[EM] Primaries?

[Adam Tarr]

I don't think we really disagree about anything meaningful, Dave.

>>I imagine this is common, but they are really doing the primary on behalf 
>>of the party.  The party could decide to not have a primary, just as the 
>>state could decide to not do the party the favor of administering it.
>About 100 years ago NY set up its system, in which primaries are done BY 
>BOE on behalf of the PEOPLE.
>
>As to "party":
>     Libertarians and Greens are national parties - this cuts NO ICE as to 
> NY law.
>     Groups willing and able to conform to NY law get the party privileges 
> that make obeying desirable.

Right, this is what I mean by "[The government] could provide very strong 
incentives".  In the case of the Dems and Republicans, they've been in 
power so long that the line between those parties and the government has 
blurred a bit.  They got in power and passed the laws which now benefit 
their parties.  But still, parties are private organizations, and the BoE 
is a public institution, so the distinction still exists.  If the Democrats 
WANTED to use Condorcet in their primaries, they could just not use the 
primary process and run their own primary.

>     Libertarians are able to get above 15,000 signatures, but unable to 
> get the 50,000 votes (about one percent) for governor to be recognized as 
> a party.
>     Greens became a party in 98, failed to get the 50,000 votes to 
> continue in 02.
>They did a new thing - got a judge to direct BOE to continue to maintain 
>party membership lists.

Obviously alternate election methods will help them enormously in getting 
the votes they need.

>>>Anyway, big deal is that it is good for the voters to understand the 
>>>method used, and that is more practical if both elections use the same method.
>>
>>Probably true, but as I said before I wouldn't mind multiple winners, and 
>>the goals of the elections are not exactly the same.
>One of my reasons for starting this series was that having ranked ballots 
>in general elections removes one big reason for needing single winner 
>primaries.
>
>Sorting out goals seems too big to solve here.
>
>>Well, when you said, "[If] a party is willing and able to move ahead - 
>>let it", that implied to me that you thought the government had the right 
>>to not let them.
>
>See my words above.

None of that really implies to me that they have the right to not let them 
- just that they are providing really strong incentives for them to stick 
to the current process.

I think that if you convinced one of the major parties to go with an 
alternate election method, they would probably be able to force the BoE to 
help them use it.  Just speculation at this point, of course.

>>>>>      Puzzle:  Assuming the above leads to Condorcet in the primary, 
>>>>> to select two candidates for the general election - WHY NOT?  the 
>>>>> arguments are not necessarily the same as related to electing two 
>>>>> officers for PR.
>>>>
>>>>Not necessarily, sure, but I don't think that Condorcet is clearly the 
>>>>best method to elect two candidates.  It seems likely that it would end 
>>>>up picking two candidates from the center of a party, and nobody from a 
>>>>wing (think Kerry and Edwards, in stead of Kerry and Dean).  But there 
>>>>have been some stabs taken at Condorcet-flavored proportional 
>>>>representation.  The best attempt is probably this one:
>>>>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/election-methods-list/message/10308
>>>>It's pretty complicated, but worth the read.  Try to sell that to the 
>>>>public, though...
>>>
>>>As I said above, we are not doing PR, so almost certainly would not find 
>>>such complication worth the pain.
>>
>>Probably not, but this does not imply that pure iterative single-winner 
>>is the best approach, either.  A good compromise (in my opinion) would be 
>>the sequential variant of the method described in the link.  So, first 
>>you find the CW, then you find the best two-candidate slate with the CW 
>>in it, then you find the best three-candidate slate with those two 
>>candidates in it, and so on until you've generated as much of the order 
>>as you need.
>You seem determined to add unneeded complications.

Well, there's complications, and there's unneeded complications.  The 
simple fact is that, while Condorcet is an excellent (I would say the best) 
method for choosing one winner, it is a terrible method for choosing two or 
more.  It is likely to produce a set of "clone" candidates, all 
representing the center faction of the electorate.  Using some method of 
PR, no matter how crude, is more likely to get good results.

I'll happily agree that sequential CFPRM is still really complicated, and 
probably more complicated then we need.  But how about single 
non-transferrable vote?  How about cumulative voting?  How about STV-PR?

All of those are well-understood and relatively simple methods, and all 
would be dramatically better than using Condorcet to elect two or three 
people.  As I said, I think Condorcet is the very best single-winner 
method.  But would a Democrat who supported Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich 
be happy if the two Democrats in the general election were Kerry and 
Edwards?  Because that would be the most likely outcome if you use Condorcet.

We surely don't need perfect PR in a primary, but some degree of PR is 
necessary, or producing more than one winner is often almost pointless.

-Adam