This shows that, for a few elections, we need extra capability.
Many of these voters should be ready to learn ranked choice voting in
order to vote for more than one and show preference they see as to
Good over Soso.
We are hopefully agreeing that we need better counting than IRV
provides.
Which leads us to Condorcet, which cares not the election's purpose -
primary here.
For just one oddity election such as this ballots could be laid out
manually. Counting could also be manual, counting how many of each
pattern voted.
I would still do an N*N matrix but, assuming 22 voted A>B that would
mean adding 22 to each of the proper entries for A & B, rather than
adding ones for each such ballot.
"Median" does not excite me here - this gives all the voters a chance
to be heard as they express themselves in detail, so why do we not
declare the results to be our found median?
When we are plotting how to do general elections the major parties
plot for advantages - here there could be more readiness to try for
best.
Dave Ketchum
.
On Aug 25, 2010, at 4:41 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
robert bristow-johnson wrote:
we have a legitimate cliff-hanger here in Vermont with the Democrat
gubernatorial primary.
5 candidates, 4 that were all viable, 3 that are within 1% and the
top 2 that are within 0.1%.
i wonder how close this would have been if there was something
better than FPTP.
it was a fascinating experience being a fly on the wall at one of
the campaigns.
now to pull on my Doug Racine T-shirt and go to the "unity rally".
Ideally (that is notwithstanding internal bureaucracy and similar
effects), a party would adopt a ranked voting method if it would
benefit them. If the "outer" ballot is also ranked and picks the
median voter's candidate, then that would happen if the old voting
method elects candidates that are further away from the median voter
(of the electorate in general) than is the case for the new voting
method.
However, there are a number of caveats in the real world. First, the
outer method does not have that quality, as it's not Condorcet (nor
even ranked any more). Second, we can't just throw away the "similar
effects" mentioned above, as they may be significant. Third, the
primary is not open and so even if a good ranked method were used,
it would elect the candidate closest to the party's median, not that
of the electorate in general.
As for why the parties don't use a ranked ballot, they may not even
know about it. Still, one may wonder...
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