[EM] A simpler approval based way of replacing the CA jungle primary

[Richard Lung]

"someone who voted their heart's select which included none of the real 
contenders will feel disenfranchised when they found out that the 
contender they hated the most wins and they didn't vote for the 
second-place finisher to oppose that hated winner."

The system, I invented, Binomial STV has bidirectional preference (two 
way choice). [The voter does not have to rely on voting for "buffer" 
candidates to keep out an undesired contender.] From the total number of 
candidates, say twenty, you can number the most hated candidate twenty, 
and it will count (weigh in the form of an exclusion keep value) against 
that candidate, and the next most hated candidate, 19, etc. That is 
because Binomial STV has an exclusion count, as well as an election 
count. The exclusion count keep values are inverted to give "second 
opinion" election keep values. The two sets of keep values, election and 
inverted exclusion, are then averaged with the geometric mean, to give a 
more representative result than either. (The geometric mean is one of 
four averages, to FAB STV, to minimise the possibility of rogue 
results.) An election count thus simply combined with an exclusion count 
is first order binomial STV, (There are higher orders, or more qualified 
counts.)

from
Richard Lung.

On 14/08/2018 07:39, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>
>
>
> ---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
> Subject: Re: [EM] A simpler approval based way of replacing the CA 
> jungle primary
> From: "Rob Lanphier" <robla at robla.net>
> Date: Tue, August 14, 2018 12:36 am
> To: "Kristofer Munsterhjelm" <km_elmet at t-online.de>
> Cc: "Election Methods" <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> > On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 1:50 PM Kristofer Munsterhjelm
> > <km_elmet at t-online.de> wrote:
> >> I also happened across the following draft paper by James 
> Green-Armytage
> >> on the question of how to select candidates for a top-two runoff:
> >> http://jamesgreenarmytage.com/runoff.pdf
> >
> > Thanks for reviving this thread, Kristofer! Also, thanks for pointing
> > out the Green-Armytage/Tideman paper. I'll queue that up on my
> > reading list, and I'll be in a better position to respond to your full
> > mail. Just in my initial skim, it looks like they make some of the
> > points that match my intuition on the subject. In particular (to
> > quote the paper):
> >
> >> Thus, one function of a [primary election selecting two candidates]
> >> is to concentrate the attention of citizens on the relative merits of
> >> the two finalists. When citizens know who these finalists are, they 
> have
> >> greater motivation to acquire information about them, ensuring that the
> >> eventual winner will undergo close scrutiny during the campaign.
> >
> > This is the reason why I dislike arguments that discount the value of
> > primary elections. If structured correctly, a primary election
> > followed by a general election allows us to balance two competing
> > needs:
> >   a. we want elections with liberal ballot access as the most
> >       democratic way to ensure a diverse selection of candidates.
> >   b. we don't want to overwhelm the electorate (and the press, and our
> >       public debates) with too many candidates
> >
> > A well-structured primary/general pairing can allow us to have both.
> > Primary voters can vet a wide field of candidates, and give us a sane
> > general election cycle. With a more sophisticated voting system than
> > FPTP, it seems possible to have a field with more than 2 candidates
> > (e.g. 3, 4 or maybe even 5 candidates). More than 5 candidates
> > becomes kind of a clown show, as evidenced by the 2008-2016 Republican
> > on-stage U.S. presidential debates, and the 2004-2008 Democratic
> > counterparts. When the field narrows to 2-3 viable candidates, the
> > policy discussions can get interesting
> >
>
> personally, i really dislike the California primary system that can 
> potentially lock out a party from the general.  in fact, even though i 
> dislike two-party hegemony as we have in the U.S., i actually believe 
> that parties in politics can be and are a good thing (this doesn't 
> mean that there aren't bad parties or bad leadership in any particular 
> party).  parties serve a useful purpose and, in my opinion, ballot 
> access in the general election should depend solely on getting enough 
> signatures and the state should recognize parties only to the extent 
> of contract law to keep some faction in a party from undemocratically 
> screwing the rest of their party.  but every party should be able to 
> get candidates on the General Election ballot, providing they get 
> enough valid signatures on the ballot petition.  i don't think the 
> General should be just between two candidates.
>
> and both the Primary and General Election should be decided with 
> Ranked-Choice Voting using a Condorcet-compliant method (either 
> Ranked-Pairs or Schulze) for the single-winner races. STV or IRV is 
> still sucky.
>
> for Ranked-Choice voting, the number of candidates appearing on the 
> ballot should not greatly exceed the number of ranking levels.  when 
> San Francisco has 20 candidates and 3 ranking levels, someone who 
> voted their heart's select which included none of the real contenders 
> will feel disenfranchised when they found out that the contender they 
> hated the most wins and they didn't vote for the second-place finisher 
> to oppose that hated winner.  but the way to make this happen is not 
> to put in 20 ranking levels, what is needed is sufficiently strict 
> ballot access law that makes it harder to get on the ballot.  but not 
> so hard that only one or two can meet that requirement.
>
> and, i think that the law should allow a candidate that loses in a 
> primary or caucus to have some time after the primary to gather 
> signatures to run as an independent candidate.
>
> what i am still unsure of is what New York does.  New York allows a 
> single candidate to be nominated by more than one party and have that 
> candidate's name appear multiple places on the ballot (associated with 
> each party that nominated him/her) and then to *total* the votes for 
> that candidate from all of the parties that he/she appears with on the 
> ballot.  George Pataki did this with the GOP and the Conservative 
> Party nominations. it can't be fair to the other candidates when one 
> of them appears on the ballot more than one place.
>
> ballot access is weird.  in Vermont, because lawmakers didn't 
> anticipate this problem, a 14-year-old kid is running for governor and 
> appears on the Dem party primary ballot.  ya gotta be at least 18 to 
> vote, but you need not be that to run.  ain't that weird?
>
>
> --
>
> r b-j rbj at audioimagination.com
>
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>
>
>
> ----
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