To James and Ernie, Thanks very much for your comments. I agree with Ernie that it's important to be civil. If my comments regarding the CVD draft seemed unnecessarily combative, that was not my intention, and I'll try to be more careful in the future. But please keep in mind that I was responding to what struck me as uncivil rhetoric in the draft, beginning with the initial unfair (if not insulting) characterization of Condorcet as a method "favored by some mathematicians".
I actually have been generally supportive of CVD's work except for its advocacy of IRV and the refusal of its leaders to allow any debate within the organization concerning the pros and cons of IRV and other single winner methods. In fact, I attended the 1992 founding convention in Cincinnati of Citizens for Proportional Representation, the organizational precursur of CVD. I met Rob Richie there and have talked or exchanged emails with him a number of times since them. I also know Dan Johnson-Weinberger of CVD and the Midwest Democracy Center (we both live in Chicago), who is heading up efforts to promote cumulative voting and IRV legislation in Illinois. Until, now, CVD's leaders have dealt with opponents of IRV by ignoring them, despite the fact that CVD's advisory board includes prominent supporters of other methods, including both Condorcet and Approval. (Aside from Lijphart, the board also includes Steven Brams, co-inventor of aproval voting). But with the recent Scientific American article about "true majority voting" (a new name for Condorcet) and a November 2002 Science News article about approval voting, that's becoming harder to do. My view is that CVD should have encouraged debate within the organization about single winner methods before deciding to commit to IRV. Instead, Richie and a few other leaders apparently decided among themselves to go with IRV and to discourage further debate. I must thank Steve Epply for educating me about the importance of single winner reform and the advantages of Condorcet over IRV. He and I participated in some very interesting and informative discussions on the Alliance for Democracy email list in 1996. At one point, Rob Richie and another CVD leader engaged in a brief discussion with us on the list. I was less impressed with their arguments for IRV than Steve's arguments for Condorcet, but Rob and the other CVD person dropped out of the discussion pretty quickly. I appealed to Rob and Steven Hill by email to allow a debate about IRV at the 1997 convention (not 100% sure of that date), but got no response from either of them. Perhaps I should have been more vocal over the years, but other issues and projects have been much greater priorities for me than voting reform, and I have had limited time and resources to engage in debates on issues of different kinds. At the same time, I have appreciated most of CVD's work and have not been eager to criticize the organization publicly about this, especially given that my prospects for success didn't seem very great. (I'm not an academic or well known activist and have no very useful credentials.) But I now think that somehow things need to change and there is an urgent need for greater public discussion of alternative single winner voting methods. CVD is probably too committed to IRV to be willing to sponsor that discussion, so it will have to be started some other way. I'm tentatively planning a visit to DC next weekend and may meet with Eric Gorr to talk about this. Is there anyone else on the list who lives in or near DC who would like to join us? -Ralph Suter In a message dated 4/3/04 12:30:26 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << Hi Ralph, I think its a fair critique, but I would encourage you to approach them in a more positive fashion. For example, I think they do raise a number of valid points, and this seems the first most of us have seen of IRV supporters actually trying to tackle the issues head on. I would encourage you to start with affirming their valid points before criticizing the (notable) weaknesses, as I think it will make it more likely for them to acknowledge your complaints. After all, you're trying to write *to* them, not *about* them, so it pays to be civil. -- Ernie P. On Apr 3, 2004, at 1:27 AM, James Green-Armytage wrote: > > to Ralph Suter, > > I liked this letter a lot. I especially liked the part where you took > issue with Amy's treatment of Condorcet! I read that book too, and the > part on Condorcet which you cited really bothered me. And the Lijphart > quote, wow! I also agree that the 'punishing candidates who take clear > stances on issues' part of the draft, which was the central argument, > is poorly supported. I also agree that IRV retains many of the polarizing > tendencies of plurality, and this is bad news. > > my best, > James >> ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info