Edward B. (Ned) Foley is a law professor who has been promoting
Condorcet compliance for quite a while now. For lots more, see his blog:

https://edwardbfoley.substack.com/

If he could have his way, legislatures would consist exclusively of
centrists, with no representation at all for people on the right or the
left. What he advocates is the exact opposite of proportionality. But at
least he's explicit about that.

--Bob Richard

------ Original Message ------

election-methods@lists.electorama.com
To "EM" election-methods@lists.electorama.com
Date 6/26/2025 7:29:38 AM
Subject [EM] Condorcet mention in a relatively mainstream context

I don't think that's his position.

Specific links?

One thing that's true is that he was in on the original meeting (via Zoom) for organizing what became Consensus Voting for Democracy (or whatever we're calling the organization).  https://www.betterchoices.vote/about#advisory-board

He's appeared on the PBS Newshour at least once to discuss elections.

--

r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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Could you pass his email along to me and let him know the Equal Vote
Coalition is interested in talking to him?

On Thu, Jun 26, 2025 at 12:01 PM robert bristow-johnson via
Election-Methods election-methods@lists.electorama.com wrote:

I'll send you, direct, his email address.  When you contact him, please be sure you use your real identity and not a pseudonym.

Also, we Condorcetists have talked about Equal Vote Coalition.  We're jealous as hell of the organization name and the domain equal.vote .  Condorcet deserves that moniker.  We are more "equality of the vote" than anyone else (other than FPTP).

Our organization name sucks, in my opinion.  But we (the Condorcetists) want nothing to do with STAR or Score or Approval.  I'm not on board with everything that Better Choices are doing.  They need to get a lot less Ivory Tower.  We must not cede to FairVote the term "Ranked-Choice Voting" (Condorcet RCV is as much RCV as IRV is, as are also Borda and Bucklin).

And we need to point out what the practical consequences are when the "Consensus" candidate (a.k.a. Condorcet winner) is not elected with IRV.  We need to make it clear that when that happens, the election is spoiled, voters are punished for voting sincerely (thus incentivizing tactical voting), that a simple majority of voters were thwarted and their votes were counted less per vote than the votes coming from the voters who supported the IRV winner.  And we also need to make a big stink about the loss of summability that comes with IRV.

CES and EVC both have taken on FairVote a little regarding Burlington 2009 and Alaska 2022, but they the only offer Approval or STAR as solutions.  That ignores the obvious question: "If the failures of IRV in Burlington or Alaska were that the Condorcet winner was not elected, then why isn't the solution to just elect the Condorcet winner?"  They won't fucking answer the question, they wanna toss the baby (the ranked ballot) out with the bathwater (IRV).

Anyway, Closed, I thought I used to know your name, but I forgot.  I will send you Ned's email (I got the emails of the other founders who you see on that page at Better Choices), and you can tell him how you got it.  But don't send him anything that could be construed as annoying.  So please send him email with your real name and not a pseudonym.  For as much as I know, Ned is getting these emails.

--

r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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Foley has explicitly stated he supports proportional
representation before, including e.g. here
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4328642&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email.
However, as he correctly points out, this doesn't work for Senators,
Governors, and other single-seat elections. I'd also like to point out this
really isn't how Condorcet (or approval, or anything else) really works:
people on the left and right can absolutely still win elections, so long as
they're popular in their own districts.

In other words, to win, a less-moderate candidate has to earn it, by
having some other quality that's more important than their ideological fit
to the electorate. This is what makes ballot-reversal symmetry actually
important*.* (The thing EVC keeps calling the "equal vote criterion", even
though it's much more of an "equal shot criterion"). Systems that fail
reversal symmetry because they're bottom-heavy in rankings (e.g. Coombs'
rule and antiplurality) are biased toward milquetoast centrists, because
they focus on who generates opposition while ignoring positive support.
Top-heavy rules like IRV or FPP are biased toward extremists, because they
focus on support rather than opposition.

On Thu, Jun 26, 2025 at 11:21 AM Bob Richard [lists] via Election-Methods <
election-methods@lists.electorama.com> wrote: