[EM] the 'who' and the 'what'

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Michael Allan wrote:
> Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>> That is interesting. Perhaps one could have, for example, a "Condorcet 
>> party" that pledges to run the Condorcet winner of an earlier internal 
>> election for president. Then various small parties could nominally join up 
>> with the Condorcet party, and that party would hold an election (a primary 
>> of sorts).
>>
>> The effects predicted by game theory would be a problem, though. A losing 
>> party could think that "hey, if I run independently, I may get a share, no 
>> matter how small, and that's better than the 0% chance I have if I stay 
>> under the Condorcet party umbrella".
> 
> Or the parallel electoral system ("Condorcet party") might undertake a
> "hostile takeover" of the other parties.  It would appeal to their
> members and cherry-pick their candidates.  (But I'm uncertain how this
> would play out in a PR context, unfamiliar to me.)  It might attract
> candidates by the chance to "be their own parties", or maybe just to
> be independent of any party.  It might attract members (voters) by the
> ease of shifting votes across party lines, opening up a wider field of
> candidates to them.  (So it would be like a market fair, with
> independent vendors.)

It seems this system would be more stable than I originally thought. 
Third parties could run as parts of the Condorcet party without running 
much of a risk, since they would otherwise get no votes at all. The 
defection danger surfaces when the third parties have become 
sufficiently large from using that parallel electoral system. Then a 
party that would win a plurality vote but who isn't a Condorcet winner 
has an incentive to defect.

Following that kind of reasoning, it would appear that conventional 
parties have very little to lose by running Condorcet primaries instead 
of Plurality primaries, more so if there's an open primary. (So why 
don't they?)