[EM] Who are we?

[Stephane Rouillon]

Hello bunch,

I am just an honest citizen fed up with politicians always bribing their
electorate to get elected.
I do not know how elections go on in your countries but this pattern of
promises and investment
toward ambivalent circumscriptions (districts) is the eternal result of
FPTP here in Canada.
Thus, I have decided to participate to the introduction of some
remedials at every level
of my governments. In my humble opinion, a proportional representation,
a preferential ballot
and replacing geographic districts are the key elements to make obsolete
the actual behaviour of
my politicians.

I have a physical engineering degree and a master in mechanical
engineering. I am completing
actually a Ph.D. in operational research.  I am 33 years old, french and
canadian, with two kids.
My parents crossed the ocean in the 60's from France, but I doubt being
a Condorcet
descendant... Who knows?

I encountered the EM list through Yahoo and Blake Cretney's site if I
remember well.
Ranked pair is my favourite method, although I think the criteria used
should depend
on the purpose and especially the explanation given to voters about the
interpretation of
truncated rankings. So ranked pair (winning votes) if truncated rankings
are rejection
opinions and ranked pair (relative margins - not pure margins) if
truncated rankings are
interpreted as "don't know, don't care" opinions.
>From a research point of view, I really liked the universal ballot I
proposed once with
Forest. Example: A > B > C = D > E | F > G ? H  can represent
preferences (>),
equal preferences (=), approval cut-off (|) and "don't know, don't care"
opinions (?).
I am more interested in multiple winner methods. First I tried to show
how to generalize
single winner methods to produce proportional residual approval weights.
Then, I
used that extension of IRV to produce an electoral system proportional
(with no quota),
preferential, with no geographical bias and with a stability garantee:
my pet system SPPA.

I fight to get governements use a leadership run method to elect their
electoral system (near
what British-Columbia is doing now...)

I am impressed with the number of languages spoken by Olli, and used to
some EM members
childlike behaviors from which I do not read all mails (their loss).
I hope everyone gets results in their country and hope you have fun,

Stéphane Rouillon.