Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: > It seems this system would be more stable than I originally thought. Third > parties could run as parts of the Condorcet party without running much of a > risk, since they would otherwise get no votes at all. The defection danger > surfaces when the third parties have become sufficiently large from using > that parallel electoral system. Then a party that would win a plurality > vote but who isn't a Condorcet winner has an incentive to defect.
There might be nowhere to defect to. The success of a minor party candidate is not necessarily the success of the minor party. Whatever attracts and holds the votes - candidate, party, or something else - will be strengthened by those votes. Or there might be (in a sense) no means of defection. Consider that the parallel system is nothing but a medium for the expression of public opinion. If it is also a continuous medium (vote recasting) then a would-be defector may be unable to escape its scrutiny. (Raph is asking whether this is legal. ?) > Following that kind of reasoning, it would appear that conventional parties > have very little to lose by running Condorcet primaries instead of > Plurality primaries, more so if there's an open primary. (So why don't > they?) Maybe technology is a factor. Pooling votes (by Condorcet counts etc.) is a technical and administrative challenge. It may have been a higher barrier in the past than now. Also, if it performs the same function as the party systems (primary selection) without itself being a party, then it is a competitor to the parties. Party administrators ought to oppose it because it cuts into their turf. It returns that turf to the members and candidates in the form of a wider playing field. So it threatens to dissolve the parties *internally* even as it promises to pool them *externally*. (Maybe if it succeeds, it could dissolve them down to their historic, pre-Gladstone roots, as a constellation of one-candidate parties?) -- Michael Allan Toronto, 647-436-4521 http://zelea.com/ ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
