[Election-Methods] Top 5 primary

[Dave Ketchum]

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 21:30:08 -0800 Don&Cathy Hoffard wrote:

 > 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.
 >

Then it would be time to either find a new reason for doing Primaries, or
give up on having such, since Condorcet does away with the current basic need.

Right now many of us worry about Republican politicians making sure Ron
Paul is excluded from the general election by seeing to it that he loses
the Republican Primary.

 >
 >
 > 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.
 >
IRV will even do fine in most cases of multiple candidates - it only 
flunks on certain patterns of voting.
 >
 >
 > 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.

-- 
   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.
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