User:RobLa/Burlington2009
Why do electoral reform advocates obsess about the 2009 mayoral race in Burlington, Vermont. This page discusses the reasons.
- Monotonicity - There are many people that obsess about the monotonicity criterion failure that happened in
- Condorcet criterion - this was the indisputable failure of instant-runoff voting in that election
The Condorcet criterion is not that hard to explain. In short, if a majority of voters prefer candidate A over candidate B (and express that preference on their ballots), then candidate A should beat candidate B.
As readers of Electowiki know, I'm Rob Lanphier, aka User:RobLa. I'm planning to iteratively publish an email interview with Robert Bristow-Johnson on this page. Robert is an electoral reform activist, and has been a longtime member of the Election-methods mailing list ("EM list"). Robert's first message in October 2009 (a response to Michael Rouse's "new method/request for voting paradoxes" thread), and he's been continuously active since then. In fact, recently, he engaged in a conversation with a conversation with Kristofer Munsterhjelm about "Linear summability" , which is what inspired me to start this interview.
The questions below will be from me, and answers will be from Robert.
Interview
Question #1: introduction
- Q: It's my understanding that you were living in Burlington back in 2009, when this election took place. Is that correct? If so, can you tell me what it was like?
- A: (________________)