I created an Electowiki article titled "VoteFair party ranking." (The history section explains its origin.) Here's the link to the article: https://electowiki.org/wiki/VoteFair_party_ranking Below are some highlights from the article, followed by comments addressed to this group. "VoteFair party ranking is a vote-counting method that identifies the popularity of political parties for the purpose of identifying how many candidates each political party is allowed to offer in a non-primary election. This limit is useful in elections that otherwise would attract candidates from very unpopular parties. It allows, and encourages, two or three candidates from the two most popular parties." "This method is designed for use in high-level elections that otherwise would attract too many candidates from political parties that are so unpopular that their candidates have almost no chance of winning. This limit enables voters to focus attention on all the candidates, which becomes important when elections use ranked ballots or score ballots instead of single-mark ballots." "The third-most popular party is identified after appropriately reducing the influence of the voters who are well-represented by the first-ranked and second-ranked parties." "Without this adjustment the same voters who are well-represented by one of the most popular parties could create a "shadow" party that occupies the third position, which would block smaller parties from that third position." Calculation steps: 1. In a previous important election, voters are asked to rank the political parties that have legal status. 2. The most popular party is identified using any vote-counting method that uses ranked ballots and pairwise counting. 3. The second-most popular party is identified using VoteFair representation ranking. 4. Identify the ballots on which the voter's most-preferred party is not one of the two highest-ranked parties. 5. Using only the ballots identified in the previous step, identify the most popular party from among the not-yet-ranked parties. This party is the third-most popular party. 6. Using all the ballots, the fourth-ranked party is the most popular party from among the not-yet-ranked parties. 7. Calculate the ranking of the remaining parties using VoteFair representation ranking. ---- End of quotations ---- I think this topic is worthy of discussion because eliminating vote splitting will eliminate the reason that political parties currently offer only one candidate per contest. Also consider that voters will ask how to accommodate the many people who want to enter fairer elections when spoiler candidates are no longer an issue. We should be prepared with an answer. Of course there are other ways to limit the number of candidates on the ballot. But those methods don't always work. (Remember the 135 candidates in the California special election for governor.) And typically those methods can be "gamed" in ways that do not fairly represent what most voters want. Also consider that if a top political party offers just one candidate -- as with the Republican party in the upcoming U.S. presidential election -- then voters deserve to see on the ballot additional candidates from the smaller parties. Your feedback about VoteFair party ranking is welcome! Richard Fobes