[EM] Re: parties working to throw out top-two primary in Washington State

[Paul Kislanko]

Russ Paielli <6049awj02 <at> sneakemail.com> writes:

> 
> So now the parties will need to have their own "private pre-primaries" 
> before the official so-called "primary." And the general election will 
> almost surely exclude minor parties.
> 
> Or will the "we'll-tell-you-how-to-run-your-party" Nazis prohibit the 
> pre-primaries? Think about the implications of that, folks.
> 
> Gov. Schwarnegger actually supported the top-two primary system in 
> California last election, but CA voters were smart enough not to go for 
> it. I like Arnold, but he was "out to lunch" on that one.
> 
> The people who concocted this idea have no clue about the purpose of 
> primary elections. The purpose of primaries, of course, is to allow each 
> party to consolidate its votes behind one candidate.
> 
> The fact that a majority was ignorant enough to fall for this scheme in 
> Washington does not bode well for the future of voting systems.

If I am understanding this correctly, the voters asked for all candidates to
participate in a "primary" from which the top two candidates (regardless of
party) would advance to a general election that only involves 2 candidates,
which could conceivably have the same party affiliation.

I can see why the parties don't like this, but from a pure election-methods
standpoint it is one way to guarantee that the ultimate winner is elected by a
majority, because it limits the general election to 2 candidates. Technically,
that's not any different from choosing a method that iteratively removes
candidates until only 2 are pairwise-compared.

Personally, I think this could be a big improvement. Throw all the democrats,
republicans, libertarians, etc. into one big mix and have the primary select the
top 2. If we'd used this in 2000 for the US Presidential election nationwide,
for instance, I think we'd more likely have seen McCain v Bush in the general
election than what we got. 

The other desirable option is to eliminate primaries at taxpayer expense, and
allow the parties to conduct to their own pre-election selection process however
they want (caucuses, etc) and not give them all the free publicity with
subsidized public elections.

I see a lot of downside to the way they're doing it - the approach could lead to
a one-party monarchical-style system as easily as a more democratic system, but
the fact that the parties don't like it makes it highly desirable to me on the
surface....