[EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process

[Fred Gohlke]

Good Afternoon, Kristofer

re: "Strictly speaking, clones are candidates that are so alike
      each other that every voter ranks them next to each other
      (but not necessarily in the same order)."

    and

     "More generally speaking, a clone could be considered a
      candidate that's very close to an already existing candidate
      and whose presence changes who wins."

Thank you.  That's a clear explanation.

Even allowing for my general ignorance of the topic, cloning seems to be 
more significant for multi-party systems than for the two-party system 
that dominates U. S. politics.

Nah.  I guess that opinion is wrong.  In the U. S., a third party 
probably can't avoid cloning some portion of a major party candidate. 
If so, eliminating clones probably increases the distance from a 
two-party system to a multi-party system. Anyway, wouldn't we be better 
served by conceiving a way to advocate the common interest instead of 
worrying about whether or not a clone will harm the parochial interests 
of partisans?

Fred