Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: Congratulations BERNIE SANDERS [View all]mwooldri
(10,291 posts)The winner has the "most votes" yes but not an absolute majority. The way to overcome this would be with some sort of single transferable vote system, where candidates are ranked by voter in terms of choice 1,2,3 etc.
First Past The Post works in the USA because there's typically only two viable candidates. If the USA ended up having multiple parties you would end up with a particular candidate winning but never with more than 50% of the vote.
What the Democratic Party has done with the primary elections has sort of given a form of proportional representation to the process - candidates win "delegates", and if all candidates ran all primary elections and caucuses they could request their delegates vote for another candidate instead... i.e. the "brokered convention".
We could reform the whole process... Have a single "super Tuesday" primary election, use the single transferable vote system, pick a candidate to represent the party in the general election in one fell swoop. No dragging it out.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden