[EM] Do any of you have any thoughts about California's top-two primary?

[Richard Fobes]

Although this is a bit of a simplification, the "top-two" runoff form of 
voting in the U.S. consists of using single-mark ballots combined with a 
variation of instant-runoff voting.

If the voters are somewhat balanced between Republicans and Democrats, 
and if the two main parties cannot convince all the "less-popular" 
candidates from their party not to run, a likely outcome is that both of 
the "top-two" winners would be from the same political party, which is 
obviously very unfair.

Oregon (where I live) had such a referendum on the ballot, and it was 
defeated.  (I played a very small role in that defeat.)

The way this fits into the "Declaration of Election-Method Reform 
Advocates" is that the Declaration denounces single-mark ballots, 
regardless of how they are counted.  And the Declaration clarifies that 
instant-runoff voting (IRV) is neither supported nor opposed by the 
signers because there are differences of opinion as to whether IRV is a 
good choice.  And the "top-two" approach is -- in my opinion -- even 
worse than IRV.

I think the easiest way to explain the concept is in the context of vote 
splitting, although others here may prefer to explain it in the context 
of the more-mathematical "independence of irrelevant alternatives."

For a recent concrete example of the concept, I suggest referring to the 
recent Egyptian Presidential election.  (I added this election to the 
list of vote-splitting examples in the Wikipedia "Vote splitting" 
article.)  I don't know the situation well enough to know who might have 
won if a better voting method had been used.  I did see news that both 
of the top-two runoff choices are widely disliked and unrepresentative.

Does anyone here have more election-method knowledge about the recent 
Egyptian Presidential election beyond what's in Wikipedia, especially 
which candidates were similar?

I was hoping that someone else might write an article about any of these 
related -- and important -- topics.

As for me, I'm waiting to see if there is any significant reaction to my 
"Tax The Takers More Than Makers" article at the Democracy Chronicles. 
(Clarification: I informed Adrian about having posted that tax-reform 
proposal in two other not-much-visited places, and he asked permission 
to publish it.)  I'm also now working on the yet-another project that 
I'll reveal later when I've got a working website to point to.

I don't know if it's possible to collaboratively write the kind of 
article that Adrian wants, but at least we can try explaining the 
basics, as I've tried to do at the beginning of this message, and the 
result might be something that Adrian could edit to become an article 
that would explain these important concepts to a larger audience.

Richard Fobes



On 6/7/2012 8:31 AM, Adrian Tawfik wrote:
> I don't know if this has already been covered here, but do any of you
> have an opinion on the changes to California's primary system? There is
> now a so-called 'top-two' methodology being used. Where does this fit in
> with your group's Declaration? Would anyone be interested in writing
> something about it for my website? Thanks!
>
> Adrian
> democracychronicles.com
>
>
>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info