[EM] Re: the simplest election reform

[Dave Ketchum]

On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 00:15:50 +0200 (CEST) Kevin Venzke wrote:

> Ted,
> 
> --- Araucaria Araucana <araucaria.araucana at gmail.com> a écrit :
> 
>>Approval voting is a reasonable first step.  But what do you do about
>>current top-two runoffs, or primaries in general?


You should be glad to be rid of top-two runoffs - too often, by locking 
out the third candidate, they lock out the truly best liked candidate - 
think of voter desires as follows, but voting Plurality plus top-two:
   45 A
   32 B
   33 C,B

Here a majority likes B better than A, but most of the B backers vote for 
C as even better.  Top-two will pit A vs C, letting A win.

BTW - IRV will also let A win - Condorcet will recognize that most voters 
dislike C, and recognize B being favored over A.


>>
>>Most of the highly-regarded single-winner methods discussed here
>>involve eliminating the primary in addition to changing the ballot and
>>tally methods.
>>
> 
> However, I doubt that primaries (or something fulfilling the same function)
> would really be eliminated. I largely blame the failure of LNHarm for this:
> Candidates from the same faction have incentive to persuade their own
> supporters to truncate, and other voters in the same faction to vote in a
> friendly way towards this candidate. If one candidate seems more popular
> than other candidates from the same faction, I think these efforts will
> be very successful.


Plurality NEEDS primaries.  Too often a party will have multiple potential 
candidates, and suffer if they split the votes available to back the 
"party candidate" in the general election (another plurality problem is 
that, even with primaries, a party - or related parties - can stumble into 
  having such multiple candidates).

With  IRV, Approval, Condorcet, etc. voters can rank multiple desired 
candidates above undesirable competitors.  Here primaries are, mostly, an 
unneeded expense.  Primaries also work toward a party only offering one 
candidate at the general election when a primary loser was better liked by 
all the voters.

> 
> Kevin Venzke

-- 
  davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
            Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
                  If you want peace, work for justice.