Our Purpose

This site was created to become a free-access, must-go-to, you-can-find-it-all-there, coherent source for explanations and analyses of the many voting methods in use or proposed for use in the United States.  

Through extensive research and analysis, I have found the consensus/tournament/Condorcet methods ensure the fairest, most representative, and most manipulation-free election results.  

Accordingly, you will find on this site much analysis that argues that any Consensus/Tournament/Condorcet method is greatly superior to Instant Runoff; and that the Approval, Range, and Star voting methods are also greatly inferior. If for whatever reason you wish to learn the strongest arguments against the use of those other systems, the strength of my views is working in your favor. If you wish to learn the strongest arguments for them, which in my rebuttals I have nevertheless tried to state as completely and fairly as I can, the strength of my views may of course lead me into error. 

You will also find arguments that while among the Consensus/Tournament/Condorcet methods the differences are by comparison small, one particular method, Ranked Pairs, emerges as uniformly superior to any known alternative.  

I was not born with those various views; indeed I had no views on these subjects four years ago; and my views are subject to change in response to evidence and argument. So though (as of 6/23) this is a new site, it has a section for Errata and Addenda already prepared to acknowledge publicly the mistakes I (inevitably) have made and will make, and the people to whom I owe their correction; and also to acknowledge and to bow to the arguments and those who made them that change my mind, in small matters or in large.

Having laid arguments on an important subject before the public, I expect to have someone who believes any of those arguments to be incorrect to attempt to shred those arguments, if necessary line by line, the better to reveal the truth.  

In the beginning, the analyses here will essentially be all mine (though of course I reference and cite a large corpus of existing work by others).  

If you have something to contribute, even a link to good but overlooked material, you will receive full credit. I pay all the expenses of this site; and its content is not and will never be monetized in any way. Success over time would be to find my own work becoming a small fraction of that offered by or linked-to from this site, and my name dimming in luster to a mere shadow compared to the names of others.  

Besides passively offering information, useful though I hope that information will be, I hope to encourage and engage policymakers, other serious voting and election reformers like myself, and the public in a productive and reasoned dialogue on the issues. There is a form to offer new arguments, descriptions of yet-uninvented election methods, or to raise questions that ``someone’’ should address, that someone not necessarily being me, but a person who happens to read the question on this site.  

For better or worse, I will curate these exchanges. Be advised, you must sign your name to a submission, and if you make one, I am free to elect or not to post it (in fair and relevant part, with your name), together with what comment or response that may come in that I deem most apt.

The subject of voting methods is not so complicated that an ordinary person cannot follow the arguments to reach his own opinion. As part of these exchanges on this site, no one may assert that some argument or other must be incorrect or unworthy of attention because it disagrees with the opinion of the Grand and Honorable Organization W, or the report written by the August Committee X, or because it agrees with the opinion of the Despicable Organization Y or the known Halfwit Z. The truth or falsity of an argument is independent of who speaks it; and in my papers I have found, adopted, and acknowledged arguments from sources whom I also believe have made mistakes.

Charles T. Munger, Jr.