[EM] Two Party Challenge

[Juho Laatu]

On 11.7.2011, at 2.05, fsimmons at pcc.edu wrote:

> 
> 
>> Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2011 23:30:21 +0300
>> From: Juho Laatu 
>>> On 9.7.2011, at 22.23, fsimmons at pcc.edu wrote:
>> 
>>> Here's an idea.
>>> 
>>> First pick a party (with full knowledge who the candidates are 
>> in each party).
>>> 
>>> Then hold an open "primary" to pick the winning candidate from 
>> the winning party.
>> 
>> This sounds like a two-phase single winner election. The first 
>> used single-winner method should maybe be such that it elects 
>> major parties only (i.e. no "weak" compromise parties). I'm not 
>> sure the short description yet guarantees a two-party rule. The 
>> idea of ordering a "late primary" is an interesting approach to 
>> allowing multiple candidates for each party but still keeping 
>> the method simple (two election days probably needed but 
>> otherwise nice and clear).
>> 
>> Juho
> 
> Under our current system those who vote in the primary go to the polls twice, anyway.  We would get 
> more interest in the "primary" if it was held after the winning party was chosen.  And it would save the 
> waste of having multiple primaries.

Ok, the cost of the election may actually decrease. Participation in the second round may be higher than in the current primaries. That would increase the costs a bit, but maybe high number of voters is not a bad thing.

> 
> I would recommend using Approval for both stages; i.e. first for choosing the party, and second for 
> electing someone from the slate of the winning party.

Maybe you are seeking simplicity and therefore not recommending e.g. Condorcet methods. Approval is fine in principle but I'm a bit worried about strategic problems when one of the wings has two equally strong candidates.

> 
> By the way, there is no good reason for requiring that the different parties have mutually exclusive slates 
> of candidates.
> 
> The key to getting real support for the Greens, say, would be for them to add the best quality candidates 
> from the other parties onto their list.  Unlike the usual version of "fusion" it would have more than 
> symbolic value, it could lead to an actual victory of the Greens over the Democrats and Republicans.

That is an interesting approach that allows third parties to gain popularity by making wiser decisions than the major parties. In the challenge I requested two-party approaches that allow only major parties to rule. This approach would allow Greens to have their say, but still one of the major parties could win. Probably this approach makes this approach increases also the chances of the Green party to win one day, but also that is in the spirit of the challenge since the target was to allow third parties to grow and win one day. This is in a way a soft approach to allowing third parties to become more credible in time.

(I'm not sure if we are going in the direction of allowing only the major parties to rule (in line with the targets of the challenge) or in the direction of allowing also small third parties to rule. There is a bit of both approaches here. But there is the spirit of making the current systems better anyway. And both keeping the method major party oriented and allowing also others to rule when appropriate are possible approaches to improving the system.)

One quite brutal strategy in this method would be to first nominate numerous candidates that all parties like, but if the strategic party wins the first round, then some key candidates will be withdrawn to make space for some of the favourites of the party. Hopefully the candidates are independent enough to make their own decisions and not allow this strategy to be used.

I assume that all the candidates are known already when the first round takes place. There might be some regret if people vote for party X in the first round because it has many nice candidates, but at the second round the worst one of those candidates wins. One could make strategic nominations so that for example party X nominates at least one centrist candidate from party X that is likely to be liked also among other parties, and in addition to its own candidates it nominates some extremists from the other parties. In that way one can at least in principle collect votes (especially extremist votes) from the other parties at the first round, but at the second round it is probable that one of the remaining centrist candidates (that are all from party X) wins.

Juho