Abd ulRahman Lomax writes: > In my opinion, however, Robert's Rules is only of > peripheral interest on this list.
The discussion during the past week has strengthened my view of the relevance of Robert's Rules for this list. To anyone who has become minimally well-informed about alternative methods for conducting votes when there are three or more candidates or options and who looks at Robert's Rules to see how such votes are dealt with, it is impossible to notice that they are not encouraged and that suggested methods for handling such votes if they must be conducted are far from adequate in light of current knowledge about voting methods. I find it nearly impossible to imagine that if such knowledge had been available 130 years ago when Henry M. Robert wrote the first edition of Robert's Rules, he would not have had much more to say about it. As a West Point graduate and an engineer, he certainly would have had no trouble acquiring such knowledge if it had been available to him. I also find it nearly impossible to imagine that a committee of parliamentarians who are well informed about alternative voting methods would not want to recommend that they be discussed more fully and adequately in future editions of Robert's Rules. The trouble is that the percentage of parliamentarians who are well informed about voting methods is almost certainly extremely small, probably less than 1%. I don't mean that as a put down, just an unfortunate reality. If I had the money to start a foundation dedicated to educate the public about voting methods, among the first groups I would target, in addition to high school civics teachers and college political science instructors, would be parliamentarians. -Ralph Suter ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info