I was mistaken that Abd ul-Rahman Lomax was seeking to win a debate. Serious debaters, as I understand it (I've never been involved in formal debate activities), stick to the questions being debated and avoid personal references, whether to the people they are debating or to themselves. Comparing me to Charles Manson, in addition to being extremely insulting and inconsiderate (will his next comparison be to Hitler or Stalin?), proves better than anything else he has written that Lomax is more interested in attacking people he has decided he dislikes or disagrees with than in entering into honest, respectful dialogues or debates about election methods. I expect him to post another thousand or so words denying this while attacking me once again, but he would be more persuasive if he proved I was wrong by ceasing his comments about personalities (including himself) and restricting himself in the future to directly discussing issues of the kinds this list was indended to be limited to.
To the extent that I have engaged in unwarranted speculations about people's motives, including the possibility that Lomax and Dave Ketchum are too committed to Robert's Rules to be able to consider them open-mindedly, I apologize to them as well as to this list. I'll try to be more careful in the future to avoid such speculations unless the evidence supporting them is much more substantial, as, for example, is the evidence for the conclusions in the preceding paragraph. -Ralph Suter ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info