Food for thought:
The "National Popular Vote" effort is a proper attempt to hear voters
better in electing a President - votes from all states would get
counted, unlike the present problem that, in many states, all of the
states electoral votes will go to the known and expected winner of
that state's voting - which, in turn, discourages candidates from
being much concerned with trying to increase their vote count from
such states.
But, how should the votes be counted when merging the votes from
multiple states? I suspect Plurality is expected because all states
know how to do that.
How about Condorcet? It lets voters express themselves more
completely, but then we have to be concerned with some states not
being prepared to do Condorcet electing.
I propose here that that is not a proper concern. Condorcet, of
course, counts, merging together votes:
as in Plurality - and thus could count in votes from states
offering only Plurality.
as in Approval - assuming, as is proper, that such could be
voted in real Condorcet.
of what Condorcet offers.
Knowing what a voter votes in Plurality or Approval, the counters
simply count what would have been counted for the voter if the voter
had voted such in a Condorcet election.
This both allows merging together what different states may be
prepared to offer, and gives them a path toward general use of
Condorcet - a tolerable destination.
Admittedly this ignores such as Range and Borda - but gives voters
better power than Plurality, while minimizing what new they could be
asked to learn.
Note that Condorcet is more tolerant than most, of different sets of
candidates being offered in different states. Conceded that such is
undesirable but, assuming Condorcet, voters can both vote what is
generally agreed on as to expectable winners, and what odd may be
added for their state.
Dave Ketchum
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