EM25

On February 15, 2021 (and for the rest of the month of February), 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.

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
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.

The first message
Subject: New "election-methods" list From: Rob Lanphier

Date: Thu Feb 15 21:34:05 PST 1996

To: [elections-reform, election-methods]

I'm starting up an "election-methods-list" list to discuss single-winner reform, the relative merits of different PR systems, and the technical underpinnings of all election methods. This list is intended to compliment, not to replace, the existing "elections-reform" list. Please continue to discuss the various electoral reform movements in the U.S. and throughout the world in the "elections-reform" list. "elections-reform" is still the best forum for discussing strategies used in reform campaigns, specific legislation addressing reform, and educational material about reform. What is the difference, you ask? "election-methods-list" discussions will most likely be more technical in nature, with the ultimate goal of providing recommendations and educational material to the members of "elections-reform". There have been complaints in the past that discussions on "elections-reform" have been too technical, and "election-methods-list" has been created to offload the more prolific technical discussions to "elections-reform". It lets folks use "elections-reform" to stay abreast of current activity in electoral reform without fear of their inbox exploding. To subscribe to "election-methods-list", send mail to majordomo at eskimo.com with no subject line (any subject will be ignored), and the following one line in the body of your message: subscribe election-methods-list My apologies to anybody who stumbled on the web page that I set up a week

ago at and tried to subscribe (and failed, because the list didn't exist yet). In the time I was waiting for the list to get set up, I set up the web page. Everything should *now* work according to the instructions on that page.

That's all there is to it. Let me know if you have any questions about the new list.

Thanks, Rob Lanphier [] http://www.eskimo.com/~robla [<< Rob's old website]

1996

 * main article: EM-list archive

The first message is not the only message that was sent in 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

 * main article: EM-list archive

The archive for the election-methods mailing list is scattered all over the place.


 * 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.
 * 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.
 * As of 2021, EM-list remains hosted on Dreamhost

Future
Who knows?