Adrian Tawfik at Democracy Chronicles requested that I supply him with
an introduction to myself for the article that contains my answers to
his interview questions. I'm thinking that everyone else who also
answered his interview questions will need to supply an introduction,
and I figure that all of us will want to elaborate on the brief comment
that appears next to our name on the Declaration. As long as we are
writing introductions that will be published, we might as well also use
the opportunity to learn more about each other, and share ideas about
what to write. Plus, if any of us includes a statement that defies the
principles of mathematics, such an error can be pointed out prior to
publication.
With that in mind, here is my suggestion for an introductory paragraph
about me:
-------- begin intro --------
Richard Fobes, who has a degree in physics (and whose last name rhymes
with robes), became involved with election-method reform when he
realized, while writing his book titled "The Creative Problem Solver's
Toolbox" [link], that most of the world's problems can be solved, but
the current voting methods used throughout the world are so primitive
that citizens are unable to elect the problem-solving leaders they want.
That insight motivated him to spend time over the last two decades
developing -- including writing open-source software for -- a system of
voting methods that he calls "VoteFair ranking." The core of the system
is VoteFair popularity ranking, which is mathematically equivalent to
the Condorcet-Kemeny method, which is one of the methods supported by
the "Declaration of Election-Method Reform Advocates."
At his VoteFair.org [link] website, Fobes offers a free service of
calculating VoteFair ranking results, and a number of organizations have
used the service to elect their officers. The only people who have
objected to the results have been incumbents who failed to get reelected.
At that site Fobes also hosts an American Idol poll that allows fans of
the TV show to rank the show's singers according to who is their
favorite, who is their second favorite, and so on down to who they like
the least, and the calculations reveal the overall ranking. Based on the
results, Fobes writes commentaries that anticipate and explain so-called
"surprise" results in terms of important voting concepts, especially
vote splitting, vote concentration, and strategic voting.
-------- end intro --------
Richard Fobes
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