[EM] Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts

[Richard Fobes]

Thank you Dave Ketchum and Peter Zbornik for your excellent responses to 
my first draft of the "multiple rounds of voting" section!  I have tried 
to incorporate your requested improvements, while attempting to keep it 
short.

Here is what I've got now for this section:

-------------- Multiple rounds of voting --------------

Current elections commonly use multiple rounds of voting in an attempt 
to overcome the weaknesses of plurality voting.  When any of our 
supported election methods are used, just one round of voting may be 
sufficient.

Although our supported election methods could eliminate the need for 
primary elections (in which political parties choose just one candidate 
each to progress to the main election), we support the continued use of 
primary elections because they foster political dialogue and the 
resolution of intra-party differences.

In situations that are highly controversial, we support the use of two 
voting rounds so that voters can focus attention on the most popular 
candidates during the second round, without distractions from 
less-popular candidates. When multiple voting rounds are used, every 
round should use one of our supported election methods. In these cases 
it is not necessary to limit the runoff election (the second round) to 
only two candidates, because that limit is only needed to accommodate 
plurality voting.

Also we agree that "open primary" elections are not fair. In this 
approach, the supposedly most-popular candidates, regardless of 
political-party affiliation, progress to the runoff (main) election. 
This approach fails to consider that a near-majority of voters can end 
up with only getting to choose between the two candidates who are 
preferred by the majority. Expressed another way, the designation of 
"most popular" is ambiguous in the context of choosing which candidates 
deserve to progress to the main election.

When choosing which candidates deserve to progress to a runoff election, 
we do not offer specific recommendations for interpreting results -- 
beyond obviously including the most popular candidate. There are various 
possibilities for how to choose the second, third, and additional 
candidates, and the best approach would depend on which of our supported 
methods is used (in the earlier round), and other details. This 
complexity overlaps with the complexity of choosing a best method to 
increase proportional representation.

Therefore, in this declaration, we are not expressing support for any 
specific way to choose which other candidates (besides the most 
popular), and how many candidates, deserve to progress to the runoff 
election. Fortunately, in the runoff round, any of our supported methods 
can produce fair results with three, four, or more candidates -- in 
contrast to plurality voting which can handle only two.

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Richard Fobes