[EM] Classical music countdown balloting

[Joseph Malkevitch]

Dear Rob,

My guess is WQXR only cares about maximizing its contribution income. From this perspective having a ballot with 5 choices and selecting winners via plurality may be a good choice. They could probably increase 5 to a bigger number but there is the issue of tallying the ballots.

Regards,

Joe

________________________________
From: Rob Lanphier <roblan at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2025 4:09 PM
To: Joseph Malkevitch <jmalkevitch at york.cuny.edu>
Cc: Election Methods Mailing List <election-methods at electorama.com>
Subject: Re: [EM] Classical music countdown balloting


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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<mailto: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/<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.wqxr.org/classical-countdown-2025/__;!!MoI8UrBbVg!41yVZpXr-yBJq5trcWsnUM5MkYeOfQYAwLCg3MizrAGjWuuDry7Bjmk6CnAZRxeHhfwdYD49Ad1tQ_eCXhGndg$>

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<mailto:jmalkevitch at york.cuny.edu>
Web page:
http://york.cuny.edu/~malk/
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