Reveling the Majority Winner

[Markus Schulze]

Don Davison wrote (19 Oct 1998):
>    On Fri, 16 Oct 1998, MikeO wrote: "IT's not just I who don't like IRO.
> It's virtually unanimously disliked by people who write about voting
> systems. For some reason CVD is disregarding the opinios of all those
> people."
>
> Dear MikeO,
>      This is not a perfect world - people don't always do what we want them
> to do. I would like the Center for Voting and Democracy to advocate even
> number of seats in a district instead of their current policy of three
> member districts. I would like them to advocate the Hare Quota instead of
> the Droop Quota. I would them to advocate MMP. I would like them to
> advocate some features of Direct Democracy.
>      If I were in charge of the Center I would make them jump. But I am not
> in charge and they do not jump for me.
>      So, what is so special about you that people should jump?
>
>      I would not put much stock in the opinions of authors of voting system
> books. They are forced to publish. They will write anything in order to be
> published. They do research in order to write their books. Research is the
> polite word for stealing. Their books are composed of stolen material with
> little original thinking on the part of each author. If some garbage exists
> in one book the same garbage is sure to be in all those books.
>      You read their garbage and put it onto our list - thanks, but no
> thanks.
>      It is not your fault - your authors let you down.
>
>     Those authors are in the education field. If they were of any help we
> should have had the best election system one hundred years ago. But we do
> not have the best system because those education people are useless when it
> comes to election reform. The Center is wise not to regard the opinions of
> all those people. The Center does not need those people - nor you. The
> Center is doing some good. The Center does not need a pack of dogs nipping
> at their heels.

There are at least three groups propagating IRO because of scientific
reasons: the groups of Hannu Juhani Nurmi [1;2], John J. Bartholdi III [3;4],
and John R. Chamberlin [5;6].

Although I don't like IRO, I don't agree with the impression, that the public
discussion is dominated by opponents of IRO.

[1]: Hannu Nurmi, "Comparing Voting Systems," D. Reidel Publishing Company,
     Dordrecht, 1987,
[2]: Hannu Nurmi, "Probability models in constitutional choice," European
     Journal of Political Economy, vol. 6, p. 107-117, 1990,
[3]: John J. Bartholdi III, Craig A. Tovey, Michael A. Trick, "The
     Computational Difficulty of Manipulating an Election,"
     Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 6, p. 227-241, 1989,
[4]: John J. Bartholdi III, James B. Orlin, "Single transferable vote resists
     strategic voting," Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 8, p. 341-354, 1991,
[5]: John R. Chamberlin, Jerry L. Cohen, Clyde H. Coombs, "Social Choice
     Observed: Five Presidential Elections of the American Psychological
     Association," Journal of Politics, vol. 46, p. 479-502, 1984,
[6]: John R. Chamberlin, "An investigation into the relative manipulability
     of four voting systems," Behavioral Science, vol. 30, p. 195-203, 1985.

Markus Schulze