EM-list archive

This is information about the mailing list archives for the "EM-list" (the "election-methods" mailing list).

Purpose
The list has long been intended a place for the discussion of the nitty-gritty details of single-winner election reform, the relative merits of different proportional representation systems, and the technical underpinnings of all election methods. "election-methods-list" discussions tend to be technical in nature (or at least, very laden with jargon), with the ultimate goal of providing recommendations and educational material to the electoral reform movement.

History
On February 15, 2021, the election-methods mailing list (the "EM-list") is celebrating its 25th birthday!!! The EM-list is a mailing list that was started in 1996 and continues to host discussions with electoral system experts and activists. User:RobLa jumped the gun when he sent the "Happy Birthday" note to the mailing list.

The list was started in 1996 by Rob Lanphier. . Rob Lanphier is "User:RobLa" on this wiki. It was started as an unofficial spinoff to the "ER-list", which was more concerned about promoting single-winner STV than diving into the weeds about the theory of electoral systems.

1996
See EM25 to see the first message that was sent (on February 15, 1996). See the following links for other messages:


 * February:
 * By Thread)
 * By Subject
 * By Author
 * By Date
 * 1996-February.txt.gz -- gzipped plain-text archive.

See the rest of the 1996 archive here: https://electorama.com/em/archive.html#1996

February 1996




Later history
During its first few years, "election-methods" it was on "eskimo.com", and was originally a "Majordomo" list. In 2003, the list moved to the newly-formed Electorama.com website on Dreamhost, and transitioned to becoming a GNU Mailman-based mailing list. EM-list remains hosted on Dreamhost, but the old "Electowiki" wiki, hosted on Dreamhost was copied the Miraheze infrastructure in 2018 and rebranded "electowiki" (with a lowercase "e"). The old "Electowiki" wiki is still running to serve up history of articles written prior to 2018.

Future
Who knows?