Re: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions
Dear James Gilmour, you wrote (10 July 2008): If you are going to mess about with MMP to the extent that you suggest in the hope of making some significant improvements to what is basically a very poor voting system, why not just adopt STV-PR and do the job properly? When you promote pure STV in a country that already uses proportional representation by party lists, then you will be accused immediately that you were dishonest and that your real aim was to increase the effective threshold to gain representation. My own experience says that, when you want to promote STV in a country that already uses proportional representation by party lists, then your proposal must contain provisions to compensate party proportionality on the national level. Otherwise, your proposal is a non-starter. Markus Schulze Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions
Markus Schulze Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 8:45 AM If you are going to mess about with MMP to the extent that you suggest in the hope of making some significant improvements to what is basically a very poor voting system, why not just adopt STV-PR and do the job properly? When you promote pure STV in a country that already uses proportional representation by party lists, then you will be accused immediately that you were dishonest and that your real aim was to increase the effective threshold to gain representation. My own experience says that, when you want to promote STV in a country that already uses proportional representation by party lists, then your proposal must contain provisions to compensate party proportionality on the national level. Otherwise, your proposal is a non-starter. Markus, you make a very valid point which I, as a practical reformer, fully appreciate. Any reform proposal, and the campaign to support it, must be wholly appropriate to the local political circumstances. It would certainly not be part of my agenda to increase the representation threshold for any political purpose, but I do recognise the political problems that can be created by very low effective thresholds (e.g. Israel). It must, however, be accepted that many party list systems (including MMP systems) have imposed thresholds and that these thresholds are completely arbitrary, e.g. 5% of the party list vote nationally - but why not 4% or 6%? . If you are going to impose such an arbitrary threshold, why go the bother of summing the votes nationally? Why not just use the effective thresholds that would result from the underlying regional structure that exists in many countries and is built into in their voting systems (e.g. where parties present lists on a regional basis)? It must also be appreciated that the effective threshold to gain representation in STV-PR is lower than a simple analysis based on dividing the national first preference vote by the average quota would suggest, for two reasons. In STV, the vote transfers are extremely important and when these are taken into account, the effect on small parties and candidates with less support can change the perspective very dramatically. For example, in the 2007 local government elections in Scotland (3 and 4-member districts) the lowest proportions of quotas secured by winning candidates of the five main parties were: 0.32, 0.42, 0.42, 0.46, 0.48, Malta shows the dangers of getting hung up on first preference votes when the main feature of the STV voting system is that the votes are transferable. It is also an unsafe assumption that every first preference vote for a particular candidate is a party vote for that candidate's party. Parties and candidates (usually) respond to the characteristics of whatever voting system is in use. Thus the approach adopted by smaller parties where it is STV-PR, is to concentrate their resources where their support is strongest and so achieve the local threshold. That's how the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, with about 2% of the first preference votes province-wide, won 2% of the seats overall in the Northern Ireland Assembly (1998) when the district magnitude was only 6 (Droop quota threshold = 14.3%). There is always a trade-off between guaranteed local representation (small districts) and proportionality (large districts), whatever the voting system. While STV-PR, as normally implemented, might reduce the effective threshold to gain representation for parties nationally, that loss has to be set against the gains for the voters of more localised representation and of shifting the balance of power and accountability from the parties to the voters. How that balance is best presented depends on local politics. No matter how enthusiastic the electors may be, such a change will nearly always be opposed by the larger political parties and their backers!! James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.526 / Virus Database: 270.4.7/1543 - Release Date: 09/07/2008 18:32 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions
Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: You use movie site data for your AAR-DSV examples. Does AAR-DSV manipulability mean that a movie site that uses it would face difficulty telling users which movie is the most popular or highest rated? The manipulability proofs wouldn't harm them as strongly (since very few users rate all of the movies), but they would in principle remain, unless I'm missing something... It all depends on what we assume the voters would be trying to do. If each voter is trying to move the overall rating of each movie as close as possible to his/her ideal rating of that movie, without any regard to how the other movies are rated, then AAR DSV is completely nonmanipulable. On the other hand, if a voter is trying to affect which movie ends up with the highest rating, voting insincerely may sometimes give an advantage. -- Rob LeGrand, psephologist [EMAIL PROTECTED] Citizens for Approval Voting http://www.approvalvoting.org/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions
Kristofer Munsterhjelm Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 1:25 PM I don't doubt that the problem exists. After all, the term decoy list (lista civetta) comes from the Italian abuse of the system. Do you know of any countries that do have overhang provisions to ameliorate the problem? While I am sure it was not introduced for this purpose (combating lista civetta), an overhang correction (in various forms at different times) has been used in elections to the German Bundestag. The Wikipedia page on this says a similar correction is applied in elections to the National Assembly of Venezuela, but I have not checked that. MMP elections to the New Zealand House of Representatives can produce am overhang of constituency (electorate) seats, but no correction is applied. There is no provision for overhang seats in MMP elections to the Scottish Parliament or the National Assembly of Wales, both of which use regionalised versions of MMP. Basically, MMP is a rotten voting system, with or without the 'overhang' correction, and it should be replaced by a better system of proportional representation. Even though I think multiwinner methods should be party-neutral, I can see the appeal of MMP: parties are guaranteed to get their share of the vote, even if the constituency vote is disproportional. Surely the fundamental requirement of any voting system for a representative assembly should be to ensure that the VOTERS get proportional representation of what they, the VOTERS, want, as expressed through their responses to the candidates who offer themselves for election. To the extent that the voters vote by party, they will get party PR. The undoubted attraction of MMP is that it appears to retain the alleged benefits of single-member districts while giving party PR. Thus MMP has proved attractive in countries that have suffered the appalling British legacy of FPTP elections in single-member districts. In fact, research has shown that the alleged benefits of single-member districts (the elector-member link) are mostly illusory, and experience has shown that greater accountability of the elected members to the local voters can be obtained in multi-member districts - provided the correct voting system is used. MMP also creates its own problems, especially in electing two different types of member. For more details see the Fairshare submission to the Arbuthnott Commission which reviewed the voting system for the Scottish Parliament (PDF, 45 KB): http://www.fairsharevoting.org/Fairshare%20Submission%20Arbuthnott%20Commission%2022%20Mar%2005.pdf Thus they can't say that they were robbed of seats because of the quirks of the system. While in reality such complaints would be infrequent (because those who have power in a very disproportional system are those where the disproportionality swung their way), why have disproportionality when it can be avoided? If we generalize this, the list part of MMP is a patch to the disproportionality of the constituency method, to take advantage of explicitly-known properties (like party allegiance). That suggests that we use a proportional multiwinner method (like STV) for larger constituencies, and then award list seats (of a much smaller share than half the parliament) to patch up whatever disproportionality still exists - even if the multiwinner method is perfect, rounding errors regarding district size would introduce some disproportionality. At that point, the generalized MMP with STV sounds a lot like Schulze's suggestion for Berlin. If you are going to mess about with MMP to the extent that you suggest in the hope of making some significant improvements to what is basically a very poor voting system, why not just adopt STV-PR and do the job properly? James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.526 / Virus Database: 270.4.7/1541 - Release Date: 08/07/2008 19:50 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions
James Gilmour wrote: Kristofer Munsterhjelm Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2008 12:10 AM Second, I've been reading about the decoy list problem in mixed member proportionality. The strategy exists because the method can't do anything when a party doesn't have any list votes to compensate for constituency disproportionality. Thus, cloning (or should it be called splitting?) a party into two parties, one for the constituency candidates, and one for the list, pays off. But is it possible to make a sort of MMP where that strategy doesn't work? I don't know about making it not work, but the 'overhang' provisions in some versions of MMP would, at least partly, address this problem. The version of MMP used for elections to the Scottish Parliament (no overhang correction) is wide open to this abuse, and we already have two registered political parties that could make very effective use of it IF they so wanted. The Labour Party and the Co-operative Party jointly nominate candidates in some constituencies. The Co-operative Party does not nominate any constituency candidates nor does it contest the regional votes. I don't doubt that the problem exists. After all, the term decoy list (lista civetta) comes from the Italian abuse of the system. Do you know of any countries that do have overhang provisions to ameliorate the problem? Basically, MMP is a rotten voting system, with or without the 'overhang' correction, and it should be replaced by a better system of proportional representation. Even though I think multiwinner methods should be party-neutral, I can see the appeal of MMP: parties are guaranteed to get their share of the vote, even if the constituency vote is disproportional. Thus they can't say that they were robbed of seats because of the quirks of the system. While in reality such complaints would be infrequent (because those who have power in a very disproportional system are those where the disproportionality swung their way), why have disproportionality when it can be avoided? If we generalize this, the list part of MMP is a patch to the disproportionality of the constituency method, to take advantage of explicitly-known properties (like party allegiance). That suggests that we use a proportional multiwinner method (like STV) for larger constituencies, and then award list seats (of a much smaller share than half the parliament) to patch up whatever disproportionality still exists - even if the multiwinner method is perfect, rounding errors regarding district size would introduce some disproportionality. At that point, the generalized MMP with STV sounds a lot like Schulze's suggestion for Berlin. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions
Rob LeGrand wrote: Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: (On a related note, has anyone tried to use Range with LeGrand's Equilibrium Average instead of plain average?) I don't recommend using Equilibrium Average (which I usually call AAR DSV, for Average-Approval-Rating DSV) to elect winner(s) from a finite number of candidates. AAR DSV is nonmanipulable when selecting a single outcome from a one-dimensional range, just as median (if implemented carefully) is, but it is manipulable when used as a scoring function in a way similar to how Balinski and Laraki proposed using median: http://rangevoting.org/MedianVrange.html You use movie site data for your AAR-DSV examples. Does AAR-DSV manipulability mean that a movie site that uses it would face difficulty telling users which movie is the most popular or highest rated? The manipulability proofs wouldn't harm them as strongly (since very few users rate all of the movies), but they would in principle remain, unless I'm missing something... Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions
Kristofer said: That could be an interesting way to solve the indecisive parliament or frequent government change problem where these exist. In order to recall the executive, they have to vote for a new coalition at the same time. They have kinda that rule in Germany.? The only way to remove their Chancellor is to nominate a replacement. There is a proposed alternative to MMP called Fair majority voting that solves some of its problems.? It has the same single winner + national party proportional vote system.? It has some problems of its own though. http://www.mathaware.org/mam/08/EliminateGerrymandering.pdf Basically, each voter votes for a party and candidate.? In each district, plurality is used to work out the winner (I think approval could also work). The fair number of seats for each party is worked out based on the party vote and a set of multiplers are determined so that each party gets the right number of seats. These multipliers are multiplied by the vote total of each candidate in the party. A party which got to few seats would be given a higher multipler. In effect, it flips the results where the margin of victory was small in order to bring all parties to their proportional totals. I am not sure what the best way to do the task that matrix voting tries to accomplish. Normally positions on the executive are not equal in value. There are free riding issues with selection of major posts.? For example, if you rank your party leader first choice as PM, you use up some of your vote for the other positions.? The solution could be to kick out anyone in the party who doesn't rank their own leader first choice, so all equally share the cost. In Northern Ireland, they use the d'Hondt system for allocating seats on the executive. This gives the larger parties an advantage as they get to pick first.? Also, the largest 2 parties get 1 seat each for free. Another option would be a fair division protocol.? If you had 2 equally sized parties, one party leader could split the executive positions into 2 and then the other party leader could pick one group.? This should mean that both groups have roughly equal value. Alternatively, one of the leaders could give each position a value and the other party leader can pick any group of positions such that the total adds up to less than half. If the first leader undervalues a position, the 2nd leader gets a powerful position for a low cost.? Likewise, if he overvalues a position, the 2nd leader will just not take it, giving him a larger share of the other positions. I am not such if this can be expanded to multiple parties of differing sizes. Also, there is the issue that there would be no coherent national policy on anything.? You could have one minister taking actions which cancel out the actions of another minister. (and both spending money doing it).? Ofc, this creates an incentive for them to work together and find a compromise. Also, budgets could be an issue.? One option would be to share tax income out proportionally. Each member of the legislature could decide what ministries their share is allocated to. Tax cuts/raises are an even bigger issue.? Raphfrk Interesting site what if anyone could modify the laws www.wikocracy.com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions
On Jul 8, 2008, at 15:24 , Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Even though I think multiwinner methods should be party-neutral, I can see the appeal of MMP: parties are guaranteed to get their share of the vote, even if the constituency vote is disproportional. use a proportional multiwinner method (like STV) for larger constituencies, and then award list seats (of a much smaller share than half the parliament) to patch up whatever disproportionality still exists - even if the multiwinner method is perfect, rounding errors regarding district size would introduce some disproportionality. I assume you want to have some level of regional representation. = At least large districts with multiple seats. You said you want the method to be party-neutral. = Maybe STV will do (I assume all party-like list (or tree) based methods would not be ok). If you use large districts and STV in each of them (separate candidates for each district) that should give you already quite accurate political proportionality (only some rounding errors left). If the size of the districts is small that would cut out some small parties (or not give them fully proportional number of seats). (Some tricks could be used to fix also the remaining rounding errors if needed.) My point is that if you are happy with large districts the MMP part (and separation of two different kind of representatives) is not necessarily needed. Juho ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. The New Version is radically easier to use The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions
Dear Kristofer, you wrote (6 July 2008): I've been reading about the decoy list problem in mixed member proportionality. The strategy exists because the method can't do anything when a party doesn't have any list votes to compensate for constituency disproportionality. Thus, cloning (or should it be called splitting?) a party into two parties, one for the constituency candidates, and one for the list, pays off. But is it possible to make a sort of MMP where that strategy doesn't work? That MMP method would have to use some kind of reweighting for those voters who got their way with regards to the constituency members, I think, because if the method just tries to find correlated parties, the party could theoretically execute the strategy by running all the constituency candidates as independents. What kind of reweighting would that be? One idea would be to have a rule that says those with say x about the constituency vote gets 1-x in the list vote. Then vary x until the point of party proportionality is found. No matter what party someone who makes a difference with regards to the constituency candidate chooses, his vote loses power proportionally, and thus decoy lists wouldn't work. Wow, that's exactly what I have proposed recently for an STV-MMP system in Berlin. Please read these papers: http://m-schulze.webhop.net/schulze4.pdf http://m-schulze.webhop.net/schulze5.pdf Read especially page 3 of paper schulze5.pdf. Markus Schulze Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions
Dear Kristofer, if your goal to issue a smaller group representing the same opinions and debates than the larger group I think maintaining proportortionality is a good characteristic to make sure most positions of these debates survive the attrition. The reduction in size should facilitate the oral exchanges. I have a tendancy to view any election as an attempt to build a microcosm of a larger group in order to facilitate debates... For your second point, there is one way to enforce coherency (using a mathematical definition) within an MMP election. If one uses the same results to elect the individual representatives and to determine the corrected proportion obtained after electing list members. The simple way to enforce such coherence between these two proportions is to use a single ballot MMP, where voting for an individual is considered too as giving support in favor of this candate party list. From what I know two german landers use this system. Otherwise you have to relie on cultural honesty of the parties or electorate to avoid the decoy problem. Salutations, Stéphane Kristofer Munsterhjelm a écrit : I thought I could ask a few questions while otherwise being busy making my next simulator version :-) So here goes.. First, when a group elects a smaller group (as a parliament might do with a government, although real parliaments don't do it this way), should the method used to elect the smaller group be proportional? I think one could make a majoritarian version with cardinal ratings/Range. It'd work this way: for n positions, each voter submits n rated ballots. Then, with k candidates, make a k*n matrix, where position (a,b) is the sum of the ratings the voter assigned candidate a in the ballot for position b. We've now reduced the problem of picking (candidate, position) values so that the sum is maximized. The constraints on the problem are: only one value can be selected from each row (can't have the same candidate for two positions), and only one value can be selected from each column (can't have two candidates for the same position). I think that's solvable in polynomial time, but I haven't worked out the details. That's for majoritarian matrix votes with cardinal ratings (or Range - could also be median or whatever as long as the scores are commensurable). (On a related note, has anyone tried to use Range with LeGrand's Equilibrium Average instead of plain average?) Perhaps the same pick-the-best-sum reasoning could be extended to a Condorcetian matrix vote, using Kemeny score for the Condorcet matrix for the position in question instead of ratings sums/averages. But as far as I remember, Kemeny scores relate to social orderings, not just candidate choices, so maybe the Dodgson score instead -- but that may not be comparable in cases where different candidates are Condorcet winners in different elections, since those would all have Dodgson scores of 0 (no swapping required). In any case, the reduction above won't work if matrix voting methods ought to be proportional. I'm not sure whether it should be majoritarian or proportional, and one could argue for either - majoritarianism in that that's how real world parliamentary governments are formed (negotiations notwithstanding), and proportionality because some group may be very good at distinguishing suitable foreign ministers while some other, slightly larger group, might not do very well at that task but be good at distinguish suitable ministers of interior. Second, I've been reading about the decoy list problem in mixed member proportionality. The strategy exists because the method can't do anything when a party doesn't have any list votes to compensate for constituency disproportionality. Thus, cloning (or should it be called splitting?) a party into two parties, one for the constituency candidates, and one for the list, pays off. But is it possible to make a sort of MMP where that strategy doesn't work? That MMP method would have to use some kind of reweighting for those voters who got their way with regards to the constituency members, I think, because if the method just tries to find correlated parties, the party could theoretically execute the strategy by running all the constituency candidates as independents. What kind of reweighting would that be? One idea would be to have a rule that says those with say x about the constituency vote gets 1-x in the list vote. Then vary x until the point of party proportionality is found. No matter what party someone who makes a difference with regards to the constituency candidate chooses, his vote loses power proportionally, and thus decoy lists wouldn't work. No concrete methods here, but maybe someone else will add to them... or find flaws in my reasoning and correct them :-) Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see
Re: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions
Stéphane Rouillon Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2008 6:02 PM For your second point, there is one way to enforce coherency (using a mathematical definition) within an MMP election. If one uses the same results to elect the individual representatives and to determine the corrected proportion obtained after electing list members. The simple way to enforce such coherence between these two proportions is to use a single ballot MMP, where voting for an individual is considered too as giving support in favor of this candidate party list. From what I know two German landers use this system. I am aware that some German Lander use single ballot MMP, but it is a fundamentally flawed system and should not be recommended. The problem is that the candidate votes (cast in single-member districts) do not provide an accurate reflection of the voters' overall support for the political parties because the candidate votes are distorted by local tactical voting. If you must use MMP (a poor voting system), it should always be a two-vote version. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.526 / Virus Database: 270.4.5/1537 - Release Date: 06/07/2008 05:26 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions
Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: (On a related note, has anyone tried to use Range with LeGrand's Equilibrium Average instead of plain average?) I don't recommend using Equilibrium Average (which I usually call AAR DSV, for Average-Approval-Rating DSV) to elect winner(s) from a finite number of candidates. AAR DSV is nonmanipulable when selecting a single outcome from a one-dimensional range, just as median (if implemented carefully) is, but it is manipulable when used as a scoring function in a way similar to how Balinski and Laraki proposed using median: http://rangevoting.org/MedianVrange.html For more on AAR DSV, please see chapter 3 of my now-completed dissertation: http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~legrand/dissertation.pdf -- Rob LeGrand, psephologist [EMAIL PROTECTED] Citizens for Approval Voting http://www.approvalvoting.org/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions
On the question of whether electing a subgroup should be proportional or majoritarian...I often make a distinction on two factors: 1) Is the association voluntary (in which dissatisfied minorities can easily withdraw to join or form a different association), and 2) Is the function of the association directional or goal oriented, vs. service, maintenance or regulatory-oriented (a political party that wants to move society in a direction, vs. an alumni association). Voluntary associations that have a directional goals (such as a platform) can sometimes be best served by majoritarian or centrist internal election method, such as electing party leaders, Whereas compulsory associations that are engaged in maintenance (a government) are best served by proportional methods. Terry - Original Message - From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2008 7:09 PM Subject: [Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions I thought I could ask a few questions while otherwise being busy making my next simulator version :-) So here goes.. First, when a group elects a smaller group (as a parliament might do with a government, although real parliaments don't do it this way), should the method used to elect the smaller group be proportional? I think one could make a majoritarian version with cardinal ratings/Range. It'd work this way: for n positions, each voter submits n rated ballots. Then, with k candidates, make a k*n matrix, where position (a,b) is the sum of the ratings the voter assigned candidate a in the ballot for position b. We've now reduced the problem of picking (candidate, position) values so that the sum is maximized. The constraints on the problem are: only one value can be selected from each row (can't have the same candidate for two positions), and only one value can be selected from each column (can't have two candidates for the same position). I think that's solvable in polynomial time, but I haven't worked out the details. That's for majoritarian matrix votes with cardinal ratings (or Range - could also be median or whatever as long as the scores are commensurable). (On a related note, has anyone tried to use Range with LeGrand's Equilibrium Average instead of plain average?) Perhaps the same pick-the-best-sum reasoning could be extended to a Condorcetian matrix vote, using Kemeny score for the Condorcet matrix for the position in question instead of ratings sums/averages. But as far as I remember, Kemeny scores relate to social orderings, not just candidate choices, so maybe the Dodgson score instead -- but that may not be comparable in cases where different candidates are Condorcet winners in different elections, since those would all have Dodgson scores of 0 (no swapping required). In any case, the reduction above won't work if matrix voting methods ought to be proportional. I'm not sure whether it should be majoritarian or proportional, and one could argue for either - majoritarianism in that that's how real world parliamentary governments are formed (negotiations notwithstanding), and proportionality because some group may be very good at distinguishing suitable foreign ministers while some other, slightly larger group, might not do very well at that task but be good at distinguish suitable ministers of interior. Second, I've been reading about the decoy list problem in mixed member proportionality. The strategy exists because the method can't do anything when a party doesn't have any list votes to compensate for constituency disproportionality. Thus, cloning (or should it be called splitting?) a party into two parties, one for the constituency candidates, and one for the list, pays off. But is it possible to make a sort of MMP where that strategy doesn't work? That MMP method would have to use some kind of reweighting for those voters who got their way with regards to the constituency members, I think, because if the method just tries to find correlated parties, the party could theoretically execute the strategy by running all the constituency candidates as independents. What kind of reweighting would that be? One idea would be to have a rule that says those with say x about the constituency vote gets 1-x in the list vote. Then vary x until the point of party proportionality is found. No matter what party someone who makes a difference with regards to the constituency candidate chooses, his vote loses power proportionally, and thus decoy lists wouldn't work. No concrete methods here, but maybe someone else will add to them... or find flaws in my reasoning and correct them :-) Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info