[EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not

[Raph Frank]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Juho <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to change
> that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two. That would
> solve the spoiler problem :-).

What about a 2 stage process.  Ask voters to vote "What party is your
favourite party?".

Only the top-2 parties are then allowed to run candidates for the main election.

You could use Asset voting to decide on the 2 parties if they don't
manage to more than 1/3 of the vote each.

Each "party" might end up being a coalition of parties.

> In principle each district could have its own two
> parties that are independent of what the two parties are in other districts.
> There is however some tendency to end up with two or small number of parties
> nation wide.

This is seen in Canada with the Quebec party.