[EM] Party-based top two with approval

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi Rob,
I maybe misunderstood part. I would expect in a jungle primary that there wouldn't be a need to restrict what party a candidate claims to be from, since party affiliation isn't a consideration within the method. But under your proposal, parties can decline to advance their winning candidate. So some "party" is making a decision.
I was also thinking (maybe incorrectly on rereading) that the approval winner on each list was always counted from all voters. If that's true then it's important for parties to be able to exclude candidates from their list. If it's not true then there is less need to control who runs as what party. But it seems a little odd if it's not controlled... Taking it to an extreme I can imagine a system where every candidate just has to claim to be left-wing or right-wing and we somehow do something with that.
It sounds like you're saying it's a problem (or else think I view it as a problem) that the parties can't winnow candidates prior to the jungle primary. I don't necessarily view that as a problem... At least, if the jungle primary is supposed to serve as a primary then there shouldn't be a lot of control beforehand. (I'm fine with candidates dropping out on their own when polls say they won't be competitive.) My fear is that if parties have the ability and inclination to winnow candidates prior to the primary, then will they really see a need to offer some choices in the primary?
I guess if under your method, all the party lists just have one candidate, this is hardly broken. An overall Approval winner can run on whatever list they want and advance to the final round.
I would like to deduce party lists organically but it's tricky to come up with something simple. It sounds like maybe you're saying the candidates declare a name for the party they represent and these become options on the ballot for the voters to self-identify. I think that might be abusable... I can imagine a candidate trying to attach themselves (while encouraging the same of their supporters) to a "list" they think they can win, to get an extra boost from the other votes for that list.
Kevin

      De : Rob Lanphier <robla at robla.net>
 À : Kevin Venzke <stepjak at yahoo.fr> 
Cc : Election Methods <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
 Envoyé le : Vendredi 2 mars 2018 12h46
 Objet : Re: [EM] Party-based top two with approval
   
Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the detailed reply!  This is exactly the depth of analysis I was hoping to get.  One starter reply below:
On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 11:34 PM, Kevin Venzke <stepjak at yahoo.fr> wrote:

It sounds like under your system parties need to be able to control who can run on their list. I think this moves more of the selection process to prior to the voting. 

I was admittedly vague on party affiliation of candidates.  The paradox that's created by the jungle primary system is that a primary elections have become the preferred way for parties to winnow their candidate lists to their party's nominee, but parties don't have a way of winnowing their candidates without having another primary/caucus/whatever.

This problem isn't one that my proposed system introduces. As it stands now (in California), if I recall correctly, in the current jungle primary system, it's not very hard to declare oneself as a "Republican" or "Democrat" in the primary.  In a very cursory investigation of the subject, I see that political party ballot-qualification has a process associated with it in California at least:
<http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/political-parties/political-party-qualification/>

I haven't read through that well enough to know all of the existing rules.

It seems to me that a "list" doesn't need to be formally created or recognized, but *can* organically emerge from whatever candidates run on the ballot.  One possible way to use my proposed system is that the voters can declare "I'm voting as a Democrat", and then also approve a Socialist and a Green.  If a Socialist or a Green gets the highest approval rating among self-declared Democrats, then that candidate would be the nominee.  It seems to me that it would be really strategically difficult for a Republican to win the Democratic "nomination" in this system (or vice versa), since forcing the voter to identify their party and then identify the candidates they approve of would make a false flag vote backfire very easily.

There's a longer reply that I can/should write up to everything else you've written, but I'll stop myself there for now. Does what I've suggested so far make sense?

Rob

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