Bart Ingles wrote: > >This raises a concern of mine: that a minor candidate > > (particularly one posing as a centrist) can not only > >alter the outcome of a race, > >but reduce any incentive for the major parties to compete for the > >middle-ground. I am as concerned about this as I am about > > overcoming the two-party duopoly. > > > Runoff would address this last concern of mine, but would require > > partisan primary elections to remain in place. David Marsay wrote: > AV/IRO addresses it too, without such a great need for primaries. Bart replies: Agreed, my point was that if a particular implementation were to keep the partisan primary election in place, I would be satisfied with replacing the general election with something resembling top-two-runoff. I am much more concerned about replacing the FPP general election than I am about eliminating primaries. There are probably arguments in favor of primaries as well as against. Maybe having a single primary winner allows a party to better focus its general election campaigning and campaign spending, for example. If a party believes that having many candidates in a general election would put it at a disadvantage (even with a good election method), it may begin holding caucuses in place of the eliminated primaries. If that happens, would we have been better off to keep the primary? In any event, I wouldn't want any such debate to get in the way of replacing FPP in the general election.
