[EM] Primaries?

[Dave Ketchum]

We have about worn out this thread:
      A primary before a ranked ballot general election has its own needs, 
UNLIKE those preceding a Plurality general election.
      Perhaps multiple primary winners would make sense.  If so, needs are 
unlike those of a PR election.
      I like the method to be simple, considering using the same method as 
in the general election qualifying as simple to learn.

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 15:47:40 -0500 Adam Tarr wrote:

> There's really only one issue left worth discussing in this thread, so 
> I'll cut the rest out:
> 
> Dave Ketchum wrote and I responded, et cetera:
> 
>>>>>>>>      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
>>
>>
>> AGAIN, we are NOT doing PR, and it is not clear to me that what might 
>> look to you like clones have to be a bad thing.
> 
> 
> So, you think it would be acceptable, even desireable, to have three 
> candidates from a party's centermost faction enter the general election, 
> even when the party has a broad range of viewpoints?
> 

Yes, especially if this faction has the best possibility of winning the 
general election.


> Say (somewhat but not totally arbitrarily) that the Democratic 
> candidates for president could have been ordered from least liberal to 
> most liberal as follows:
> 
> Lieberman<Clark<Kerry<Edwards<Gephardt<Dean<Kucinich<Brown<Sharpton
> 
> Furthermore, let's assume that Kerry was the Condorcet winner, and 
> furthermore let's assume that preferences by most voters follow a 
> predictable pattern of moving away from their favorite.
> 
> If we use successive Condorcet elections to pick three nominees, then 
> the other two winners (other than Kerry) will be either Edwards and 
> Gephardt, Edwards and Clark, or Clark and Lieberman.  This leaves the 
> entire more liberal third of the Democratic electorate without any 
> representation, and it leaves the candidate with the second-strongest 
> core support (Dean) eliminated.
> 
> This shouldn't bother us in a single-winner situation, but in the case 
> of a multi-winner election it begs the question of why we are even 
> bothering with electing more than one nominee, if all we are doing is 
> getting the three most similar candidates.
> 

Destination of this thread is a single winner general election.


> Moreover, this could constitute really poor strategy.  If the general 
> electorate has different preferences than the primary electorate 
> (obviously very likely) then producing a slate of candidates with 
> diverse stances is more likely to produce a good result for the party, 
> in general.
> 
> Again, none of this argues that perfect PR is needed in a primary.  But 
> completely ignoring PR issues is a mistake, too.
> 
> -Adam

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  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
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