[EM] Political party ranking

[VoteFair]

I created an Electowiki article titled "VoteFair party ranking."  (The 
history section explains its origin.)

Here's the link to the article:

   https://electowiki.org/wiki/VoteFair_party_ranking

Below are some highlights from the article, followed by comments 
addressed to this group.

"VoteFair party ranking is a vote-counting method that identifies the 
popularity of political parties for the purpose of identifying how many 
candidates each political party is allowed to offer in a non-primary 
election. This limit is useful in elections that otherwise would attract 
candidates from very unpopular parties. It allows, and encourages, two 
or three candidates from the two most popular parties."

"This method is designed for use in high-level elections that otherwise 
would attract too many candidates from political parties that are so 
unpopular that their candidates have almost no chance of winning. This 
limit enables voters to focus attention on all the candidates, which 
becomes important when elections use ranked ballots or score ballots 
instead of single-mark ballots."

"The third-most popular party is identified after appropriately reducing 
the influence of the voters who are well-represented by the first-ranked 
and second-ranked parties."

"Without this adjustment the same voters who are well-represented by one 
of the most popular parties could create a "shadow" party that occupies 
the third position, which would block smaller parties from that third 
position."

Calculation steps:

1.  In a previous important election, voters are asked to rank the 
political parties that have legal status.
2.  The most popular party is identified using any vote-counting method 
that uses ranked ballots and pairwise counting.
3.  The second-most popular party is identified using VoteFair 
representation ranking.
4.  Identify the ballots on which the voter's most-preferred party is 
not one of the two highest-ranked parties.
5.  Using only the ballots identified in the previous step, identify the 
most popular party from among the not-yet-ranked parties. This party is 
the third-most popular party.
6.  Using all the ballots, the fourth-ranked party is the most popular 
party from among the not-yet-ranked parties.
7.  Calculate the ranking of the remaining parties using VoteFair 
representation ranking.

---- End of quotations ----

I think this topic is worthy of discussion because eliminating vote 
splitting will eliminate the reason that political parties currently 
offer only one candidate per contest.

Also consider that voters will ask how to accommodate the many people 
who want to enter fairer elections when spoiler candidates are no longer 
an issue.  We should be prepared with an answer.

Of course there are other ways to limit the number of candidates on the 
ballot.  But those methods don't always work.  (Remember the 135 
candidates in the California special election for governor.)  And 
typically those methods can be "gamed" in ways that do not fairly 
represent what most voters want.

Also consider that if a top political party offers just one candidate -- 
as with the Republican party in the upcoming U.S. presidential election 
-- then voters deserve to see on the ballot additional candidates from 
the smaller parties.

Your feedback about VoteFair party ranking is welcome!

Richard Fobes