I have at least one disagreement with Brian Olson's proposed legal descriptions of different voting methods. The name he uses to describe Condorcet's method should be Instant Round Robin and abbreviated IRR. It should NOT be described as Virtual Round Robin Tournament.
One reason is that this method is no more "virtual" and no less "instant" than IRV. Technically, virtual would be a better term for both of them, because one of the best ways to explain and compare them is to say that one is equivalent to a virtual series of runoff elections and the other is equivalent to a virtual round robin tournament. The word "instant" was chosen for rhetorical purposes because "virtual" seems a lot like "artificial" while instant sees more like "streamlined" or "faster and better." Obviously, the name of a method is much less important than the method itself. But to be fair and avoid any suggestion of arbitrary favoritism and to help people understand the fundamental similarity of the two methods (i.e., their virtual/instant nature), the same word should be used to describe both of them. In addition, Instant Round Robin has been in use for at least 10 years. Maybe Virtual Round Robin has also, but I don't recall the latter term being used as often. -Ralph Suter In a June 11 message with the subject line "Re: [EM] voting reform effort in DENVER - PLEASE HELP", Brian Olson wrote: << The approach I'm taking is to write all the good methods into law and allow the election official in charge (secretary of state, county clerk, etc) to pick from an approved method. I've been writing something up sorta in the format of California Law which I think is almost ready and I plan to send to my state legislators this week. http://bolson.org/voting/law/ElectionSystemsCode.html Comments on that are welcome, and if we have boilerplate legalese-ish specifications of election methods that might help them be good to go wherever the law needs to be changed. I'm promoting these methods in what I've written up so far: Approval Voting Yes/No Vote (for initiatives, judge retention, etc. Anything single- issue yes or no.) Instant Runoff Normalized Ratings (because it's my baby) Instant Runoff Voting (because IRVists will demand it) Virtual Round Robin Tournament (aka Condorcet. with CSSD) Single Transferrable Vote (with droop quota and meek reweighting. for multi-seat elections) Brian Olson http://bolson.org/ >> ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
