This is at least in principle an interesting area of study. In addition to having strategic selfish voters in this type of elections we may have also malicious voters (whose intention is not to elect a candidate that would be good for themselves but possibly a candidate that is so terrible that nobody wants him, or a candidate that would lead to problems like not being elected in the actual election after the primaries).
This could in principle happen also in other elections than primaries. In a two-party system with simple linear left-right opinion structure it would e.g. make sense for the malicious voters to vote for the most leftist candidates in the left primary since they are probably less preferred by the right wing party, and the right wing of the left party too. It makes sense to invite right party voters in the left party primary since that may lead to electing a candidate that is quite close to or otherwise acceptable to the right party. But of course if the right party voters are strategic, then they might vote for the extreme left candidates. It thus depends on the expected level of strategic voting if one wants to limit participation in primaries to a closed circle or not. (I sort of assume that the most efficient way to win the final election is to have a candidate that is seen to be a centrist and even slightly on the side of the other party. The own party voters of that candidate will vote him anyway and will tolerate some political rhetoric around the values of the other party, while it is crucial to appeal to some voters of the other party to steal the last required votes from them to change the balance in favour of one's own party.) I wonder how many of the primary voters today vote for the candidate that they consider to be the best, and how many vote for the candidate that they think has the best chances to win against the candidates of the other party. In Finland in the presidential elections of 1993 the Social Democratic Party used a primary that was (exceptionally) open also to others than party members. Mr Martti Ahtisaari who had not been that active within the party won the primary and finally also the actual election. Mr Ahtisaari was elected in the primary although there were also other more distinguished party internal candidates (i.e. a long time party leader that many considered to be the automatic first choice of the party). I'm sure the party external voters must have contributed (more or less) towards electing Ahtisaari, and making a Social Democratic Party candidate win the final election. The idea of arranging a primary for "all the people" may also have led all the voters (also party internal) to evaluate the candidates using more general than just party internal criteria. I'm not aware of any strategic voting. Most voters, especially Ahtisaari supporters outside of the party (and non-registered party supporters too) maybe saw this just as an open (somewhat populistic) opportunity to influence positively. I have only very limited understanding of the US primary system but I have understood that it is quite easy to become registered as a voter of "the other party" and participate in their primaries. Negative campaigning seems to be quite popular nowadays, and widely spread registration and voting in the primaries of the other party could actually make sense ;-). It may be easier to elect a disliked person in the primary of the other party than to try to figure out which one of the candidates of one's own party would be acceptable also to the other party members in the final election. Of course the end result might be an election between two highly incompetent and unwanted candidates (low utility). One way to fight against this would be to arrange one's own primaries in a way that is not too vulnerable to this type of strategic attacks. In general methods that are designed to elect the candidate that the voters want probably work well also in the reverse direction (=bad candidates will be elected if the voters so want). It is impossible to separate malicious votes from the regular ones. Maybe the idea to limit participation works best (if widespread strategic voting is expected). Good methods like Condorcet may be easy also for the strategists in the sense that they don't need any strategic plan on how to change the outcome. It is sufficient to rank the candidates in the order of unlikeliness of being elected in the final election. In plurality the strategic votes could be wasted e.g. by voting for some bad candidate that is so bad that he will not be elected anyway (or by picking a candidate that is not the worst one that could have been picked). Of course there is no need for primaries that would elect one candidate only if the method is good enough to handle multiple candidates per party. Influencing primaries that elect multiple candidates for the final election seems to be less efficient as influencing election of one single candidate for the final election. One more simple approach is to collect poll data about the popularity of the candidates of one's own party and make the results well known to the voters of the closed primary. This would encourage electing candidates that get wide support also from other parties. Also any registrations that force the voters to somehow "show colour" publicly could limit the number of voters that do not want to show this particular colour. One general observation. In theory primaries can make the outcome of the election worse than it would be without them since the election criteria in the primaries are different from the actual election. Primaries may well eliminate candidate that would have won the final election. This is maybe one additional reason for supporting methods that can handle numerous candidates. (Having too many candidates may however also make the election worse since then it is more confusing and based on less good analysis of the candidates by the voters. Allowing e.g. two candidates from the major parties and one from some smaller ones (and maybe few independents too) could be one way to go.) Juho On Jan 4, 2008, at 6:33 , Dave Ketchum wrote: > On Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:42:30 -0800 Steve Eppley wrote privately. > If you > reply, >> please address it to the maillist.] >> >> You wrote: >> >>> As to "closed" primary elections: >>> They make sense to me for Plurality general elections. >> >> >> Why do you think so? > > In a closed primary election party members properly get to choose who > shall be the party's candidate in the general election: > For a major party it matters little, for it is hard to round up > enough outsiders to outvote party members. > For a minor party there are lots of outsiders, who could easily > outvote party members. > Assuming there are enough interested outsiders, they should > be able > to nominate the candidate they wish to elect, without interfering > with a > party's nomination task. > > I did specify Plurality. With some other methods, such as > Condorcet, more > candidates can be allowed in the general election without destructive > interference. >> >> Regards, >> Steve Eppley > -- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/ > davek > Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 > 607-687-5026 > Do to no one what you would not want done to you. > If you want peace, work for justice. > > > > ---- > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for > list info ___________________________________________________________ Copy addresses and emails from any email account to Yahoo! Mail - quick, easy and free. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/trueswitch2.html ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
