Making EVERY Vote Count
The following resources are provided for those who would like to delve deeper into the study of voting systems and include not only the extensive analyses performed by election reform authority Charles T. Munger, Jr., but also others with expertise in the field. If you would like to provide any comments on, or contributions to, these resources, please use the Contact Us section of this website.
Analyses
My various papers each have individual abstracts that gives their principal results, and each has an introduction that describes the content of the separate section of the paper. The papers and sections can (mostly) be read independently of each other; think of a section as something like an entry in an encyclopedia, a book which one could if one chose read from cover to cover, but which is designed to let a reader look up and read information about one topic mostly without reading information about another.
To help a potential reader navigate, here the papers are grouped into one of three categories: The California Top-Two Primary; Condorcet Methods Versus Instant Runoff and Election Methods Without Ranked-Choice Ballots.
For each paper is listed its title, often its abstract or a summary, and then what can be found in it, section by section. Major sections of a paper are indexed by Roman numerals; subsections, by capital letters; and sub-subsections by numbers.
A summary and conclusions covering all three linked papers — California's Top-Two Primary: A Successful Reform, papers I, II, and III — appears in III on p. 13. The four linked papers The right way to read Ranked-Choice ballots: not Instant Runoff, but Ranked Pairs, papers A through D have a single abstract
California's Top-two Primary: A Successful Reform I
Abstract: This is the first of three concurrent papers on California's top-two primary, California's Top-two Primary: A Successful Reform I, II, and III.
Summary: The turnout of voters under the top-two; whether a voter when turned out actually casts a ballot in a same-party general election; whether the top-two is biased for or against either major party; whether either major party has been eliminated from a same-party general election that it could otherwise have won; the effect of the top-two on the minor political parties; the flow of money in top-two races; and the changes the top-two has wrought in the number of votes, and from which electorate, required to win and retain office: these are all analyzed, with conclusions favorable to the top-two. The effects of three other changes to the California political system| redistricting reform, which ended legislative gerrymanders of the districts; and the decision by the legislature to ban citizen initiatives from the statewide primary ballot; and changes to term limits for the Assembly and state Senate are taken into account.
California's Top-two Primary: A Successful Reform II
Abstract: This paper is the second of three concurrent papers, California's Top-two Primary: A Successful Reform I, II, and III, but it can be read independently.
Summary: Contrary to claims, it is found that no harm has been wrought by the top-two on the minor parties in California, whether judged by their voter registration; or the risk a minor party runs in not remaining ballot-qualifed; or any correlation between a minor party's voter registration and whether it has few or many candidates on the general election ballot; or any fall in the amount of money disbursed by the minor parties state committees. II. In a race in an incumbent-free Assembly district safe for one or other major party, that ends in a general election between two candidates of that party, the top-two has raised the minimum block of votes sufficient to win the seat, from 20,000 to the range of 60,000 to 80,000, and moved the required block from the primary electorate to the general; and in districts safe for their party the vulnerability of incumbents to being knocked out office in a primary election has decreased, but the number of incumbents actually losing to same-party challenges has increased, these increased losses now occurring in the general election.
California's Top-two Primary: A Successful Reform III
Abstract: This paper is the third of three, California's Top-two Primary: A Successful Reform I, II, and III, but it can be read independently.
Summary: The paper presents a table of all the candidates elected in a same-party general election in California from 2012 through 2016, and reports how often a candidate who had trailed in the primary won the general election. The paper examines whether voters who vote a general-election ballot and face, either in a statewide race or in a district race, two candidates of a party not their own, vote in that race or skip it; tallies the amount of money spent in same-party general elections, as a quantiable measure of their competitiveness and interest; examines whether the top-two primary, in creating some general election races from which one or other major party is excluded, has denied that excluded party a significant chance of electing one of their candidates; and compares the number of general election races in California, either resulting from the system of partisan primaries or from the top-two, that end with both a Democrat and a Republican on the ballot, to the number in the other states. The conclusions drawn from all three papers appear together at the end of this one.