On Aug 26, 2010, at 11:23 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On Aug 26, 2010, at 11:03 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote:
This started with a description of a primary problem - 5 strong Dem
candidates for gov. in VT.
5 candidates, but only 4 were "strong". one was always an underdog
and proved to be pretty weak when the vote came in.
Sorry - you said that and I did not follow carefully - matters little
for the current topic.
Primaries are a party task, but this one sounds as if it may
include clones, or at least near-clones. Just as primaries were
invented to do such as attend to clones within a party, perhaps
something new could be invented to help this primary.
So Ranked Choice makes sense here and I would argue, as usual, that
it should be Condorcet rather than IRV.
still agree that Condorcet is better than IRV, but IRV is better
than FPTP. within the Racine camp (which is where i was a volunteer
and able to directly observe what was going on on primary night)
there were some pining for IRV believing that our candidate would
have prevailed if IRV was operative instead of FPTP.
I suspect that many are simply echoing the label they have heard for
Ranked Choice.
Let IRV keep what it demonstrated in Burlington - but avoid Condorcet
getting scarred by that.
For another day I would promote Condorcet for the general election,
noting that that reduces the value of even having primaries.
i think that, especially for a single-seat office, that parties will
want to proffer one candidate that is "our guy". then primaries or
caucuses or something is needed within the primary to decide who
their guy is. and in the U.S., the state governments enacted laws
regarding that to keep parties honest within themselves. they
didn't want major parties to select their candidates solely within
smoke-filled rooms. so most states imposed primaries upon the
parties and some imposed advanced registration to a party to be
eligible to vote in such primary.
The advanced registration makes sense to protect against invasion with
intent to destroy.
Plurality can suffer from a party's clones or near clones getting to
the general election - and nomination by petition can easily stumble
into this. This is not so big a problem with Condorcet but agreed
there are other reasons for primaries.
--
r b-j [email protected]
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