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

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Dave Ketchum wrote:
> My goal is using Condorcet, but recognizing that everything costs money, 
> wo we need to be careful as to expenses.
> 
> Thus I see:
>      Condorcet as the election method.
>      But then see no value in a "condorcet party".
>      Also then see no value in primaries, but know parties see value in 
> such.

The idea of having a Condorcet party is to gradually transform Plurality 
elections into Condorcet elections.

Election systems in general have the problem that they're very hard to 
change, since if the current system has a bias in any direction, those 
who are elected are those who benefit from that bias, and thus would be 
quite uninterested in changing the status quo. In optimization terms, 
Plurality is at a local optimum, and we're stuck with hill climbing.

Now, if we have a Condorcet party, which isn't a real party after all, 
but simply a way of pooling votes of the voters of real parties, and the 
parties have little to lose and everything to gain by pooling the votes 
as such, then (ideally) more and more parties would join until the 
election is, in effect, Condorcet. Local optimization, because no party 
has to "sacrifice itself to the cause".

The process would go like this: The parties promise to not run 
candidates under their own names. Instead, they submit the candidates to 
the Condorcet party election. Voters submit ranked ballots in the 
"party"'s "primary". The winner is who the "party" runs for President 
(Governor, whatever).

>  And no value in runoffs - Plurality needs runoffs because of the 
> way voters cannot express their thoughts - but Condorcet has no similar 
> problem.

Condorcet runoffs may have value if the people decide to play dirty and 
always use strategy. Since the runoff must be honest (with only two 
candidates, the optimal strategy is honesty), it hedges the risk since 
the best of the two will always win.

I think the best way would be to have two Condorcet methods, one that 
produces very good results, and one that produces worse results but is 
near-unaffected by strategy. Then if there's a CW, he wins, otherwise 
the winner of one method faces the winner of the other. That would be 
extremely complex, though, and it's likely that people aren't going to 
be so conniving that something like that would be required.