Rob Richie:

Before jumping to the conclusion that Edwards’ majority win indicates he would have won under any electoral system, think again. Edwards benefited from a classic problem with traditional two runoff-systems. That is, one of the two advancing candidates (Sen. Vitter) was in fact the weakest Republican among the three that ran.

In fact, it’s quite likely that either of the other two Republicans in that first round would have defeated Edwards, just as Republicans won all six of the other statewide contests, including a runoff for lieutenant governor yesterday by more than 10%. It’s also quite likely that Edward would have lost if there had been an earlier runoff only among Republicans or if Louisiana has extended its use of ranked choice voting ballots from use by overseas and out-of-state military voters to all voters. But the state’s so-called “majority system” in fact did not provide a majority outcome.