[EM] Classical music countdown balloting

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi Joe,

I'm curious: what do you think the best voting system would be for
WQXR's purposes?

Rob

On Fri, Dec 5, 2025 at 6:52 PM Joseph Malkevitch via Election-Methods <
election-methods at lists.electorama.com> wrote:

> For the last several years the classical music station in the New York
> City area WQXR  (which can also be listened to via the Internet) asks
> listers to vote, this year, for up to 5 pieces of music. The votes are
> tabulated and the pieces are played  starting somewhat earlier than New
> Year's Eve, counting down to the start of the new year with the most voted
> for piece being played just before the new year starts, New York time.
> Votes are tied to email addresses and a person is supposed to submit only
> one ballot. Instructions for this year's countdown appear at the link below
> including the suggestion that one pick as your 5th choice something
> outside your box.
>
> https://www.wqxr.org/classical-countdown-2025/
>
> Lists of pieces played in previous can be found via an Internet search.
>
> Presumably the goal here is to get large numbers of listeners to the
> station in the period running up to the new year but individual people may
> be interested in learning about appealing music that other like minded
> people find worthwhile to know about and listen to. Newcomers to this kind
> of music may find this a venue to learn about people who made important
> contributions to this kind of music. Certainly if one has never listened to
> the music of Franz Joseph Haydn, one has  missed out but Haydn
> wrote so much fascinating music that voters who vote for one valued piece
> may scatter votes for Haydn's music so that none of his music gets played.
> Looking at past results some pieces of an "obscure" nature appear that it
> seems possible that there was a coordinated effort by some person/group to
> vote for a truly not "broadly" popular piece.
>
> I think there are some interesting issues in designing a voting scheme
> (ballot/decision method") here depending on the goal one hopes to achieve.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Joe
>
> ——————————————
> Joseph Malkevitch
>
> Email:
> jmalkevitch at york.cuny.edu
> Web page:
> http://york.cuny.edu/~malk/
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>
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