[EM] Down with party poopers and primary poopers

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi folks,

This email is a followup to my reply to Ted Stern his proposed "High5"
voting system:
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-December/005181.html

.... and it's a followup to this blog post:
https://robla.blog/2023/12/17/down-with-party-poopers-and-primary-poopers/

I've been debating the value of "primary elections" versus "general
elections" with many people (mainly in the United States) over the years.
Some electoral reform advocates believe that we should do away with
"expensive" primary elections, and use a system that eliminates this step
Some even believe that political parties could be made obsolete with the
right method.  I believe those advocates are paying too much attention to
the math of the final two stages of the electoral process, and not enough
to the psychology of elections.

There are (at least) THREE very important voter-certified checkpoints that
unaffiliated candidates generally need to pass through to get to office:

   1. The signature-gathering process
   2. The primary election
   3. The general election

Candidates can sometimes skip the first step if they find an established
political party who really likes them (e.g. because they "worked their way
up the ranks" within the party or because the political party "drafted"
them).  Ultimately, though, the value of political parties is to build a
trusted brand with voters by being an organization that vets candidates,
and doesn't let crackpots use their trusted brand name.  The better the
party is at vetting candidates, the better their brand.

As we know, in the United States, we have a duopoly: the Republican Party
and the Democratic Party.  These days, most voters don't trust at least one
of the parties as far as they can throw them, but most voters have picked
one or the other as the "good enough" party.  They may not LOVE the
candidates churned out by their "favorite" party, but they usually prefer
that to letting the nutjobs from the other party have any more power than
they already have.

Brands have value, even if all of the big brands in a particular market
category kinda suck.  Personally, I don't LOVE the Democratic Party, but
I'd generally rather have their chosen candidate for most offices in power
than the Republican Party's chosen candidate.  I'm sure that most folks
that currently vote for Republicans feel the same way about the Democratic
Party's vetting process.

I bring up this point because some election methods proposed here (and
elsewhere) try to tout the benefits of eliminating primaries.  Personally,
I'd prefer it if we could somehow eliminate (or streamline) the signature
gathering process needed for ballot access.  I wouldn't particularly mind
being presented with 100 candidates for the county coroner's office if I
didn't ALSO have to seek out activists on the sidewalk with clipboards that
are gathering signatures for alternatives to the two big parties here in
the United States in order to ensure "third party" candidates make it on
the ballot.

A system that I think would work really well:

1. Make it easier for candidates to get on the ballot.  For small,
relatively low-stakes offices (e.g. county coroner), have minimal paperwork
and vetting process (for minimal qualifications) to get on the ballot.  For
big offices (POTUS, State Governor), have a state-operated website where
minimally-qualified candidates can gather a required number of e-signatures
(in addition to allowing for old-school paper signature gathering).

2. Have a "unified primary" (or rather, an approval-based primary).  I'm
not sure if two, or three, or five is the right number of candidates to
advance out of the primary.  One could avoid having a fixed number of
candidates by having a  minimum approval threshold (say, 30% approval),
which would (hopefully) make it less likely that candidates would talk
about why the other candidates are bad, and instead nudge them focus on
earning positive name recognition and approval of 30% (or whatever) of the
electorate.

3.  Have a general election with (potentially) three or more candidates
from the primary, using a system that doesn't fail miserably when there are
three or more candidates seeking a single office.

The three stages above seem like they would both give voters ample time and
tools to vet the candidates, while at the same time offers a broader
opportunity to become a candidate, and rejects candidates before they
distract public consideration of worthier candidates.

Rob

[1]  The "unified primary" is basically the approval-based system used in
St. Louis:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Unified_primary
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