intersecting more than one party, then winnability
> would be the major issue if there were primaries.
> 

Regardless of method, the voters need to be mostly agreed as to goals to 
expect success.

Assume a candidate with the ability to win the general election AND plans 
to destroy party goals, and the voters had best look elsewhere, EVEN if 
that risks losing the election to a less destructive candidate from elsewhere.


> Forest

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