Thursday, December 23, 2004 ::: YGLESIAS VOTING METHODS
Matthew Yglesias has some cute ideas about how to run the primary election, but it seems to me that the last thing you want to do for the any election in this country is to drive down voter turnout. Any system that requires either multiple voting dates, or unreliability on when the vote will happen or when in the process the vote will happen will keep people away from the polls. His athletic-tournament style systems are fairly similar, however, to some established alternative voting methodologies.
explains the options very nicely. And actually, the Democratic primary would be a good place to try out Condorcet voting since (1) it could be imposed by fiat rather than needing to be endorsed by an ignorant electorate, and (2) our chief problem in the primaries is that we're always conflicted over whether to go for a centrist for strategic reasons or a leftist because he's really the guy we'd like to see. Condorcet is designed to pick somebody everybody can live with.
All that said, I can see one important possible objection to Condorcet, and that is that you always end up with the Vanilla candidate. Sometimes the world needs a radical. I don't have the answer to that problem.
