[Election-Methods] Top 5 Primary

[Dave Ketchum]

Best to leave US Presidential out of this debate because of its 
peculiarities.  Time enough to go there once the basic topic is resolved 
for general use.

Also matters that Plurality is the major election method in the US. 
Plurality DESPERATELY needs Primaries to try to avoid parties having 
multiple candidates to divvy up the vote of party backers.

This discussion is based on Condorcet, which has no difficulty with a 
party having multiple candidates, and backers, should they choose, to vote 
for more than one such.

On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:39:13 +0200 Juho wrote:
> On Dec 27, 2007, at 22:39 , Don&Cathy Hoffard wrote:
> 
>> In this example I will uses the 2008 US Presidential Election only to 
>> illustrate a point - you could assume a state Governor or Senators race
>>
>>  
>>
>> We currently have about 25 candidates running for President of the 
>> United States.
>>
>> 9 Democrats
>>
>> 9 Republicans
>>
>> 3 (assumed) Green
>>
>> 2 (assumed) Libertarian
>>
>> 2 (assumed Constitution
>>
>>  
>>
>> Bases on the current election laws we will have 5 candidates in the 
>> General Election.
>>
>> 1 Democrat
>>
>> 1 Republican
>>
>> 1 Green
>>
>> 1 Libertarian
>>
>> 1 Constitution
>>
>>  
>>
>> Voters will be asked the vote for one of these candidates.
>>
>>  
>>
>> Why do we have to choose among the following preferences (using 
>> head-to-head match ups – i.e. Condorcet) among the 25 candidates running?
>>
>>  
>>
>> 4 most preferred (Democrat Party/Clinton-Plurality winner)
>>
>> 5 most preferred (Republican Party/Giuliani-Plurality winner)
>>
>> 15-19 most preferred (Green Party - assume Nader)
>>
>> 21 most preferred (Libertarian Party -unknown)
>>
>> 23 most preferred (Constitution Party -unknown)
>>
>>  
>>
>> If we have to have 5 candidate in the general election why not have 
>> the TOP 5 (based on the Condorcet method)

Every time I see a magic number I choke.  We do need to keep the counts 
below astronomical, but specific numbers mean unreasonable methods of 
obeying the restrictions.  Ditto for limiting by number how many a party 
may have.

Condorcet cares not beyond needing to have space for its arrays.  Election 
officers need to attend to ballots.
      Voters care little - they care not beyond being able to rank the 
handful they desire to rank.

So - how might we reasonably limit the candidate count to something 
manageable without using unreasonable methods?
>>
> Is the plan is to first arrange a Condorcet election between all 
> candidates and then between the top 5 candidates? In that case if the 
> voters have not changed opinion between the two elections (and the 
> voters vote sincerely) then the results of the second round should 
> usually be a copy of the results at the first round. In that sense the 
> results of the first round could be considered also final. But if the 
> law requires to arrange an election between 5, why not then.
> 
> Too many candidates in an election may be a problem since that makes 
> voting tedious. One option would be to allow large parties to have e.g. 
> 2 candidates each and small parties to have only one candidate. In this 
> case also republicans would have a say on which one of the democrats 
> will win (assuming that democrats will have majority). I'm not sure if 
> democrats want that or if they prefer to first elect the "best democrat" 
> among the democrats and name only that candidate in the final election. 
> Having several candidates in the final election may make the probability 
> of electing some of them higher.
> 
> My point is just that running primaries and the number of candidates 
> each party wants to nominate and the maximum number of candidates in the 
> final election do have impact on how the system works.
> 
> Condorcet should work ok in all phases (I don't expect strategic votes 
> to be a major problem).
> 
> Juho Laatu
> 
...
-- 
  davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
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