[EM] On Naming and Advocacy

[bql at bolson.org]

"free voting" does indeed have nice connotations in the free-as-in-freedom 
way. Free can also mean unrestricted and unregulated and someone specially 
cynical might take that to mean we're free to stuff the ballot box. :-/

Outside this list, I've been plugging "rankings and ratings ballots" as 
the generic label for the issue. I deliberately want to leave the back-end 
counting method vague due to the IRV - the world feud. Also, describing 
the voter-interface is sometimes the simplest elevator speech to give 
someone about what they can do with the new improved way to vote.

Virtual Round Robin vs. Instant Round Robin vs. Condorcet. IRR is too 
close to IRV and may lead to confusion. I suppose that's a desirable trait 
if you want to play on the credibility that IRV has in some places, but I 
don't want that. I haven't seen "IRR" in usage, but I may be missing a 
proper tour of the election methods canonical literature. Either way I 
think we should promote usage of a descriptive name over the 
dead-french-guy name.

Anyway, I had a chat with someone at my state legislator's office today 
and got the first draft in. Wish me luck, and in 1-3 years California will 
have this stuff. :-)

Brian Olson
http://bolson.org/