[EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:15 PM 4/27/2007, Howard Swerdfeger wrote:
> > Warren has published his code and has invited others to vary how it
> > is used, or to substitute their own functions. And I'm quite sure
> > he'd be happy to put up, on the Range site, anything reasonable. He
> > really is looking for optimum simulations, not merely simulations
> > that show Range as being better!
>
>I never tried to question his Intent. Just stating that I don't
>understand all of what he is doing .
>do you have a link where I could find his code?

He's not necessarily always easy to follow. But he tries to be clear. 
I found code for one of the experiments on the RV list, but, if you 
are interested in confirming or expanding or correcting his work, I 
would suggest that you join and ask about it on the Range Voting 
list. I can assure you that you will be welcomed and supported in that.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RangeVoting/

Okay, I searched the yahoogroup for "simulation code" and found a 
fairly recent message describing it and giving the URL to the code:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RangeVoting/message/3498

I have suggested that the Center for Range Voting split into two 
distinct activities, one which would probably keep the name CRV but 
which would essentially be a Political Action Committee promoting 
specific reforms (though I expect it will remain far more open than 
such equivalents as the Center for Voting and Democracy, which is 
nailed firmly to IRV), and another organization dedicated to election 
method and related research. The reason is that it is common that the 
research of Warren and others is commonly discounted because of the 
advocacy. That is, because Warren and some of the others advocate 
Range Voting, it is assumed that they have cooked the research 
(consciously or unconsciously). Note that such an assumption, while 
prudent as a hypothesis, could result in disqualifying any research 
that has *led* to advocacy rather than proceeding from it. In 
Warren's case, his research clearly preceded his advocacy, he got 
fired up about Range as a result of studying it and other methods. He 
happens to have also invented what I consider to be superior to 
Range, but it is not, technically, an election method in that it does 
not necessarily determine, simply from the ballots, all the winners. 
It's deliberative, creating a class of electors (who are usually 
assumed to be candidates, Warren actually refers to this, but they 
might even be prohibited from being candidates) who negotiate and 
vote publicly to create a winner or winners.

We *do* have the Range Voting Free Association, 
http://rv.beyondpolitics.org, which is an *interest* group that does 
not have and will not take any advocacy positions *as a group*. It is 
an FA/DP organization and all interested in Range Voting (even if 
only to oppose it) are invited to join. Right now, all that means is 
registering on the wiki.... It will never mean that you've consented 
to more than an occasional mail. So far, no mails have been sent to 
all registered members. Some day....