[EM] Shortlisting

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 2026-01-31 21:21, robert bristow-johnson via Election-Methods wrote:
> What's the difference between "shortlisting" and a primary election?
> Isn't this essentially about ballot access?

In the paper, shortlisting involves a "primary" by a separate group, 
then the general involves everybody.

So the distinction is that my primary-general idea has lots of options 
provided to the public, then the set of candidates is reduced, then the 
public investigates the remaining candidates and vote again; but in 
shortlisting, one group does the initial investigation (possibly more 
in-depth than would be fair to ask of a large number of people) and then 
another does the final one.

One example from the paper:

> Example 1: Participatory Budgeting (PB) in Cambridge, MA [ 30]
> receives over 1,000 project proposals in each cycle. During a four-
> month Proposal Development phase, volunteer shortlisters work with
> citizens and government officials to “review, research, and develop
> submitted ideas to create final ballots.” They narrow down the candi-
> date set according to the need, impact, and feasibility of the proposals.
> Eventually, around 20 proposals are selected for a city-wide vote.

The closer this group of shortlisters is to the general population (and 
drawn in an unbiased manner from it), the more shortlisting becomes like 
a primary. But they don't have to be.

-km