If you're going to pit two election rules against each other by using them both and then have voters decide between the cases when they differ then you're going to have sample selection problems. For it's potentially more work, there might be a learning curve for many voters with some rules, which would muddy the evidence, and I find it hard for politicians to agree to such an experiment or not tamper the evidence by additional targeted campaigning if it did go into a face-off. Or what if there's been significant amounts of voter error in a close election(in one of the two) or even possibly selective tampering as a potential source of differing outcomes? C
It sounds like a nice experiment, but it'd have a terrible marketing problem, apart from perhaps the internal elections of modestly-sized third parties committed to experimenting with different elections. I am fascinated with the scope for increased experimentation in the USA if the GOP civil war weakens the center-right-ish party so that it'd be in their interest to push for a less winner-take-all electoral system. But I think it's fair to focus on electoral reforms that won't end the tendency to 2-party domination, but rather end the tendency to single-party domination that currently exists in the US's political system and that makes it so hard for our leaders to get anything done... dlw
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