[Election-Methods] Top 5 primary

[Don&Cathy Hoffard]

Dave Ketchum Said

>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.

 

Reply:

In my example I lumped all of the candidates in one primary election.  This
is called a "Blanket Primary" which the US Supreme Court has rule as
unconstitutional (freedom of association principle).  I was just trying to
making a point.

The Party's rights to "Their candidate" (s) is a 1st amendment right.  The
reason parties were formed was to avoid the "spoiler" problem inherent with
plurality voting.   If a party had 2 candidates and another had only one the
other party would always win (under plurality voting).  But if we change the
rules to Condorcet in the General election there would be no need to limit
their candidates to just one.

 

We could also have a Party primary that would have a Condorcet winner.  If
we are just talking about a general election IRV would work in 90% of the
cases.  Why? It is that in most cases the election is between two major
candidates and some minor party candidates, who in most cases have little or
no chance of winning.  However, when you have 9 very similar candidates in a
Party primary elections (Democratic primary or the Republican primary) you
need a very different type of processes (like Condorcet/Range).  My point is
that Plurality does not would work in the Democratic or Republican
primaries.  Although there are no "head-to-head" polls for those primaries
we can guess the results.   Clinton may be the Plurality winner but Edwards
may be the Condorcet winner (Best candidate) in the Democratic Primary and
McCain may be the Condorcet winner in Republican primary.  Which was kind of
my point.

 

Let us assume that a State passes a law that the "winner" (Pledged
delegates) would be the winner of the states Condorcet Party primary.  For
example we have 9 candidates in the New Hampshire Primary and the Sate of
New Hampshire decides to uses the Condorcet method to determine how the
State will cast its vote in the Party convention.

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