[EM] Election Methods Research Group

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Alex wrote:

To make it look like a formal organization, maybe Mike will declare us to
be members of the Election Methods Education and Research Group. Then we
can post our report and press releases there.

I reply:

I'll talk to Russ & Rob L., but even without talking to them, it's obvious 
that
increased membership is what a small organization needs, and so
it doubt very much that they'd  object to the EMERG organization
adding members other than its 3 founding members.

EMERG would benefit from the higher membership numbers, and from
more things being done under its name. EM's Approval project could
benefit from the use of a pre-existing Approval organization such
as EMERG.

I realize that, with only 3 members, EMERG isn't a _strong_
accretion nucleus, but we've been on the web for some time now,
and have gotten lots of website-visitors and questions. We've been
doing things in the way of advocacy of Approval and sharing about IRV's
disadvantages, though the only part of that work that's under the EMERG
name is the replies to questions to the website.

Of course any organization has founding principles, and EMERG
has the founding principle that a very important goal of single-winner
reform is to get rid of the lesser-of-2-evils problem. That leads
to our criteria and our method recommendations. But I don't believe
there need be any problem from the fact that some EM Approvalists
have different standards than we do. Part of EMERG's goal is to
advance Approval, and someone who doesn't necessarily agree with
our founding principle or with all of our proposals could easily
work with us in organized Approval work, just as electoral reformers
with different political beliefs work together all the time. It
isn't necessary for all Approval advocates to like Approval for
identical reasons, or to agree on what other methods are good.

One reason why EMERG has only 3 members is because its 3 founding
members aren't really organizers. Most likely Russ & Rob L. would
agree that it would be great to start a bigger organization that
gains prestige as it gains size, and I doubt very much that they'd
object to that organization starting as EMERG. An advantage of that
approach is that it avoids the need to vote on the name of a new
organization, and avoids duplication of effort and unnecessary
competition that can occur when there are unnecessarily many
organizations with the same goal.

Bylaws issues could be dealt with later, after we determined that
we have a larger organization.

So, as the 1st person replying to the EMERG suggestion, I think
it sounds fine.

Mike Ossipoff


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