[EM] Board Meeting Deadline

[Andy Jennings]

>
> My analysis has led me to believe the hole in this strategy is there is no
> position taken on primaries. Going back to the premise that the duopoly
> must be broken, it appears to me the whole "ball game" is how to structure
> primaries. Conservatives will want it left up the the States, liberals
> probably want Congress to pass something. Nevertheless, letting everyone
> vote, and having a diverse selection of viewpoints to choose from seems
> critical.
>

There are two schools of thought on this.

Some people feel like once we have a better voting system, one that can
support a dozen (or more) good candidates, political parties (and
primaries) will be unnecessary, which would eliminate some elections and
save money.  The counter-argument to this is that most systems (even the
ones that have no problem, in theory, with candidates that are similar to
each other) can, in practice, benefit from a primary round that winnows
down similar candidates.  Parties are the natural categorization framework
for this winnowing process.  Additionally, it is probably good to narrow
down the field to 6-8 candidates for the general election just so we don't
overwhelm the voters with too many choices.

The other school of thought is that we should start with encouraging
political parties to use these better methods internally.  In some states,
this may be possible without statute changes.  To my understanding,
Americans Elect was essentially using approval voting for their nomination
round.  Voters could register support for as many candidates as they
wanted.  There were, in effect, thousands of candidates on the "nomination"
ballot and I don't know of a system other than approval voting that would
work well in that situation.  I don't know what system they were going to
use to decide among their candidates once nominated, but I, for one, was
hopeful that they would eventually be willing to consider one of these
improved systems.  The thinking is that a political party which embraces
one of these better systems will be able to put up better candidates and
will have a competitive advantage over other parties.

~ Andy
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