Suggestions for allowing an assembly to elect either one or two candidates

[Alex Meed]

I am the president of a political organization that endorses candidates in primary elections—one candidate per race (with the option to make "No Endorsement"), by preferential ballot, per our bylaws.

We are one of about two dozen organizations in our city affiliated with our political party who also make endorsements under their own rules. Most of these clubs endorse one candidate per race in two-round elections, where the top two candidates from the first round enter a runoff if neither gains a majority in the first round.

We recently rewrote our bylaws and made endorsements in the 2020 primary election under the new bylaws. I'm now on the lookout for possible process improvements. One idea I have is based on other clubs in our city that allow dual endorsements. For instance, in one club, if nobody gets the required fraction of votes in the first round, a member can move to issue a dual endorsement instead of holding a runoff. If the motion is passed, the club endorses both candidates at once. (I'm not sure of the vote margin required for the motion.)

My questions, which might be out of scope here but I'll ask anyway:

• Does this appear to be a sound procedure? What should the vote margin be?
• Are there any alternative ways that you've encountered of allowing the body to elect either one or two candidates?
• How could this be fit into a preferential-ballot system, as my organization uses? (Especially since usually many members have gone home by the time the tellers report; that's part of why we switched from two rounds to preferential balloting in the first place.)
• Is the whole idea dumb to begin with? Am I missing any pitfalls?

[Rob Elsman]

I vote for the last. There is a whole chapter devoted to nominations and elections. I suggest all of you memorize it word-for-word and stick to it like glue. See RONR (11th ed.), pp. 430ff.

[Weldon Merritt]

I concur with Mr. Elsman. While you are not nominating and electing officers for your organization, I believe the RONR provisions Mr. Elsman cited would work very well for deciding on candidates to be endorsed.

[Richard Brown]

I’m going to respectfully disagree with the opinions of my two colleagues above, one of whom I consider a very good and knowledgeable friend and whom I respect very much.

This organization is not electing officers, as Mr. Merritt pointed out, and is certainly not endorsing electing co-officers, such as co-presidents. That is something which we all abhor and which our recently departed colleague, Dr. Stackpole, used to elaborate upon very eloquently.

This  is a political organization which makes political endorsements for elections. They are free to make whatever types of endorsements they desire and to do them in whatever manner they desire. While some of us may prefer that they decide upon a single candidate, they do not by any means have to do it that way and RONR does not require that they do it that way.  If their membership is torn between which of two candidates would be the best, they are perfectly free to endorse both of them, as the New York Times just did with endorsing  two presidential candidates a few days ago. Whether we want to laugh at that or not, it is their right and is not at all equivalent to electing co-officers or co-committee chairs as RONR and  most of us so strongly recommend against.

In this case, by endorsing two candidates, they are saying simply that  “we think both of these candidates are acceptable”.  They are perfectly free to do that and I have no problem with them doing it if that is their desire.

Now, the method of arriving at a dual endorsement is an entirely different matter. There are a myriad of ways in which the organization can do that. The first two that come to mind are a motion “that the XYZ endorsement club endorse Jane Smith and Jack Jones as mayor” or that they endorse the two candidates receiving the largest number of votes provided that each of the top two candidates receive a certain percentage of the vote. There are countless other methods that could be used for deciding, first, whether to endorse two candidates and second, to be used in deciding which two candidates to endorse. I’m not ready to speculate on what I think the best method of accomplishing that would be.  Perhaps that’s what Alex M is asking us to do. I’m really not sure.  RONR certainly does provide some alternatives for doing so. Not all of those alternatives are in the chapter on nominations and elections.

Edited to add: I think the title to Alex M’s question is misleading. This organization is not proposing to elect two candidates. It is proposing to endorse two candidates in an election For public office.

Edited January 25, 2020 at 06:43 PM by Richard Brown
Added last paragraph

[Atul Kapur]

I'm going to side with Mr. Brown and respectfully disagree with Mssrs. Elsman and Merritt. This is a not unreasonable alternative, to endorse two candidates in the primary election.

@Alex M., I can see many ways of doing this -- I am having trouble seeing how to do this along with a preferential ballot. Every system you choose will involve some trade-offs. Your organization should discuss these trade-offs and decide on their preference.

The options, and their trade-offs, are too numerous and detailed to get into here. However, one example is that the major disadvantage of the preferential ballot -- that voters must make their decisions on subsequent rounds of voting without knowing the results of previous rounds -- is exacerbated because voters are now being asked to decide on an entirely different question -- whether to endorse two candidates instead of one -- in advance, without knowing the results of the first round of voting.

[Rob Elsman]

The main motion is amendable to insert another blank, if desired, in which case, the rules for selecting more than one candidate apply.

[Weldon Merritt]

Mr. Brown and Dr. Kapur seem to assume that by citing the RONR provisions on nominations and elections, Mr. Elsman and I imply that the organization is limited to endorsing only one candidate. I certainly did not mean to imply that, and based on his more recent post, apparently neither did Mr. Elsman. As most of us are aware, it is perfectly proper under RONR's nomiation and election provisions to elect two (or more) officers to equivalent positions (most comonly, directors).

Certainly Alex M's organization is free to use any other method they choose. But he asked if his other ideas were "dumb," and in my (and it seems, Mr. Elsman's) opinion, they are. (OK, maybe "dumb" is too strong. But unless the organization has a very good reason for doing something else, they will be better served, in my opinion, by uing RONR's method.) 

[Richard Brown]

22 minutes ago, Weldon Merritt said:

As most of us are aware, it is perfectly proper under RONR's nomiation and election provisions to elect two (or more) officers to equivalent positions (most comonly, directors

Weldon, I quite agree, but this organization is not endorsing two people for equivalent positions such as electing two people to a board. It is wanting to endorse two people for the same position. I do not believe RONR contains a procedure for electing two people to the same position, such as president, which would amount to having co-presidents. In fact RONR recommends strongly against it, as do almost all of us.  But, this organization isn’t planning on co-anythings, other than saying “we think these two people are qualified and suitable for the position and we endorse both of them.“

[Atul Kapur]

1 hour ago, Weldon Merritt said:

Mr. Brown and Dr. Kapur seem to assume that by citing the RONR provisions on nominations and elections, Mr. Elsman and I imply that the organization is limited to endorsing only one candidate.

Weldon, that's not the problem I see. In the OP's situation, they are not yet decided on how many candidates to endorse. If they decide on the number ahead of time, then it is a simple matter of following the nomination/election procedure. But, as I read it, they want to hold off on making that decision until after at least one round of voting. 

Doing this in real-time is possible, if not easy. Mr. Elsman's suggestion is one option, for example. But doing this with a preferential ballot is a different matter, entirely, and I don't see direct analogies to the nom/elect procedures.

[Rob Elsman]

I think it is necessary to know how many blanks there are to fill before commencement of the voting, since the number of blanks will determine how many votes each member may cast. Put another way, the exact form of the main motion must be known before the assembly can vote on it.

Edited January 26, 2020 at 03:56 AM by Rob Elsman

[J. J.]

I will with my colleagues Mr. Brown and Dr. Kapur.  This is not an election for office and those rules do not apply.

I will, however, note the nature of an endorsement, in the general case.  It is a formal recommendation to vote for someone for an office.  When there is only one office to be filled, the voter is being asked to to effectively cast an illegal vote of more candidates than there are offices.  The group endorsing may not wish to do that.

If there was a desire to state that this group would find some candidates acceptable for a certain office and other candidates not acceptable, that would be a solution,  Some groups in my state say "qualified" and "not qualified."  There may be many candidates for an office that could be found to be "qualified."

[Rob Elsman]

Some things should be noted:

• The first question to be decided is whether to make any endorsement at all, since, as the poster, noted, no endorsement is an option. This is a main motion of the "yes/no" kind. It is an option to include in this motion a blank for the number of endorsements to be made.
• The second main motion is conditional upon the adoption of the first motion. The second motion is a main motion that contains one or more blanks to be filled with names. If the number of endorsements was decided in the first motion, the number of blanks in the second motion will be the number determined in the first motion; otherwise, the number of blanks can be determined through the normal procedures for amending a main motion. This second motion does, indeed, follow the rules for elections if, as I suspect, the blanks are to be filled by ballot; otherwise, the rules for filling blanks apply.

[Alex Meed]

If only my skill in all aspects of my life were commensurate with my ability to generate conflict on a parliamentarians' forum.... I'll respond to a few comments first and then briefly summarize my impression. The TL;DR, as some put it, is at the bottom.

On 1/25/2020 at 12:04 PM, Richard Brown said:

Now, the method of arriving at a dual endorsement is an entirely different matter. There are a myriad of ways in which the organization can do that. The first two that come to mind are a motion “that the XYZ endorsement club endorse Jane Smith and Jack Jones as mayor” or that they endorse the two candidates receiving the largest number of votes provided that each of the top two candidates receive a certain percentage of the vote.

I think all the clubs in our area that allow dual endorsements use one of those two models, combined with the aforementioned two-round voting system. They're difficult to adapt to preferential balloting, though.

Quote

There are countless other methods that could be used for deciding, first, whether to endorse two candidates and second, to be used in deciding which two candidates to endorse. I’m not ready to speculate on what I think the best method of accomplishing that would be.  Perhaps that’s what Alex M is asking us to do. I’m really not sure.  RONR certainly does provide some alternatives for doing so. Not all of those alternatives are in the chapter on nominations and elections.

That is exactly what I'm asking you to do—though judging from this forum's general (and understandable) inhospitability to being asked to speculate, I perhaps should have known better than to ask.

On 1/25/2020 at 6:58 PM, Atul Kapur said:

Weldon, that's not the problem I see. In the OP's situation, they are not yet decided on how many candidates to endorse. If they decide on the number ahead of time, then it is a simple matter of following the nomination/election procedure. But, as I read it, they want to hold off on making that decision until after at least one round of voting.

A few semesters ago, we switched to preferential ballot specifically to avoid having multiple rounds of voting. It also took multiple hours to count ballots at our last endorsement forum, long after many participants had departed. So ideally we would be able to use only one round of voting to decide whether to endorse one candidate (or none) or multiple.

On the other hand, I'm wary of selecting the number of candidates to endorse ahead of time, since voting results can often be hard to predict in our endorsement elections. I could foresee a situation happening where a few members, desiring to endorse candidates A and B, persuade a majority to add another blank to the endorsement motion—perhaps even with that stated purpose—only to find that the results favor A and C instead. But perhaps that can be justified as all part of the strategy.

In any event, it increasingly seems that my wishes in the preceding two paragraphs are mutually exclusive, at least if we want a fair and comprehensible voting system.

22 hours ago, J. J. said:

I will, however, note the nature of an endorsement, in the general case.  It is a formal recommendation to vote for someone for an office.  When there is only one office to be filled, the voter is being asked to to effectively cast an illegal vote of more candidates than there are offices.  The group endorsing may not wish to do that.

If there was a desire to state that this group would find some candidates acceptable for a certain office and other candidates not acceptable, that would be a solution,  Some groups in my state say "qualified" and "not qualified."  There may be many candidates for an office that could be found to be "qualified."

To me, endorsing one candidate is akin to saying "we believe this candidate is most qualified for the position". Endorsing two means "we believe each of these candidates is equally qualified (or almost equally qualified), and a voter should select one of the two to vote for". In theory, we might find ourselves believing the same about three or more candidates. But I believe the organization also has an interest in avoiding overly broad endorsements; an endorsement loses its potency when it's combined with endorsements of half the candidates in the race.

To summarize, this discussion has helped me crystallize my hopes for a new system—allowing my organization to endorse a variable number of candidates, not decided in advance, with only one round of voting. It has also helped convince me that this is a fool's errand. I believe having a single round of voting is more important to my membership than being able to endorse multiple candidates, so unless I have a flash of creativity I'll likely not argue for any changes of the latter sort.

Thanks for your assistance, and for adding to the reading load that graduate school has imposed on me!

Edited January 27, 2020 at 05:07 AM by Alex M.
Clarify my perception of the meaning of a dual endorsement

[Josh Martin]

9 hours ago, Alex M. said:

A few semesters ago, we switched to preferential ballot specifically to avoid having multiple rounds of voting. It also took multiple hours to count ballots at our last endorsement forum, long after many participants had departed. So ideally we would be able to use only one round of voting to decide whether to endorse one candidate (or none) or multiple.

One potential solution to this problem would be to permit members, when nominating candidates, to submit a team of two candidates (or “no endorsement”) as a candidate.

The other way would probably involve nominating only single candidates (or “no endorsement”) and then have some rules for what happens in various scenarios when the counting process has narrowed the field to two candidates. It might look something like this:

1. If one of the two candidates is “No Endorsement,” and “No Endorsement” has more votes than the other candidate, there is no endorsement.

2. If one of the two candidates is “No Endorsement,” and “No Endorsement” has fewer votes than the other candidate, the other candidate is endorsed.

3. If neither candidate is “No Endorsement,” and one of the candidates has more than X% of the vote, that candidate is endorsed.

4. If neither candidate is “No Endorsement” and neither candidate has more than X% of the vote, both candidates are endorsed.

I don’t think these are particularly good systems, but if an assembly were to insist on using a single, preferential ballot to determine both the number of candidates to endorse and which candidates to endorse, this is the best I can come up with.

Edited January 27, 2020 at 02:37 PM by Josh Martin