[EL] Fw: Approval Voting Top Two Primaries

[Rob Richie]

This proposal should be interesting to track.

If the proposal was approved and worked as intended, "top two" in Oregon
would go from only rarely having two general election candidates of the
same party to very often having two candidates of the same party. So in a
Democratic-leaning state like Oregon, many statewide races might feature
only two Democrats and even more state legislative races would have only
candidates from one party  If one likes the idea of the November 2008
presidential election being a choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama, then this is the system for you. It's "top two on steroids."

The flip side is that it might not work out this way because parties would
either push hard for only one candidate in most primaries -- as Washington
state parties seem to have very effectively done, meaning almost every
congressional and statewide race has a consensus candidate from each party
who the face off in a traditional D-R race in November -- or many voters
would not use the approval voting feature because they wouldn't want a vote
for a lesser approved candidate to count against their first choice.
Although approval voting advocates will disagree, at least some approval
voting elections (particularly those  where voters really care about the
outcome and have a spectrum of views about the candidates) have more of a
plurality vote dynamic because most voters end up voting or only one
candidate.

But I'll say I'm glad this proposal is in the mix. It's good  to think
outside the box.

I'll flag that FairVote did a detailed analysis of the Top Two system as
it's working in Washington State and California and has proposed as a
reform moving to a system where four candidates advance to the general
election ballot and ranked choice voting ("instant runoff") is used in that
four-candidate race. Whether one agrees with this idea or not, the reports
have a lot of useful analysis of Top Two in practice. See:

http://www.fairvote.org/top-two-in-washington-state<http://www.fairvote.org/top-two-in-washington-state#.UehvMI3VDh4>
 [Washington]
http://www.fairvote.org/fairvote-s-fix-for-top-two-in-california [California
]

- Rob Richie


On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Salvador Peralta <
oregon.properties at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> Here's an interesting twist on the top two primary that may do a better
> job than the current "first to the post" system in terms of determining
> actual voter preferences.
>
> This proposal, which is currently being prepared for circulation in Oregon
> would create a "preference voting" primary, which would allow voters to
> vote for as many candidates as they wish in a primary election.  The top
> two overall vote getters would advance to the general election.
>
> I was first introduced by the concept by a fellow at the Society for
> Industrial and Applied Mathematics who suggested that Oregon's Independent
> Party, which has 100,000 members statewide in Oregon, should use it as the
> basis for the party's political primary, because it is such a good method
> for determining actual group preferences from a list of given alternatives.
>
> I am not currently involved in the Oregon effort, but I would be
> interested in hearing what people on the list think of this system of
> voting.
>
> Here's an overview of the general concept of approval voting:
>
> http://www.electology.org/approval-voting
>
> Here's an academic treatment of the issue by Steven Brams & Peter Fishburn:
>
>
> http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/brams/theory_to_practice.pdf?q=pledge-shabad
>
> Here are some articles related to the effort as proposed in Oregon.
>
>
> MEASURE TEXT:   http://media.oregonlive.com/mapes/other/SP-2014-043.pdf
> STORIES:
>
>
> http://www.oregonlive.com/mapes/index.ssf/2013/10/dave_frohnmayers_son_proposes.html#incart_river
>
>
> http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-30782-mark_frohnmayer_proposes_open_primary_initative.html
>
>
>
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