**INTRODUCING** 2-Choice Voting (2CV) - An Improved Iteration on RCV and STAR
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@cfrank I've responded to you main criticisms in the edits above!
I'll have to dive deeper into the vote splitting hypothetical, but my guess is that you won't often have "Clones from 1 party" since most parties would only allow 1 candidate to have their party's endorsement. So this hypothetical of "clones" seems, at face, extremely unlikely, especially considering no 2 humans are exact clones. There will almost certainly be SOME differences between the "clones," so I feel that the premise is likely flawed. But I'll humor the hypothetical and dive in and reply more in depth 
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@jack-waugh I've responded to your criticism of not passing the Frohmayer Balance test in my edit to the main post. I think this system does satisfy it, since there is the ability for any voter to bring balance to another voter's ballot cast in an equally weighted and balanced opposing vote, which would many times result in the "common ground" candidate being more highly supported, which is a benefit of the system - rewarding candidates with higher overall support.
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@psp_andrew-s even approximate clones will cause vote splitting, such as the Bush-Nader-Gore election. A clone is a formal voting theoretical concept, where two candidates appear adjacently in preference rankings among (very many) voters. Furthermore, parties can and will strategical nominate likely clones if it’s in their interest to do so.
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@cfrank I think 2CV satisfies this. Would you be available for a Discord video call to discuss and run it through the Election model that I built? You can add me on discord @lamppost
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@psp_andrew-s no it does not. The example I gave demonstrates that it fails independence of clones.
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@cfrank I've read through your hypothetical several times and some things don't make sense - not sure I'm understanding the variables correctly. Are you available to discuss via screenshare/video chat so I can better understand?
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@psp_andrew-s unfortunately I am not available for a video chat at the moment, but I can elaborate later about the example. The key point is that the coins that get distributed over larger groups of similar candidates will cause those platforms to weaken, and that this enables minority rule.
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@cfrank Ok, I think I kind of understand where you're going with that, I'll think hard on it and let you know what I find. I'm also updating the model to support 8 candidates to run it through.
I will say, however, that I think the hypothetical is flawed, as I can't think of a scenario whereby 5 candidates from 1 single party could, or ever have, competed in the same general election as 3 candidates from ANOTHER party. Typically the POINT of parties is to align around 1 candidate, so those parties will have their own Primary before selecting whom to choose as their Party's candidate in a given general election.
Please advise and let me know if my criticisms of your hypothetical are valid or not.
Edit: I think your hypothetical requires the running of MIXED Primaries, which I neither support nor think are a good idea. But we can get into that separately if you genuinely believe that mixed Primaries are preferred to our current unmixed systems.
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@psp_andrew-s the reason we don’t see multiple candidates running on similar platforms is precisely because the “vote for one” system we currently employ suffers severely from vote-splitting. So platforms that run with more than one candidate are essentially doomed from the start, which is exactly what happened in the infamous Bush-Nader-Gore election. The primaries really just function to strategically navigate the failure of independence of clones. In a system that satisfies independence of clones, there is no intrinsic reason for many candidates with similar (read as: appealing largely to the same group of voters) platforms not to run for office. What I’m saying is that 2CV will probably converge to 2 large parties nominating 3 clones each, which is only nominally different from what we already have.
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EDIT: I may have misunderstood, I think your hypothetical assumes that there are 50/50 weighted voters for liberal vs conservative, right? I'll readjust and look at it.
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@cfrank I actually STRONGLY disagree with your premise that having clones in a general election is desirable. I think it's actually highly UNDESIRABLE and that we should want our general elections to offer us REAL CHOICE, meaning true, tangible, distintinct differentiation of candidates and ideas. No healthy election should only offer a choice between 3 shades of Red and 5 shades of Blue.
The party system is good and works, so long as it allows for alternative parties / moderates to win by getting a large amount of general approval (even if they're not 1st choice of the highest number of voters) - I think we can all agree with this premise.
That's the problem with our system - not that it doesn't promote the running of candidate clones (that's actually a GOOD thing, in my opinion), but rather that it doesn't allow for sufficient voter expression whereby they can choose a 2nd or backup candidate to gauge candidate acceptance / support more broadly than Single-Vote can indicate, and allowing for the victory of more populist candidates, which 2CV does elegantly.
I've thought very hard about your hypothetical, and I've come to the conclusion that it's an impossible situation, since it would likely NEVER be the case in an 8-candidate Mixed Primary Election (which is undesirable in and of itself, in my opinion) that no candidate would attempt a strategy of populist appeal and be more "moderate," to gain 2nd Choice Votes, since doing so is a huge competitive advantage. So I don't personally see that as a valid criticism of 2CV, though I'm open to more discussion if you have counter-arguments
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@psp_andrew-s I don’t get the impression that you are evaluating your own stance objectively, and I again do not mean to condescend, but it seems like you will need to do more research into this matter.
You are right that a healthy election should offer more than 3 shades of red against 5 shades of blue. What I am telling you is that I am very confident your system, if implemented, would converge almost always to 3 shades of red and 3 shades of blue.
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@psp_andrew-s no, my hypothetical assumes that, for example, there are 38% in one party that nominates three clones, and 62% in the other that happens to nominate 5 clones. Which is, actually, roughly realistic, assuming a small degree of naivety among candidates and that a larger and more diversified platform encourages more candidates to run for office. Which it should.
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@psp_andrew-s said in **INTRODUCING** 2-Choice Voting (2CV) - An Improved Iteration on RCV and STAR:
@cfrank I actually STRONGLY disagree with your premise that having clones in a general election is desirable.
I don't think his point was that it was in general desirable or undesirable, but rather, that it should not be available as a strategy whereby a strong-arm party could prevent democracy.
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@psp_andrew-s said in **INTRODUCING** 2-Choice Voting (2CV) - An Improved Iteration on RCV and STAR:
On Frohmayer Balance
If there are candidates ABCDE and 1 voter selects A/C as 1st/2nd choice, another voter can cast E/C as 1st/2nd choice to create balance between A/C and E/C preferences.These two votes do not balance, because in the context of the other votes (the ones in the election but not stated in the example) the first one could deny candidate B the win, and the second would not restore B's win.
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@psp_andrew-s said in **INTRODUCING** 2-Choice Voting (2CV) - An Improved Iteration on RCV and STAR:
Typically the POINT of parties is to align around 1 candidate, so those parties will have their own Primary before selecting whom to choose as their Party's candidate in a given general election.
Assuming that, first off, the voters, in order to have power, are required to organize themselves into parties, which I object to, and assuming that a given party conducts a primary election to determine its one nominee for the general, which I read you above as recommending, are you suggesting that the party is to use 2CV for the primary? That just pushes the problem from the general to the primary. Are the different factions of voters within the party supposed to organize themselves into subparties, and have a primary in each of those to determine their nomination for the party primary?
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@jack-waugh @psp_andrew-s this is precisely correct. Whether having clones in an election is unconditionally desirable or undesirable is immaterial and not a statement I make. What I will argue to be undesirable is minority rule by strategic nomination and tactical voting.
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@cfrank Please provide an example, because I cannot come up with one where I've seen multiple candidates from Party A running against multiple candidates from Party B in a general election. This should never happen and it's a bad system if it allows as such (does not promote sufficient candidate diversity).
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@psp_andrew-s You shouldn't need an example from to-date real-world practice. The question is whether your proposal would encourage such a tactic.
I have seen a cartoon that shows Republicans rejoicing at the announcement that Nader is running. Is the suggestion in the cartoon plausible, even if not proven? Did Republican partisans have plausible reason to be glad at Mr. Nader's candidacy, on grounds of it improving the chances of their candidate Mr. Bush?
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I suggest that for evaluating any multi-round voting system, a helpful (although not comprehensive) step is to ask whether, when it eliminates candidates in a non-final round, it eliminates the correct candidates based on equality of political power from one voter to another. And your first round shares with choose-one voting the fact that voters do not get to weigh in on every pair of candidates, but have a limited count of coins to spend. Accordingly, your first round inherits the problems of choose-one plurality voting, with slight mitigation in some cases, since your voters have two coins and voters in a choose-one single-winner election only get one coin. The improvement could show up when there are few enough candidates. With seven candidates, it's not a real improvement. Someone having money support for advertising, or distinction by fame or infamy, will move forward into the final round, because the voters face the prisoner's dilemma.
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Moved from Voting Theoretic Criteria by
SaraWolk