[EM] why can't we have the Ranked Ballot (even IRV) for primaries?

[Dave Ketchum]

This started with a description of a primary problem - 5 strong Dem  
candidates for gov. in VT.  Primaries are a party task, but this one  
sounds as if it may include clones, or at least near-clones. Just as  
primaries were invented to do such as attend to clones within a party,  
perhaps something new could be invented to help this primary.

So Ranked Choice makes sense here and I would argue, as usual, that it  
should be Condorcet rather than IRV.

For another day I would promote Condorcet for the general election,  
noting that that reduces the value of even having primaries.

What I read below is at times into trying to do good outside of party  
primaries needs.

Dave Ketchum

On Aug 26, 2010, at 7:39 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> Raph Frank wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 9:41 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
>> <km-elmet at broadpark.no> wrote:
>>> Third, the primary is not open and so
>>> even if a good ranked method were used, it would elect the  
>>> candidate closest
>>> to the party's median, not that of the electorate in general.
>> Not necessarily.  The candidates could easily argue (as now), that
>> they have a better change of being elected if they are closer to the
>> national median.  Party voters would have to trade off getting a
>> candidate who reasonably represents the party's views with one who  
>> has
>> a reasonable change of being elected.
>
> That's true, but then the voters are acting strategically. Although  
> the strategy isn't the familiary selfish sort, they are reporting a  
> different rank than if they were to just rank by their own preference.
>
>> Another option would be to give party members 2 votes and everyone
>> else 1 vote.  This would give a median that is between the national
>> and party median.
>
> You probably have a continuum here. At one end, you would have the  
> party leadership just decide upon the common candidate. A little  
> further, you have an ordinary (closed primary), in effect giving  
> party members 1 vote and everybody else 0; then you have all sorts  
> of weighting up to open (1 vote for members and 1 for everybody  
> else), and if you go even further, no primary at all.
>
> With methods like Schulze and RP, an open primary distorts the final  
> election less than in Plurality, because these methods fail IIA less  
> than does Plurality. That is, if you have an open primary and the  
> voters would vote identically in the real election (with respect to  
> the candidates running in the primary) as in the primary, then that  
> primary is closer to having no primary at all and just one election  
> with every possible candidate than would be the case for Plurality.
>
> The parties still might want to run primaries, though, so that they  
> have one candidate to unify behind, run ads for, and so on - but on  
> the scale, you'd expect the open primary and no primary points to be  
> closer to each other for the advanced Condorcet methods (and  
> probably cardinal ratings too) than for Plurality.