[EM] wrt Fobes

[David L Wetzell]

It may not be fair but in the status quo US system there are networking
effects in activism and voter education about electoral reform.  Given the
need to deal w. rational ignorance about politics, and even moreso
electoral rules, there is a need for marketing short-cuts.  FairVote does
that well in simplifying the message for low-info voters ignorant about
electoral rule analytics.

So reform in a system where economies of scale are exacerbated by the
status quo is not fair and there's scope for a 2nd best approach based on
networking externalities and marketing advantages that include
over-simplifications or statements of tendencies as absolutes.

I agree w. your focus on primary systems where the no. of candidates on
average wd tend to be higher.

My agenda is to defend iRV for single-winner gener'l elections and redirect
energy to complenting such with American forms of Proportional
Represetnation that similarly won't so much challenge the US's 2-party
dominated system but keep it from tilting to one-party domination and make
it work a lot better, as I belive would be inevitable if the proliferation
of LTPs were incentivized by the use of Am forms of PR that make it easy
for a small, local third party to win represetnation.

dlw

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Message: 5
Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 14:48:45 -0700
From: Richard Fobes <ElectionMethods at VoteFair.org>
To: election-methods at electorama.com
Subject: Re: [EM] Re2: Fobes wrt IRV w. relatively few competitive
        candidates.
Message-ID: <51A677BD.4070303 at VoteFair.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

A clarification would be helpful in this discussion (below).

David seems to be talking about the number of candidates in _general_
elections.

I am more focused on the number of candidates in _primary_ elections.
This is where the greatest unfairnesses now occur.  This is where there
should be more candidates.

Specifically, in a congressional election where the district boundaries
do not ensure victory for the incumbent's party, the other party should
have about four to seven credible candidates in their primary election.

IRV cannot handle that many credible candidates.

Richard Fobes
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