It may not be fair but in the status quo US system there are networking effects in activism and voter education about electoral reform. Given the need to deal w. rational ignorance about politics, and even moreso electoral rules, there is a need for marketing short-cuts. FairVote does that well in simplifying the message for low-info voters ignorant about electoral rule analytics.
So reform in a system where economies of scale are exacerbated by the status quo is not fair and there's scope for a 2nd best approach based on networking externalities and marketing advantages that include over-simplifications or statements of tendencies as absolutes. I agree w. your focus on primary systems where the no. of candidates on average wd tend to be higher. My agenda is to defend iRV for single-winner gener'l elections and redirect energy to complenting such with American forms of Proportional Represetnation that similarly won't so much challenge the US's 2-party dominated system but keep it from tilting to one-party domination and make it work a lot better, as I belive would be inevitable if the proliferation of LTPs were incentivized by the use of Am forms of PR that make it easy for a small, local third party to win represetnation. dlw ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 14:48:45 -0700 From: Richard Fobes <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [EM] Re2: Fobes wrt IRV w. relatively few competitive candidates. Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed A clarification would be helpful in this discussion (below). David seems to be talking about the number of candidates in _general_ elections. I am more focused on the number of candidates in _primary_ elections. This is where the greatest unfairnesses now occur. This is where there should be more candidates. Specifically, in a congressional election where the district boundaries do not ensure victory for the incumbent's party, the other party should have about four to seven credible candidates in their primary election. IRV cannot handle that many credible candidates. Richard Fobes
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