[EM] Does anyone know who this person is?

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for highlighting this thread (and changing the subject line).
I want to reply to your last paragraph:

On Sun, Oct 24, 2021 at 5:51 PM Richard, the VoteFair guy
<electionmethods at votefair.org> wrote:
> I do not support Robert's use of inappropriate language.

I agree with you.  Verbally, I'm more than willing to use all of
George Carlin's "seven dirty words"
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_dirty_words> in ample quantity,
and I have a difficult time NOT using many of those words after I've
had enough alcohol.  I spent much of my early childhood listening to
George Carlin and hanging around auto mechanics who had NO PROBLEM
dropping any and all of those words around a six-year-old.  However,
if I were giving a talk to a political organization (e.g. the League
of Women Voters), I would refrain.  Even if I was friends with every
single person in the audience, I would avoid dropping the f-bomb,
because it's rare that foul language is politically persuasive.

When addressing this mailing list, I'd like everyone here to imagine
that they are writing words to be spoken at the podium pictured in
this event:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/297800594094453503/

Pretend you're the speaker after the person at the podium, addressing
the same audience.  In fact, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if
someone from that audience is reading this mailing list.  Let's all
use this mailing list as a way to practice not being a foul-mouthed
douchebag, okay?  :-)

> But I do agree
> there is lots of propaganda being presented on Reddit that is not backed
> up by a clear understanding of the "basics" of election-method reform.
> And I do see that lots of it is coming from fans of "cardinal" voting
> methods. Yet I don't see that support clearly expressed here on this forum.

I suspect that the consensus among frequent posters on this mailing
list is that the Condorcet Winner criterion is more important than
many of the things that die hard fans of "cardinal" methods insist
upon (like poorly-modeled notions of "utility"). Moreover, I suspect
that the /r/EndFPTP subreddit has greater readership than this mailing
list.  That's why before I wrote the email you are reading now, I
responded to /u/rb-j over on reddit (supporting his well-written
comment about justice over utility):
https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/qa1f2i/why_do_people_say_approval_voting_is_immune_to/hhy797b/?context=10000

I've appreciated that I can be proud of the 25+ years of archived
discussion of this mailing list:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/EM-list

There is a lot of great information in this archive.  The
"signal-to-noise" ratio has historically been very good.  Let's all
work to make sure that any email that any of us sends to this mailing
list is clear, concise and clean enough such that any of us would
cheerfully print out the unredacted email and physically mail it to
our respective representatives, without being embarrassed about
anything that was written.  And let's do that with our reddit comments
too.  Let us all use all of our online communication to win in the
court of public opinion.

Rob
p.s. at some point, I need to finish up writing a revised "Code of
Conduct" for this mailing list, using the "Bill of Responsibilities"
idea that I cooked up a while ago:
(<https://robla.miraheze.org/wiki/Bill_of_Responsibilities>).  To
everyone reading this mailing list: feel free to periodically pester
me about my progress on that.