[EM] Re: electionmethods website is cancelled

[Dave Ketchum]

We NEED a committee.

Seems like it will need to appoint itself, for it NEEDS:
      To sort out keeping Election Methods alive and continuing to be useful.
      I see Russ and Mike as not qualified to be committee members.
      Russ offers a statement as witness below.

Assuming the committee agrees with Russ' statement:
      Ask Russ to continue maintaining Election Methods.
      Provide for review of any proposed updates to the site - almost 
certainly even the best of us should not be doing such updating alone.
      Keep Russ and Mike out of each other's hair.

Notes:
      I understand Russ mentioning 9/11 in his witness statement, and have 
STRONG opinions of my own on that topic.  However, the business of EM is 
elections and extraneous material should not normally sneak in.
      I see good words about Condorcet, and feel we need better words to 
successfully move ahead.
      I see PR mentioned.  I see EM saying nothing about PR beyond it 
having possible utility, with others elsewhere exploring whether it is 
worth doing and, if so, how.

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 19:19:21 -0800 Russ Paielli wrote:

> Dear EM subscribers,
> 
> I just joined this list to reply to a post regarding me and my website 
> http://ElectionMethods.org. Some of this post may be off-topic, but I am 
> replying to a post that went off-topic regarding me, so I feel that I 
> should have an opportunity to reply. [I haven't figured out how to reply 
> directly to a message in the archives, so I am initiating a new message.]
> 
> Several years ago I found Mike O. on the web, and I emailed him with a 
> question about IRV and why he opposes it. We had some correspondence, 
> and he persuaded me that IRV is not what it is cracked up to be. I was 
> impressed with Mike's knowledge, intelligence, and dedication to this 
> important topic, so a few months later I proposed that we set up a 
> website on the topic. He would be the "domain expert" and I would be the 
> webmaster and editor/writer. He agreed, and ElectionMethods.org was born.
> 
> I realized very early that he and I were on opposite sides of the 
> political spectrum. However, I figured that we should keep partisan 
> politics and ideology completely off the site anyway, so I figured we 
> could "agree to disagree" on politics. We consciously avoided discussing 
> politics, and we got along well with regard to the content of the 
> website. I thought it was actually a testament to the website that two 
> individuals of opposite political persuation could cooperate so 
> harmoniously on a website about something so fundamental to democracy.
> 
> Well, it couldn't last forever. I don't remember exactly when it 
> happened, but a few months ago we started talking politics. Not just 
> "garden variety" politics, mind you, but really bizarre stuff. Mike put 
> forth the notion that the Bush Administration was behind the 9/11 attacks.
> 
> At first I thought Mike was suggesting that Bush had merely "allowed" 
> the attack to occur because he thought it would help him politically. I 
>  didn't think that was likely, but I was willing to consider the 
> possibility. I then soon realized that Mike believed more than that. He 
> believes that Bush or his aids actively organized the attacks. He also 
> believes, for example, that the WTC was wired with explosives that were 
> detonated on cue to make the WTC collapse.
> 
> Wait, that's not all. Mike is convinced that that a US missile, rather 
> than an airplane, hit the Pentagon. Why? Because he read a book by a 
> Theologian that says the hole in the Pentagon was too small for the 
> airplane to have penetrated, and not much of the airplane was left 
> outside the wall. I referred him to sites that debunk this claim, and I 
> told him that most of the airplane probably just burned up in the 
> massive fire, but his belief was unshakable. When I asked him where the 
> airplane (and the people in it) went if it didn't hit the Pentagon, he 
> said it could have simply flew out over the ocean and ditched.
> 
> I told Mike that such a massive conspiracy would not only be incredibly 
> risky, but any net benefit to Bush was highly questionable. Had Bush 
> been caught in such an act, not only would he be hung by the gonads, but 
> the Republicans could plan to be out of power for the next 50 years! 
> Beyond that, the attacks took something like $1,000,000,000,000 (that's 
> a lot of zero, folks!) out of the US economy, which severely damaged the 
> economy and nearly cost Bush the election. Yes, Bush did gain some 
> political "capital" as a result of the attacks, but the downside to the 
> economy was huge, and presidential elections are usually a referendum on 
> the economy. But I digress.
> 
> Well, at that point I started to wonder what sort of person I had hooked 
> up with, but I decided to just ignore it and keep the website as is. 
> Then we started talking about the war in Iraq. Now, I respectfully 
> disagree with the position that the war is unjustified and too costly in 
> terms of lives and dollars, but I have no respect for the notion that 
> the US is in it for purely immoral, "imperialistic" reasons. Guess what 
> Mike believes. He believes that the people of Iraq would be better off 
> with Saddam still in power. He also thinks that the US is torturing 
> Iraqis as bad or worse than Saddam and his regime ever did. And 
> apparently Mike's committment to democracy doesn't extend to the Iraqi 
> people. I guess he thinks they have a "right" to live under the thumb of 
> a murderous tyrant who gets 99.96% of the vote (and the other 0.04% are 
> tortured to death).
> 
> But even that wasn't enough to end our collaboration on the website. It 
> turns out that Mike is also convinced that Bush stole the 2004 election 
> by means of rigged voting equipment with no paper trail. Now, I agree 
> completely with him that we need paper ballots, and I even wrote an 
> article at the website about it that has been there for years. 
> Furthermore, I am even willing to consider evidence that the machines 
> were rigged. But I was absolutely amazed that Mike is certain it 
> happened when even the Democrats aren't making that claim. That was the 
> straw that made me realize what sort of person I was dealing with.
> 
> Mike and I had some nasty email exchanges. (I have only met him once in 
> person, by the way, and it was years ago.) I got frustrated with his 
> apparent lack of connection with reality, and I wrote some really nasty 
> things to him and about him. I probably shouldn't have written those 
> things, but I am not apologizing -- at least not yet.
> 
> Things got really nasty when Mike ordered me to "take down the website" 
> or, as he put it in his post to this group,
> 
> "I've asked Russ to either take down his website, or at least remove 
> from it my articles, and anything there that has its origin in any 
> suggestions or comments that I'd sent to Russ."
> 
> Well, Mike does not have the authority, either legal or moral, to order 
> me to take down the website that I spent so much time developing. The 
> website was my idea to start with, I own the domain, I wrote most of the 
> material, and we certainly had no agreement that the site would "come 
> down" as soon as he demanded it.
> 
> Also, the notion that I have no right to use any ideas I got from him is 
> delusional. Because I learned about the deficiencies of IRV from him, 
> does that gives him the legal or moral right to silence me on the 
> matter? Of course not. But he apparently thinks it does. Then again, 
> what would you expect from someone who believes ...
> 
> I think I have the right to leave the site as is, with no changes 
> whatsoever. However, I told Mike that I would voluntarily remove the 
> highly technical stuff that he sent me, which I have done. I also gave 
> him the option of freezing the site as it appeared, with both our names, 
>  even though we can't stand each other anymore. I did this as a 
> voluntary gesture of fairness to him, but he scoffed at it and 
> childishly demanded once again that I remove everything that I had ever 
> learned from him on the subject. But I could have learned most of it 
> elsewhere, of course. Mike is hardly the only person in the world who 
> knows about the problems of IRV and the benefits of Approval voting.
> 
> He also wrote this in his earlier post to this group:
> 
> "Over the years, Russ's website has been an ongoing embarrassment on EM,
> because Russ has often reworded my definitions in a way that is 
> ambiguous or means something different from the wordings that I'd sent 
> to him."
> 
> This is gross distortion. Here's how it worked. Mike would send me his 
> definitions and other material, and I would edit them for readibility. 
> His text was often convoluted and garbled. I spent a lot of time 
> improving his text. Yes, there were a few times when I inadvertantly 
> changed the meaning of something. But I always asked for his approval. 
> Usually I would get his approval before posting, but sometimes I would 
> get a bit careless and post it first and ask him to review it on the 
> site. He was virtually always apprised of new postings and revisions. 
> His claim that I made significant revisions without his approval is 
> simply wrong.
> 
> This message is already very long, so I will leave it at that. That is 
> my side of the story. I don't intend to get into a long discussion about it.
> 
> Regards,
> Russ Paielli
> 
> http://RussP.org

-- 
  davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
            Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
                  If you want peace, work for justice.