On Sat, Sep 06, 2003 at 04:40:58PM -0700, Rob LeGrand wrote: > I like it. My only worry is that the candidates themselves might be far > less willing to compromise than the voters. In the California > gubernatorial "race", Bill Simon pulled out to avoid drawing votes away > from Schwarzenegger, but he's an exception. Most of the candidates are > running despite not having any chance of winning, and many of them (Arianna > Huffington, Tom McClintock, Peter Camejo, etc.) are likely to take > significant votes away from the frontrunners. A candidate would seem to > care much more about his own, even slim, chances than about who ends up > winning. When I ran for state rep in Texas, I wouldn't have considered > voting for one of my major-party opponents even if I had vastly preferred > one to the other. (I didn't.)
There are secondary targets when running beyond winning the whole thing, though - ISTR the US having a threshold at 5% of the votes for a party to get better consideration in the next election, for instance, and less formally there are single-issue parties who merely want to gather votes they can point to during negotiations or publicity campaigns to show how many people support their cause. I suspect many of the California governor candidates just want to see how much they can get, perhaps to kick-start a political career. I'd think people would be much more willing to compromise in an Approval situation, or if they weere still able to use non-proxy votes for pride or publicity. Joe ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
