[EM] primary election thoughts

[Ted Stern]

What do group members think of the following primary election proposal:

- Ballots allow a voter to rank 1st, 2nd or 3rd choice candidates.

- Unlike IRV, more than one candidate can be chosen for any rank.

- Any 1st/2nd/3rd choice vote is considered an "approval" vote.

- Use Condorcet to tally.

- If a Condorcet winner exists, with more than 50% of the voters
  approving, then that candidate wins immediately and the seat doesn't have
  to be decided in the general election.

- Otherwise, eliminate candidates with less than 1% approval.

- On the general election ballot for that seat, candidates will be listed
  with the Condorcet winner (if any) at the top, with remaining candidates
  listed below in order of approval.

This would be an alternative to either Louisiana-style top two runoff or
closed party primary.

I'm curious what advantages of full Condorcet might be lost by reducing the
options to only 3 ranks.

[The general election could also use a 3 choice ballot with some robust
Condorcet completion method such as Ranked Pairs (wv), optionally using
approval-weighted pairwise ranking.]

IMO, the main benefits of such a primary would be

1) The ballot would be relatively simple, no different from some IRV proposals
   or the "Borda" of www.vote123.info (really just a Cardinal Rating scheme).

2) Non-controversial positions would be decided in the primary and the general
   election ballot would be much less cluttered.

3) Popular cross-over or third-party compromise candidates could win races at
   the "primary" level without being eliminated before the general election,
   and even more clutter would be eliminated from the general election ballot.

4) The general election would be reduced to just controversial races.  In
   those, candidates would vie for highest approval rating on the general
   election ballot.

In Washington State, the voters approved a Louisiana style top-two-primary
initiative last November.  This law cannot be changed within the next 2 years
except by another initiative.  There is an IRV initiative circulating in the
state.  I'd like to see a better alternative.

Ted
-- 
Send real replies to
	ted stern at u dot washington dot edu

Frango ut patefaciam -- I so break that I may reveal