- Election-software - hio.mailmanlists.us

Upcoming ElectoramaCall and ElectoramaNews for January
by Rob Lanphier 16 Jan '26

16 Jan '26

Hi everyone! In December, we had our first "ElectoramaCall" with leaders in the electoral-reform movement[1]. We're doing it again in January: [1]: https://electowiki.org/wiki/ElectoramaCall Our next call is happening on Wednesday, January 21 at 2pm Pacific time (22:00 UTC). As with last month, please RSVP by emailing me, or you may email "news(a)electorama.com" (a newly created email alias). You can also send email to "news(a)electorama.com" if you want to add something to the ElectoramaNews and you don't want to sign up for an electowiki account. But really, why wouldn't you want to sign up for an electowiki account? If you have paid attention to electowiki's "Recent Changes"[2], you would know that I'm drafting the ElectoramaNews for January on electowiki[3]: [2]: https://electowiki.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges [3]: https://electowiki.org/wiki/ElectoramaNews/2026-January I would love to have your help! Right now, I'm planning on doing a deeper look into the effort to pre-emptively ban RCV in Indiana, but that could change as the end of the month draws closer. I'm planning to publish the January newsletter in January, but we'll see how I feel when I grow tired of working on it and how quickly February approaches. Rob p.s. As of right now, news(a)electorama.com is just an alias for my email address, but I reserve the right to change that. p.p.s. There was a lot going on for me personally in December, but I'm hoping I'll have the time I'm hoping for to put together the January edition. p.p.p.s. If you have an electowiki account, but feel nervous making edits directly to the newsletter, just drop a comment on the talk page: [4]: https://electowiki.org/wiki/Talk:ElectoramaNews/2026-January

1 0

Electorama community on reddit alternative lemmy.world
by Rob Lanphier 03 Jan '26

03 Jan '26

Hi folks, As many of you know, /r/EndFPTP has become the de facto electoral-reform subreddit over on reddit. Many of you post here because you don't agree with the general consensus over at /r/EndFPTP, or maybe you got banned over there. Regardless, if you're interested in big online forums that aren't reddit to reach new folks, this email is for you! There's a reddit alternative that seems to have critical mass to talk politics/etc called "Lemmy". Lemmy is decentralized, but I believe that "lemmy.world" is the largest instance of Lemmy, so I created an electoral-reform community there (A "community" on Lemmy is a "subreddit" on reddit.): https://lemmy.world/c/electorama Note that I haven't promoted /c/electorama much yet, so it's pretty quiet right now. But I did at least post the ElectoramaNews to /c/politics on Lemmy.world and got a few upvotes: https://lemmy.world/post/41079275 Lemmy obviously doesn't have the reddit folks too worried, and Lemmy still has plenty of usability issues, but I think it stands a good chance of having its moment in the sun eventually. Regardless of whether it ever becomes even 0.01% as successful as reddit, there's a community of people over there that talk politics, and some of them may not know as much about the Condorcet criterion or monotonicity as they should. Even though it's a smaller audience, it's not nothing. Rob

1 0

ElectoramaNews published to reddit (and available in video form!)
by Rob Lanphier 31 Dec '25

31 Dec '25

Hi folks, With minutes (nay HOURS) remaining in 2025, the ElectoramaNews for December 2025 has been published to reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1q0ttty/first_edition_of_the_elec… I've also crossposted it to Electorama subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/electorama/comments/1q0tzjh/first_edition_of_the_e… One may (of course) read it on electowiki: https://electowiki.org/wiki/ElectoramaNews/2025-December ...or if you want to listen to me read it (or even WATCH me), see me over on the new "electorama" channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzsNd9DFaH4 Please let me know if there's anything timely you want to make sure gets included in the January edition! Rob

1 0

The ElectionNews draft newsletter
by Rob Lanphier 29 Dec '25

29 Dec '25

Hi folks, Before I blast this out to a wider audience, I'd like to send my draft to this mailing list. It's included below and at the following link: https://electowiki.org/wiki/ElectoramaNews/2025-December I haven't summarized what's been going on on the EM list, which maybe we should. What does everyone thing the most notable discussions have been this month? This year? Rob --------- Happy holidays, y'all! This is the first (and maybe only) version of the *ElectoramaNews*, covering December 2025. Actually, since this is the first edition, this may end up becoming a "year-in-review" newsletter. The newsletter hasn't yet been published (as of 2025-12-05), so it's difficult to say what will be in here. This issue of *ElectoramaNews* provides a basic outline for future newsletters, while sprinkling in some of the news from December 2025. It mainly focuses on online conversations; future editions will hopefully focus more on movement progress. This edition highlights the "ElectoramaCall <https://electowiki.org/wiki/ElectoramaCall>", a new monthly video call. It also provides a summary of every post to the /r/EndFPTP <https://reddit.com/r/EndFPTP> subreddit in December. Other forums may get more coverage as activity picks up on each of them. Section01 -- Main feature: the "ElectoramaCall" User:RobLa <https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa> hosted a video call (the "ElectoramaCall <https://electowiki.org/wiki/ElectoramaCall>") on December 17 with leaders in the electoral-reform space. One product of that conversation was a goal to publish a monthly newsletter. We also resolved to have monthly conversations, which are currently slated for a similar time each month (more on that in a bit). The discussion (at first) was intended to have conversations similar to those in Sass's Open Democracy Discussion <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Sass_Open_Democracy_Discussion>, but at a different time of day. Sass's call sometimes enjoys the attendance of an Australian or two, which is easier to imagine when it's noon in Sydney than it is for Europeans attending when it's well past midnight in Paris. However, timezone differences aren't the only reason why some folks hope we have a regular call. There have frequently been debates between the "cardinal camp" (folks that like approval voting <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Approval_voting>, range/score voting <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Score_voting>, and STAR voting <https://electowiki.org/wiki/STAR_voting>) and the "ordinal camp" (folks that advocate for systems that work best with a ranked ballot, like instant-runoff voting <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting> and Condorcet methods <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Condorcet_method>). Many folks in these two camps are deeply disrespectful of folks in the opposing camp, which is something that might get incrementally better if the two camps have mutually respectful discussions with one another on a regular basis. If you would like to join the January call (slated for Wednesday, January 21 at 2pm Pacific Time), please RSVP to User:RobLa <https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa>, and he will add you to the meeting invitation. Section02 -- reddit EndFPTP update the /r/EndFPTP subreddit on reddit.com <https://reddit.com/r/EndFPTP> is a very active forum for discussing electoral reform, and frequent posters seem to come from all quarters of the reform movement (both the cardinal camp and the ordinal camp post here). Below Is a list of some of the posts on EndFPTP. As of this writing on December 14, it is a mostly unedited collection of posts pulled from reddit using a vibecoded script along with some haphazard manual coalition and adaptation to MediaWiki format. There are likely gaps in the coverage due to when and how RobLa <https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa> ran the script. - 2025-12-28 14:34:06 [a000] - title: *I built an Agent-Based Model in Python to simulate how Electoral Systems influence Separatism and Civil War risk. Here are the results. (I need you to find the reason for close pr stv)* - body: If you disagree with this conclusion, I’d really appreciate specific, actionable critique: please point out exactly where you think the model breaks—whether it’s in the assumptions, the metric/formula, or the input data. I’m happy to revise the analysis i… ([[1] <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pxsqls%7Cfullbodylen=8929> ]) - user: [[2] <https://reddit.com/u/mercurygermes%7C/u/mercurygermes>]; score: 9 - url: https://i.redd.it/9uthbcu9hy9g1.png - 2 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pxsqls - 2025-12-23 21:47:49 [a001] - title: *Idea: Lazy MMP* - body: Probably not the best name for this system. I’m also pretty sure somewhere already uses/used something like this, but I couldn’t track down where I saw it. Whether it even qualifies as lazy is a question in itself. The system (which can be implemented in … ([[3] <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pu63jn%7Cfullbodylen=1343> ]) - user: [[4] <https://reddit.com/u/Additional-Kick-307%7C/u/Additional-Kick-307>]; score: 1 - url: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pu63jn/idea_lazy_mmp/ - 3 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pu63jn - 2025-12-22 20:19:47 [a002] - title: *Idea: A framework to convert any single-winner method into PR?* - body: After learning about Sequential Monroe voting <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Sequential_Monroe_voting>, I think I’ve came up with a general framework that can theoretically turn any single-winner method (let’s call it *Method X*) into a multi-winner prop… ([[5] <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pt9u3t%7Cfullbodylen=1702> ]) - user: [[6] <https://reddit.com/u/No-Vast7006%7C/u/No-Vast7006>]; score: 1 - url: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pt9u3t/idea_a_framework_to_conve… - 15 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pt9u3t - 2025-12-19 22:28:40 [a003] - title: *Fairness of STV when parties run multiple candidates ?* - body: Edit: thank you to Pantherkittysoftware who pointed me towards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPO-STV which is a system designed to overcome some of the problems I talked about, specifically how STV may result in lone ‘maverick’ candidates being eliminat… ([[7] <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pqyaha%7Cfullbodylen=2674> ]) - user: [[8] <https://reddit.com/u/ravencrowed%7C/u/ravencrowed>]; score: 2 - url: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pqyaha/fairness_of_stv_when_part… - 49 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pqyaha - 2025-12-17 11:44:12 [a004] - title: *My Framework for Electoral Design: Internalize Political Externalities* - body: I believe in the power of the *“invisible hand”*: in many cases, dispersed self-interest can be steered—through institutions and incentives—toward socially efficient outcomes. But this belief has a hard precondition: **external costs must be internalize… ([[9] <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pouhxm%7Cfullbodylen=8959> ]) - user: [[10] <https://reddit.com/u/Previous_Word_3517%7C/u/Previous_Word_3517>]; score: 1 - url: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pouhxm/my_framework_for_electora… - 7 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pouhxm - 2025-12-12 20:40:49 - title: *Utah SD 11 Special Approval Voting Results* - body: Some pretty interesting results. Average of 1.74 candidates approved. In addition, it seems like there were no two clear “frontrunners,” and the winner got close to 50% while having a lead over others, making the results showcase a similar approval for al… ( fullbodylen=300 <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pl2k48>) - user: /u/Ibozz91 <https://reddit.com/u/Ibozz91>; score: 24 - url: https://i.redd.it/9ag1zbos3u6g1.png - 11 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pl2k48 - 2025-12-11 16:57:51 - title: *From Texas Gridlock to Utah’s Blueprint: A Tale of Two States and Redistricting Reform* - user: /u/ILikeNeurons <https://reddit.com/u/ILikeNeurons>; score: 4 - url: https://electionscience.org/newsroom/from-texas-gridlock-to-utah%E2%80%99s-… - 1 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pk2m70 - 2025-12-10 22:27:43 - title: *Expert committees purged by low voter turnout* - body: I’ve been working on a thought experiment that uses a novel voting mechanism for accountability. The core mechanic is that expert committees are automatically replaced if a specific measure of public trust falls below a threshold. I’m posting here because… (fullbodylen=1552 <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pjgm4o>) - user: /u/Agitates <https://reddit.com/u/Agitates>; score: 0 - url: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pjgm4o/expert_committees_purged_… - 3 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pjgm4o - 2025-12-10 21:34:39 - title: *Condorcet Cycle in the wild - 2021 Minneapolis City Council Ward 2* - user: /u/Antagonist_ <https://reddit.com/u/Antagonist_>; score: 18 - url: https://ranked.vote/report/us/mn/2021/11/ward-2 - 32 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pjfaax - 2025-12-10 20:23:23 - title: *Is there a better way to market Condorcet-IRV hybrids than just saying Condorcet IRV?* - body: I know IRV is also known as Ranked Choice Voting, but what about Condorcet? Or Smith? Or Woodall, Benham, TidemanAlt etc? How would we name them as household names? My guess is to name them “Top Cycle Ranked Choice Voting” but that’s too long. Doesnt soun… (fullbodylen=863 <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pjdg8w>) - user: /u/SidTheShuckle <https://reddit.com/u/SidTheShuckle>; score: 8 - url: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pjdg8w/is_there_a_better_way_to_… - 37 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pjdg8w - 2025-12-10 16:54:43 - title: *Schwarzenegger blasts redistricting ‘war’* - body: He kinda pointed out yhe problem eith FPTP - user: /u/SamsonOccom <https://reddit.com/u/SamsonOccom>; score: 2 - url: https://youtube.com/shorts/72FxgVVmo_I?si=Wg43fClFSOruASVR - 3 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pj7q8n - 2025-12-09 22:59:40 - title: *Shaky political “science” misses mark on ranked choice voting* - body: In this study, co-author Paul Haughey and I assess the quality and credibility of 41 different studies on RCV. We note a disturbing pattern. A number of misleading studies, including by well-known political scientists, fall well short of real “science.” … ( fullbodylen=888 <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pim4fq>) - user: /u/DemocracyWorks1776 <https://reddit.com/u/DemocracyWorks1776>; score: 5 - url: https://open.substack.com/pub/democracysos/p/shaky-political-science-misses… - 4 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pim4fq - 2025-12-06 07:39:42 - title: *Economist article on FPTP: “Britain’s slot-machine politics”* - body: The article is fairly critical of FPTP, focusing on how things get random when you have multiple parties. That’s just one of many criticisms of FPTP, obviously, but a good sign when a newspaper like The Economist is writing articles like this. Behind a p… (fullbodylen=3019 <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pfjkgz>) - user: /u/Dystopiaian <https://reddit.com/u/Dystopiaian>; score: 18 - url: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/12/04/britains-slot-machine-politics - 7 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pfjkgz - 2025-12-04 04:05:45 - title: *Score Then Automatic Runoff (STAR) Voting Used For First Time In Election For Public Office to Elect Astoria City Council Member!* - body: “On Monday, city councilors interviewed Conklin and the other applicants during a public meeting. The councilors listened to public comments from attendees and then used a “score then automatic runoff” (or STAR) voting system to narrow the field to the to… (fullbodylen=520 <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pdq6h5>) - user: /u/Stunning_Walrus6276 <https://reddit.com/u/Stunning_Walrus6276>; score: 49 - url: https://mailchi.mp/equal.vote/star-elects-astoria-city-councilor - 3 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pdq6h5 - 2025-12-03 13:46:36 - title: *Ranked choice voting outperforms the winner-take-all system used to elect nearly every US politician* - body: When it comes to how palatable a different voting system is, how does RCV fair compared to other types? I sometimes have a hard time wrapping my head around all the technical terms I see in this sub, but it makes me wonder if other types of voting could r… (fullbodylen=360 <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pd4la9>) - user: /u/12lbTurkey <https://reddit.com/u/12lbTurkey>; score: 140 - url: https://theconversation.com/ranked-choice-voting-outperforms-the-winner-tak… - 138 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pd4la9 - 2025-12-03 02:19:15 - title: *How do I refute the argument that Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem and the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem prove electoral systems are the “worst” system?* - body: The person I’m debating claims that *Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem* and the *Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem* prove that electoral systems are mathematically broken and therefore are the worst possible way to govern. His proposed solution is a system w… (fullbodylen=6562 <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pcrys8>) - user: /u/No-Vast7006 <https://reddit.com/u/No-Vast7006>; score: 7 - url: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pcrys8/how_do_i_refute_the_argum… - 30 comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1pcrys8 Section03 -- Voting Theory Forum update The Voting Theory Forum is a popular watering hole for many folks in the electoral-reform. The activity on this website seems to have simmered down from it's early days (in 2020 and 2021), but there are still frequently notable discussions here. - URLs: - https://VotingTheory.org <https://votingtheory.org/> - News: - (ADD HERE) Section04 -- Center for Election Science updates This newsletter intends to track the major electoral-reform organizations, and the Center for Election Science <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Center_for_Election_Science> (CES) is one of them. CES is largely focused on approval voting as their preferred method, but they support other reforms. One can presumably follow the latest things going on with them by following them on Twitterx.com <https://x.com/electionscience> or by consulting their "Newsroom" <https://electionscience.org/newsroom>. - URLs for approval-voting organizations: - https://electionscience.org - News: - Utah The last thing they mention in their "Newsroom" (as of December 15) is the use of approval voting in Utah <https://electionscience.org/newsroom/from-texas-gridlock-to-utah%E2%80%99s-…> . - Colorado - Manny Rutenel - Maryland - Reintroducing legislation for 2026 - NAACP's call for voting reform that includes RCV/IRV and Approval Voting: - https://naacp.org/resources/states-voting-rights-act Section05 -- FairVote updates Of course, if we're going to talk about big organizations in electoral reform, we have to talk about FairVote <https://electowiki.org/wiki/FairVote>. They also have an x.com profile <https://x.com/fairvote> and a "newsroom" of sorts, from which the latest thing (as of December 15) is an editorial about gerrymandering <https://fairvote.org/why-im-hopeful-about-democracy/> and asserts "*We can end gerrymandering. We can create a nation where every district is a swing district.*" - URLs for RCV/IRV organizations: - https://fairvote.org - News: - ADD HERE Section06 -- Equal Vote Coalition/STAR Action updates The big news for the Equal Vote Coalition <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Equal_Vote_Coalition> and STAR Action is the news from Astoria <https://x.com/5starvoting/status/1997391859983761663>. The EVC/STAR folks have not one but two x.com accounts they post things to: @5starvoting <https://x.com/5starvoting> and @TheEqualVote <https://x.com/TheEqualVote>. - URLs for EVC/STAR organizations: - https://equal.vote - https://www.starvoting.org/ - News: website launches in 2025 - https://bettervoting.com - https://realrcv.equal.vote/ Section07 -- Better Choices for Democracy Better Choices for Democracy <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Better_Choices_for_Democracy> is a new organization that officially launhed in November 2025. They are focused on Condorcet methods <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Condorcet_method>; specifically, what they call "Consensus Choice Voting". The latest news from the BCD newsroom <https://betterchoices.vote/news> is a video editorial from University of Maryland Professor Eric Pacuit titled "*Consensus Choice Explained: Head-to-Head Voting vs Plurality & Ranked Choice <https://www.betterchoices.vote/news/same-voters-different-winners-why-rules…>* ". - URLs - https://betterchoices.vote - News: BCD has launched a new web app for conducting online polls: - https://ccv-app.netlify.app/ Section08 -- Wikipedia updates There has been a lot of editing happening on election-method articles and adjacent articles on English Wikipedia. Here's a few feeds that one can look at to see some of the latest changes: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Electora… - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Psepholo… - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Voting_t… - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChangesLinked/Template:Voting_c… - section08-item01 - (ADD HERE) Section09 -- Electorama/electowiki/EM/ES/abif electowiki <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Electowiki> is still the most prominent wiki associated with electoral reform that User:RobLa <https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa> knows about (other than English Wikipedia <https://electowiki.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia>). Looking at the RecentChanges feed for electowiki <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges>, it would seem that User:RobLa <https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa> has been the most active editor in December (as of December 15), but User:Dr. Edmonds <https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:Dr._Edmonds> made some changes to the Sequentially Shrinking Quota <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Sequentially_Shrinking_Quota> article. Back in November, User:Kristomun <https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:Kristomun> and User:Dr. Edmonds <https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:Dr._Edmonds> were more active than User:RobLa <https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa>, with changes to the "Sequentially Spent Score <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Sequentially_Spent_Score>" article and the "Kotze-Pereira transformation <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Kotze-Pereira_transformation>" article, among others. Also, User:RodCrosby <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/RodCrosby> resumed work on their QPR2 article <https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RodCrosby/QPR2>. The election-methods mailing list <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Election-methods_mailing_list> (a.k.a. the "EM list") has seen modest activity in November and December: - November: - http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2025-… - December: - http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2025-… The election-software mailing list <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Election-software_mailing_list> (a.k.a. the "ES list") has been pretty quiet, other than User:RobLa <https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa>'s promotion of the "Electorama Call <https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa/Electorama_call>" happening on December 17. Activity on ABIF <https://electowiki.org/wiki/ABIF>, abiftool <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Abiftool>, and the ABIF Web Tool (awt) <https://electowiki.org/wiki/ABIF_Web_Tool> has been relatively quiet, though there was a little performance/caching work on awt in November <https://github.com/electorama/awt/commit/1ca34c24c212dbc4cdc04d813ca76be64a…> . - section09-item01 - (ADD HERE) Section10 -- additional items/other orgs - Orgs - Secure Internet Voting (https://siv.org) - Respect Voters Coalition (https://respectvoters.org) - Misc links submitted during ElectoramaCall <https://electowiki.org/wiki/ElectoramaCall> in December 2025: - Robert Bristow-Johnson's submitted paper for *Constitutional Political Economy*: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jIhFQfEoxSdyRz5SqEjZotbVDx4xshwM/view - One page primer (talking points) on "precinct summability <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Precinct_summability>": https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YtejO54DSOFRkHBGryS9pbKcBM7u1jTS/view - 2022 Letter to Governor Phil Scott of Vermont about H.744 from 2021: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Niss1nWjbsb63rPeKTKLT7S2KVDZIo7G/view - Templates for plausible legislative language implementing Ranked-Choice Voting: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DGvs2F_YoKcbl2SXzCcfm3nEMkO0zCbR/view - Partha Dasgupta and Eric Maskin 2004 *Scientific American* article "The Fairest Vote of All": https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m6qn6Y7PAQldKNeIH2Tal6AizF7XY2U4/view - Articles regarding the Alaska RCV election in August 2022 that suffered a similar majority failure: https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2024/WorkGroups/House%20Governmen… - Benham's method <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Benham%27s_method> - Text for tabled bill in Vermont: https://legislature.vermont.gov/bill/status/2024/H.424 - News - (ADD HERE)

1 0

The "Electorama Call" and "ElectoramaNews"
by Rob Lanphier 16 Dec '25

16 Dec '25

Hi everyone! Last week, I announced the "Electorama Call" that is coming this Wednesday: https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa/Electorama_call I didn't get a huge response, but I really like the responses I did get. I would gladly have a weekly (or monthly, or whatever) conversation with all of the folks who have responded so far. To be clear, by RSVP'ing, you're only signing up to join December 17, and I can't imagine that everyone who has signed up for Wednesday will want to join very frequently, but one can hope! As some of you know, I'm a frequent participant in Sass's "Open Democracy Discussion", which is held every Tuesday evening at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific: https://democracydiscussion.com My initial fear was that a second periodic call would end up being a clone of Sass's ODD call. As I've noted earlier on this list, I've started drafting "ElectoramaNews", which I'm hoping I can get around to publishing at least monthly. The December edition is still being drafted here: https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa/ElectoramaNews/2025-December It may be that future editions will basically be lightly edited minutes from a monthly/weekly/whatever "Electorama Call" (or "ElectoramaCall"). TBD. Having a newsletter goal will differentiate from Sass's ODD call on Tuesday afternoons. I'm likely to be a very different moderator than Sass is on their calls. Anyway, to RSVP to the "Electorama Call": please email me personally. The call is going to be on Wednesday, December 17 at 5pm Eastern/2pm Pacific. When you send me email, I'll invite you to the Google Calendar event for the meeting, which will have the link to the video call. If you think you've RSVP'd already but haven't gotten an email from Google Calendar (and especially if the event doesn't show on your calendar) send me an email and I'll make sure you're on the invite list and you get the URL for the meeting. Rob p.s. those of you that are joining the Electorama Call, please join the Electorama Discord, which will be a great place to get my attention if you're having trouble getting on the call: https://electorama.com/discord

1 0

The first (only?) Electorama call: December 17
by Rob Lanphier 03 Dec '25

03 Dec '25

Hi folks, If you closely follow this list (either the EM list or the ES list), you may remember that I somewhat reluctantly suggested a periodic call for electoral-reform advocates that is vaguely neutral with regards to the food fights we frequently have about election methods, but may have a slight bias toward believing the Condorcet winner criterion is very important (if not paramount) among election method criteria. See below for my October message on the subject (both to EM and to ES): - EM: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2025-… - ES: https://hio.mailmanlists.us/archives/list/election-software@hio.mailmanlist… After I sent that message to both lists, there wasn't much of a response. Per the conversation several of us had today in a different video call, I'm going to host my first "Electorama!" call on Wednesday, December 17 at 2pm Pacific Standard Time, barring unforeseen complications or last minute rescheduling. Please learn more about how to RSVP and what next steps are here: https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa/Electorama_call Rob

2 2

Another electoral community call? (the "Electorama call")?
by Rob Lanphier 14 Oct '25

14 Oct '25

Hi folks, As some of you may know, I've been hosting a monthly "office hours" call every Tuesday at 2pm Pacific: https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa/Tuesday_at_2 It's often a small crowd and seldom more than show up for Sass's weekly call: https://electowiki.org/wiki/Sass_Open_Democracy_Discussion One semi-regular attendee at my monthly call is Kristofer Musterhjelm, though he's not the only electoral-reform person who has dropped by. The conversation on my call frequently gets DEEP in the weeds with respect to oddball corner cases when elections can go off the rails (as well as the interplay between geography and democracy, and other math-y/computer-y topics). It also sometimes ends up being a bit of a gossip session about the various people in the electoral reform movement, though I sometimes feel guilty for letting it go that way. Sometimes. Anyway, things can get a little awkward when alumni from Wikimedia Foundation or other former co-workers and friends/family of mine show up, because I can suddenly lose interest in talking about electoral.reform stuff (especially if it's someone I haven't seen in a while). Folks that I know from electoral reform stuff frequently want to talk about mathematical concepts that I barely understand, let alone my friends who haven't been mildly aware of many of these concepts for the past 30+ years. Also, Kristofer (and probably other Europeans) would like a time for the call that doesn't involve staying up until way-too-late to attend. My "Tuesday at 2" time was chosen because it VERY VAGUELY works for folks in western Europe, the US west coast, and Australia (among others), but rumor has it the globe is spherical, and there are times that suck for some folks in the global electoral community. Who knew? I see the community of folks that subscribe to this list (who I'll refer to as the "Electorama community") as the target audience for this call. Kristofer is less cardinal-tolerant than I am, and thus also doesn't want to stay up until 3am to talk to folks who tend to be biased toward cardinal methods (as many folks on Sass's call are). Though I find STAR to be an acceptable (even "very good") reform, Condorcet methods are my first love, and I find myself "flipping the idiot bit" on people who make specious arguments against Condorcet tallying (even if I don't say so out loud). Given how much many cardinal advocates like to hear the sound of their own voice and how often they make said specious arguments (mistaking "assertiveness" for "correctness"), I find myself frequently biting my tongue/stepping away from the keyboard when I read/hear their arguments. I've been promising Kristofer I'd send this email for weeks if not months now. I've been dragging my feet because I'm ambivalent about having another periodic call that I feel semi-obligated to attend. I'm hoping if we have another call, it'll be complementary to Sass's weekly call (not explicitly competitive to it). I'm not sure if the Electorama call should be weekly, fortnightly, monthly or some other time increment. For now, let's assume this will be fortnightly (i.e. every other week), but let's use when2meet to come to initial consensus: https://www.when2meet.com/?32866470-TyG8q Note that the host (me, for now) gets to choose the time, regardless what the vote on when2meet is. I've created a temporary electowiki page here for this call: https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa/Electorama_call If you're interested in joining this call, please let your opinion be known at the when2meet link above. when2meet is optimized for weekly meetings, but this is only a straw to get vague availability for everyone. I was very liberal about the times I said that I'm available, but I imagine if the group consensus seems to be at an awful time for me, I may ask someone else to host the call. We can use the "Talk:" page for the "User:RobLa/Electorama_call" page to discuss whether this should be weekly, fortnightly, or monthly. TIA! Rob

2 1

Updates to abif.electorama.com
by Rob Lanphier 19 Aug '25

19 Aug '25

Hi folks I pushed out many updates to https://abif.electorama.com late last night, and it's becoming a lot of fun to use. Some big changes: * Tabbed interface to switch between election methods on any given election * I've added approval voting * it is MUCH easier to just browse tags to find various elections now. I haven't added many new elections, but you may not have noticed many of the elections that were already there before, since the tag navigation was so bad. I did add one notable election: the NYC Democratic Party mayoral race of 2025: https://abif.electorama.com/id/NYC2025-Mayor-Primary-Dem Interestingly, by my count, it would seem that Andrew Cuomo lost in pairwise comparisons to THREE candidates (not just Zohran Mamdani). The November general election is going to be interesting.... The latest version of abif.electorama.com supports approval voting. An interesting bit: it converts ranked ballots to approval ballots. The algorithm uses a funky way of approximating reasonable-ish voter behavior extrapolated from their rankings, which I call the "favorite_viable_half" algorithm: find the candidate with the most first preferences and then determine the minimum number of figurative seats that would need to be open in order for the candidate to exceed the Hare quota with the given first-prefs (an estimate of viable candidates). Assume then that all candidates that the voter ranks above their respective quota of viable candidates are approved, and any ranked below their least favorite in their quota was not approved. Their quota: half of the viable candidates, rounded up. Of course, if they don't rank a candidate, then that candidate isn't approved. Since there isn't a jurisdiction (yet, that I know of) that allows voters to draw an approval line, the algorithm above is my best guess at where they would draw the line between approved and not-approved candidates. In the examples that I've looked at, it intuitively seems rational. For example, let's look at the 2024 SF mayoral race: https://abif.electorama.com/id/sf2024-mayor/approval#approval By the favorite_viable_half algorithm, Daniel Lurie (the winner of the RCV/IRV election) gets 50.1% approval. London Breed (the runner-up incumbent) gets 42.2% approval. That roughly matches what their pre-election approval ratings were, based on my cursory research. Breed had 55% disapproval and 40% approval before the election. It wouldn't be surprising if she netted the 2% difference in the voting booth because voters didn't approve of any of the dozen other candidates running against her. That 42.2% approval is an informed approximation; there were more voters that ranked Breed, but only 42.2% ranked her as one of their two-two favorite viable candidates (of the approximately 4 viable candidates in the election). The media here in SF had a tough time deciding if 4 or 5 of the 13 candidates were viable. The first publicized mayoral debate had 5 candidates, and the remaining debates had 4 candidates. Speaking as a voter who was asked to rank 13 candidates, I say to all y'all who are jealous: be careful what you wish for. The update to abif.electorama.com is all part of the upcoming 0.33 release of abiftool and awt. abiftool is the command-line tool for viewing/analyzing elections (and converting between election-result formats), and then awt is the web interface for abiftool that powers abif.electorama.com. It's all free/open source software, so feel free to download and try it out yourself. Patches/contributors welcome! Also, if you find any bugs (there are many), please file a report in the issue tracker: https://github.com/electorama/awt/issues Don't be bashful about filing feature requests as well. I've got a lot of bugfixing to do before the 0.33.0 release, but after that, I'll be looking for compelling features to implement. Thanks Rob

1 0

abiftool/awt 0.32.0: now with recent SF elections and caching!
by Rob Lanphier 22 Jul '25

22 Jul '25

Hi folks! I'm proud to announce abiftool v0.32.0 and awt v0.32.0, which are: - abiftool <https://electorama.com/abiftool> — a command-line tool for working with election files, converting from other formats into ABIF <https://electowiki.org/wiki/ABIF> (and vice versa), and tallying elections using many systems (Copeland/Condorcet - awt <https://electorama.com/awt> — the web front-end for abiftool. A live instance of awt can be found at abif.electorama.com. New! SF 2024 elections, FPTP support, caching, improved testing, and bug fixes Both awt and abiftool use the abiflib library found in the abiftool repository. Some important advancements in abiflib since the 0.2.0 <https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1ihxmw8/over_400_elections_now_at…> release of abiftool back in February 2025: * Handling of San Francisco's latest JSON-based CVRs (see the "sf2024" tag <https://abif.electorama.com/tag/sf2024>). * Initial implementation of First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) tabulation. * Many micro-features hidden in command-line options. * Substantial refactoring of abiflib. * General code cleanup and major improvements throughout. * Much more robust pytests and more of them. Additonally, here's a big improvement in awt * Caching! All prior versions computed the results of the static abif under abif.electorama.com/id/* <https://abif.electorama.com/id> dynamically, which was silly. As a result, the website was often dog slow. Now it is only cat slow. If you tried this out in February and had a poor experience because the many bugs and server timeouts in 0.2.0, come back and try it again. This version is *much* more reliable (he says, automatically jinxing awt to have a serious bug that is obvious to everyone but himself). Bugs, feature requests, other ways to get involved Speaking of bug discovery, bug reporting, and feature requests, there's no end of work to do on abiftool and awt, and your help would be greatly appreciated (even if you aren't a software developer). Please visit abif.electorama.com, and if you find any bugs or think of any features you like to see, file a ticket at github.com/electorama/awt/issues. If you find a problem, don't assume that anyone else knows about it -- getting something in the issue tracker is the best way to ensure someone deals with it. If you're a software developer and want to help, reach out to me; I'm easy to get in touch with (see robla.net and electorama.com) You can help shape the future direction of abiftool and awt: - There's a lot of user interface work that needs to happen with awt. I'm more of a backend developer and text-file twiddler (hence the appeal of ABIF to me), but I recognize many folks have less of tolerance for "ugly" user interfaces than I do. If you fancy yourself a front-end developer looking for a project to make an impact with, talk to me. - Many more formats can be added to and there are many formats that seem worth adding (both for conversion *to* and *from* ABIF). - Keep tweaking at it. There's lot's of smaller features that would be nifty to have (like better display of ties in IRV <https://github.com/electorama/awt/issues/7>). - Merging with other websites/codebases. This is by no means the first public election software (see also stablevoting.org, preflib.org, Votelib <https://github.com/simberaj/votelib>, rob-legrand.github.io <https://rob-legrand.github.io/ranked-ballot-voting-calculator/> and ranked.vote for just a few). There's already some integration/interoperability with some tools [e.g. with the ABIF reader in the pref_voting library <https://github.com/voting-tools/pref_voting/blob/main/pref_voting/io/reader…> or the experimental ABIF branch in Votelib <https://github.com/simberaj/votelib/tree/abif>), but the combinatorial aspects of interoperability between tools mean there's practically infinite work to do. There's a lot of different ways software-developer activitsts can spend their time. What's the *best* way? For that matter, what's a *good enough* way? Join the conversation! To discuss awt and abiftool (and election software more , a good mailing list to join is the election-software mailing list: - https://electorama.com/es ...or if you prefer chat, you can join the Electorama Discord server. - https://electorama.com/discord ...or just get the code and start hacking! Get the code! To get the source code, visit the GitHub projects for awt and abif below: - https://github.com/electorama/awt - https://github.com/electorama/abiftool ...or just visit abif.electorama.com. Rob

1 0

abiftool and awt version 0.31.0: SF 2024 elections, FPTP support, improved testing, and bug fixes
by Rob Lanphier 11 Jul '25

11 Jul '25

Hi folks, Y'all are the first to hear this. Or rather, you're the first to get this email. I've finally released abiftool v0.31.0 and awt v0.31.0. As a refresher: - abiftool <https://electorama.com/abiftool>-- this is a command-line tool for working with election files, converting from other formats into ABIF <https://electowiki.org/wiki/ABIF>, and tallying elections. - awt <https://electorama.com/awt>-- this is the web application version ofabiftool. A live instance ofawt can be found atabif.electorama.com Both awt and abiftool use the abiflib library found in the abiftool repository. Here are some important advancements in abiflib since the 0.2.0 release of abiftool back in February 2025: - Handling of San Francisco's latest JSON-based CVRs. - Initial implementation of First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) tabulation. - Substantial refactoring ofabiflib. - Much more robust pytests and more of them. - Many micro-features hidden in command-line options. - General code cleanup and major improvements throughout. There's a lot of features I would love to add toabiftoolandawt.I'd love your help (especially if you're a Python dev). There's a lot of user interface work that needs to happen withawt, and there are many formats I'd love to add. Even if you aren't a software developer, I'd love for you to visit abif.electorama.com, and if you find any bugs here: https://github.com/electorama/awt/issues To get the source code, visit the GitHub projects forÂ awtÂ andÂ abifÂ below: - https://github.com/electorama/awt - https://github.com/electorama/abiftool Rob

1 0