Jameson Quinn was a pretty cool dude
Hi everyone,
It breaks my heart to have to break the news to many of you, but a longtime
participant of the election-methods list was involved in a
terrible accident. Jameson Quinn died on March 23 while hiking in
Guatemala. His mother posted about it on Bluesky a couple of days ago
https://bsky.app/profile/voter.bsky.social/post/3llp6vre3gk2s
I've been sitting tight on the information (which I learned from my board
involvement with EVC, where he was also a board member). But now that I
know the information is public information, I figured it'd be okay to share
it with y'all.
Jameson was a tireless force in the electoral-reform community, and
accomplished a lot. Like many of us, he liked to tinker around the edges
of election methods, hoping to find big breakthroughs and insights. He
actually had many big insights, coming up with some very interesting
methods, such as PLACE
https://electowiki.org/wiki/PLACE
...as well as 3-2-1 voting:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/3-2-1_voting
He didn't just come up with new methods. He also followed through on
advocacy. He came up with "E Pluribus Hugo" and got the folks who dole out
the Hugo Awards to use it:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/E_Pluribus_Hugo
You'll notice there's a lot of electowiki.org links, rather than
wiki.electorama.com links. That's because Jameson helped light a fire
under my ass, making sure that the folks in /r/EndFPTP had a wiki for
discussions there. When they migrated electowiki over to Miraheze, I made
a point of registering electowiki.org, and worked with them to make
electowiki.org a continuation of wiki.electorama.com (rather than a fork).
I could detail more about that, but I want to keep this email about
Jameson. I don't know exactly what Jameson's role was, but I know he was
critical, and I appreciate it in retrospect.
Jameson and I always had cordial conversations, and I think/hope y'all
didn't get TOO bent out of shape when you had conversations with him. He
was a genuinely nice guy, and didn't seem to like the rancor that many of
us seem to tolerate. I'm assuming none of us LIKE the rancor, but there
was a point one time when I was getting a little bent out of shape about
something with a mutual electoral-reform colleague, and he took the time to
have a video chat with me to make sure that things were okay. He was a
good guy.
And all of this is to say Jameson was a pretty cool dude, and I'll miss him
for sure. I'm assuming many of you will miss him too, and I suspect the
world is going to learn to miss him as we discover some of his old
writings. Rest in peace, dude!
Rob
This is very sad news to hear and it is a great loss. I had quite a bit of communication with Jameson in the past because of our shared interest of cardinal proportional methods and I always enjoyed his insightful contributions. He is also the only person from the "voting method community" that I have ever met in person.
Toby
On Thursday 3 April 2025 at 07:42:57 BST, Rob Lanphier roblan@gmail.com wrote:
Hi everyone,
It breaks my heart to have to break the news to many of you, but a longtime participant of the election-methods list was involved in a terrible accident. Jameson Quinn died on March 23 while hiking in Guatemala. His mother posted about it on Bluesky a couple of days agohttps://bsky.app/profile/voter.bsky.social/post/3llp6vre3gk2s
I've been sitting tight on the information (which I learned from my board involvement with EVC, where he was also a board member). But now that I know the information is public information, I figured it'd be okay to share it with y'all.
Jameson was a tireless force in the electoral-reform community, and accomplished a lot. Like many of us, he liked to tinker around the edges of election methods, hoping to find big breakthroughs and insights. He actually had many big insights, coming up with some very interesting methods, such as PLACEhttps://electowiki.org/wiki/PLACE
...as well as 3-2-1 voting:https://electowiki.org/wiki/3-2-1_voting
He didn't just come up with new methods. He also followed through on advocacy. He came up with "E Pluribus Hugo" and got the folks who dole out the Hugo Awards to use it:https://electowiki.org/wiki/E_Pluribus_Hugo
You'll notice there's a lot of electowiki.org links, rather than wiki.electorama.com links. That's because Jameson helped light a fire under my ass, making sure that the folks in /r/EndFPTP had a wiki for discussions there. When they migrated electowiki over to Miraheze, I made a point of registering electowiki.org, and worked with them to make electowiki.org a continuation of wiki.electorama.com (rather than a fork). I could detail more about that, but I want to keep this email about Jameson. I don't know exactly what Jameson's role was, but I know he was critical, and I appreciate it in retrospect.
Jameson and I always had cordial conversations, and I think/hope y'all didn't get TOO bent out of shape when you had conversations with him. He was a genuinely nice guy, and didn't seem to like the rancor that many of us seem to tolerate. I'm assuming none of us LIKE the rancor, but there was a point one time when I was getting a little bent out of shape about something with a mutual electoral-reform colleague, and he took the time to have a video chat with me to make sure that things were okay. He was a good guy.
And all of this is to say Jameson was a pretty cool dude, and I'll miss him for sure. I'm assuming many of you will miss him too, and I suspect the world is going to learn to miss him as we discover some of his old writings. Rest in peace, dude!
Rob----
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info
I'm literally crying because losing Jameson Quinn is such a great loss.
All the more so because he was destined to accomplish so much more in
the field of election-method reform.
I had the joy of co-writing with Jameson the "Declaration of
Election-Method Reform Advocates." Here's a copy:
https://www.votefair.org/bansinglemarkballots/declaration.html
Jameson and I simultaneously edited the document on Google Docs. Doing
that together in real time was a joy. During those interactive sessions
he changed wordings to implement what others had requested, and I
followed a few sentences behind him and cleaned up the wording to make
it clearer and cleaner.
A couple of times during this editing we chatted in the sidebar. He was
living in Panama and telling me what was happening in the elections,
especially about all the candidates being corrupt. IIRK one of the
candidates was the wife of a jailed former president. (At that time it
seemed incredulous; now it seems a similar pattern is going on here, and
might even be a preview of family inheritance yet to come.) And I
taught him some editing tricks, such as making sure the last item in a
bulleted list was a strong argument, not a weak one.
Only later did I see photos of Jameson. I hadn't realized he was that
young. Apparently that was either before he went to college or before
he went to grad school. (I'm old, now 74.) I knew he had so much more
to offer.
I'm especially grateful that Jameson negotiated the "Declaration ..." as
somewhat of a peace treaty among us election-method reformers. It has
served to remind us that our enemy is the status quo, not each other's
"flawed" favorite method.
Thank you Rob for informing us. And thank you Rob for joining the Equal
Vote Coalition. I'm hopeful you can help that group become less
star-struck. Not so much because I dislike the star method but because
the people who promote it are failing to do what Jameson did, which is
to stick to the underlying facts and not create carefully worded
misrepresentations.
With fond thoughts of Jameson,
Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy
Rob, if it seems appropriate, please forward my sympathies to Jameson's
mother. May this message remind her that her son's spirit lives on in
the Declaration of Election-Method Reform Advocates and in the r/EndFPTP
rule that says "don't bash alternatives."
On 4/2/25 23:42, Rob Lanphier wrote:
Hi everyone,
It breaks my heart to have to break the news to many of you, but a
longtime participant of the election-methods list was involved in a
terrible accident. Jameson Quinn died on March 23 while hiking in
Guatemala. His mother posted about it on Bluesky a couple of days ago
https://bsky.app/profile/voter.bsky.social/post/3llp6vre3gk2s <https://
bsky.app/profile/voter.bsky.social/post/3llp6vre3gk2s>
I've been sitting tight on the information (which I learned from my
board involvement with EVC, where he was also a board member). But now
that I know the information is public information, I figured it'd be
okay to share it with y'all.
Jameson was a tireless force in the electoral-reform community, and
accomplished a lot. Like many of us, he liked to tinker around the
edges of election methods, hoping to find big breakthroughs and
insights. He actually had many big insights, coming up with some very
interesting methods, such as PLACE
https://electowiki.org/wiki/PLACE https://electowiki.org/wiki/PLACE
...as well as 3-2-1 voting:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/3-2-1_voting <https://electowiki.org/
wiki/3-2-1_voting>
He didn't just come up with new methods. He also followed through on
advocacy. He came up with "E Pluribus Hugo" and got the folks who dole
out the Hugo Awards to use it:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/E_Pluribus_Hugo <https://electowiki.org/
wiki/E_Pluribus_Hugo>
You'll notice there's a lot of electowiki.org http://electowiki.org
links, rather than wiki.electorama.com http://wiki.electorama.com
links. That's because Jameson helped light a fire under my ass, making
sure that the folks in /r/EndFPTP had a wiki for discussions there.
When they migrated electowiki over to Miraheze, I made a point of
registering electowiki.org http://electowiki.org, and worked with them
to make electowiki.org http://electowiki.org a continuation of
wiki.electorama.com http://wiki.electorama.com (rather than a fork).
I could detail more about that, but I want to keep this email about
Jameson. I don't know exactly what Jameson's role was, but I know he
was critical, and I appreciate it in retrospect.
Jameson and I always had cordial conversations, and I think/hope y'all
didn't get TOO bent out of shape when you had conversations with him.
He was a genuinely nice guy, and didn't seem to like the rancor that
many of us seem to tolerate. I'm assuming none of us LIKE the rancor,
but there was a point one time when I was getting a little bent out of
shape about something with a mutual electoral-reform colleague, and he
took the time to have a video chat with me to make sure that things were
okay. He was a good guy.
And all of this is to say Jameson was a pretty cool dude, and I'll miss
him for sure. I'm assuming many of you will miss him too, and I suspect
the world is going to learn to miss him as we discover some of his old
writings. Rest in peace, dude!
Rob
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info
I attended the WorldCons at which E Pluribus Hugo was proposed, accepted, and first used. On first reading the description I was like, "Hey, I know that guy from Election-Methods!" I have no doubt it was successful in its intended purpose of blunting the influence of certain people who were acting in bad faith at that time.
Very sorry to hear of his death. A great loss.
--pH
From: Election-Methods election-methods-bounces@lists.electorama.com On Behalf Of Rob Lanphier
Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2025 1:42 AM
To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com
Subject: [EM] Jameson Quinn was a pretty cool dude
Hi everyone,
It breaks my heart to have to break the news to many of you, but a longtime participant of the election-methods list was involved in a terrible accident. Jameson Quinn died on March 23 while hiking in Guatemala. His mother posted about it on Bluesky a couple of days ago
https://bsky.app/profile/voter.bsky.social/post/3llp6vre3gk2s
I've been sitting tight on the information (which I learned from my board involvement with EVC, where he was also a board member). But now that I know the information is public information, I figured it'd be okay to share it with y'all.
Jameson was a tireless force in the electoral-reform community, and accomplished a lot. Like many of us, he liked to tinker around the edges of election methods, hoping to find big breakthroughs and insights. He actually had many big insights, coming up with some very interesting methods, such as PLACE
https://electowiki.org/wiki/PLACE
...as well as 3-2-1 voting:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/3-2-1_voting
He didn't just come up with new methods. He also followed through on advocacy. He came up with "E Pluribus Hugo" and got the folks who dole out the Hugo Awards to use it:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/E_Pluribus_Hugo
You'll notice there's a lot of electowiki.orghttp://electowiki.org/ links, rather than wiki.electorama.comhttp://wiki.electorama.com/ links. That's because Jameson helped light a fire under my ass, making sure that the folks in /r/EndFPTP had a wiki for discussions there. When they migrated electowiki over to Miraheze, I made a point of registering electowiki.orghttp://electowiki.org/, and worked with them to make electowiki.orghttp://electowiki.org/ a continuation of wiki.electorama.comhttp://wiki.electorama.com/ (rather than a fork). I could detail more about that, but I want to keep this email about Jameson. I don't know exactly what Jameson's role was, but I know he was critical, and I appreciate it in retrospect.
Jameson and I always had cordial conversations, and I think/hope y'all didn't get TOO bent out of shape when you had conversations with him. He was a genuinely nice guy, and didn't seem to like the rancor that many of us seem to tolerate. I'm assuming none of us LIKE the rancor, but there was a point one time when I was getting a little bent out of shape about something with a mutual electoral-reform colleague, and he took the time to have a video chat with me to make sure that things were okay. He was a good guy.
And all of this is to say Jameson was a pretty cool dude, and I'll miss him for sure. I'm assuming many of you will miss him too, and I suspect the world is going to learn to miss him as we discover some of his old writings. Rest in peace, dude!
Rob
I don't check in that often, so I just saw this. I'm devastated. Jameson
was one of the best. I started corresponding with him in 2010 and he was
open minded and creative. The world has lost a lot.
May his memory always be a blessing.
On Wed, Apr 2, 2025, 23:42 Rob Lanphier roblan@gmail.com wrote:
Hi everyone,
It breaks my heart to have to break the news to many of you, but a
longtime participant of the election-methods list was involved in a
terrible accident. Jameson Quinn died on March 23 while hiking in
Guatemala. His mother posted about it on Bluesky a couple of days ago
https://bsky.app/profile/voter.bsky.social/post/3llp6vre3gk2s
I've been sitting tight on the information (which I learned from my board
involvement with EVC, where he was also a board member). But now that I
know the information is public information, I figured it'd be okay to share
it with y'all.
Jameson was a tireless force in the electoral-reform community, and
accomplished a lot. Like many of us, he liked to tinker around the edges
of election methods, hoping to find big breakthroughs and insights. He
actually had many big insights, coming up with some very interesting
methods, such as PLACE
https://electowiki.org/wiki/PLACE
...as well as 3-2-1 voting:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/3-2-1_voting
He didn't just come up with new methods. He also followed through on
advocacy. He came up with "E Pluribus Hugo" and got the folks who dole out
the Hugo Awards to use it:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/E_Pluribus_Hugo
You'll notice there's a lot of electowiki.org links, rather than
wiki.electorama.com links. That's because Jameson helped light a fire
under my ass, making sure that the folks in /r/EndFPTP had a wiki for
discussions there. When they migrated electowiki over to Miraheze, I made
a point of registering electowiki.org, and worked with them to make
electowiki.org a continuation of wiki.electorama.com (rather than a
fork). I could detail more about that, but I want to keep this email about
Jameson. I don't know exactly what Jameson's role was, but I know he was
critical, and I appreciate it in retrospect.
Jameson and I always had cordial conversations, and I think/hope y'all
didn't get TOO bent out of shape when you had conversations with him. He
was a genuinely nice guy, and didn't seem to like the rancor that many of
us seem to tolerate. I'm assuming none of us LIKE the rancor, but there
was a point one time when I was getting a little bent out of shape about
something with a mutual electoral-reform colleague, and he took the time to
have a video chat with me to make sure that things were okay. He was a
good guy.
And all of this is to say Jameson was a pretty cool dude, and I'll miss
him for sure. I'm assuming many of you will miss him too, and I suspect
the world is going to learn to miss him as we discover some of his old
writings. Rest in peace, dude!
Rob
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
I just saw that there is an online obituary if anyone wants to read it. https://obituaries.rwcpulse.com/obituaries/memorials/jameson-quinn?o=8976
Toby
On Thursday 3 April 2025 at 12:46:41 BST, Toby Pereira tdp201b@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
This is very sad news to hear and it is a great loss. I had quite a bit of communication with Jameson in the past because of our shared interest of cardinal proportional methods and I always enjoyed his insightful contributions. He is also the only person from the "voting method community" that I have ever met in person.
Toby
On Thursday 3 April 2025 at 07:42:57 BST, Rob Lanphier roblan@gmail.com wrote:
Hi everyone,
It breaks my heart to have to break the news to many of you, but a longtime participant of the election-methods list was involved in a terrible accident. Jameson Quinn died on March 23 while hiking in Guatemala. His mother posted about it on Bluesky a couple of days agohttps://bsky.app/profile/voter.bsky.social/post/3llp6vre3gk2s
I've been sitting tight on the information (which I learned from my board involvement with EVC, where he was also a board member). But now that I know the information is public information, I figured it'd be okay to share it with y'all.
Jameson was a tireless force in the electoral-reform community, and accomplished a lot. Like many of us, he liked to tinker around the edges of election methods, hoping to find big breakthroughs and insights. He actually had many big insights, coming up with some very interesting methods, such as PLACEhttps://electowiki.org/wiki/PLACE
...as well as 3-2-1 voting:https://electowiki.org/wiki/3-2-1_voting
He didn't just come up with new methods. He also followed through on advocacy. He came up with "E Pluribus Hugo" and got the folks who dole out the Hugo Awards to use it:https://electowiki.org/wiki/E_Pluribus_Hugo
You'll notice there's a lot of electowiki.org links, rather than wiki.electorama.com links. That's because Jameson helped light a fire under my ass, making sure that the folks in /r/EndFPTP had a wiki for discussions there. When they migrated electowiki over to Miraheze, I made a point of registering electowiki.org, and worked with them to make electowiki.org a continuation of wiki.electorama.com (rather than a fork). I could detail more about that, but I want to keep this email about Jameson. I don't know exactly what Jameson's role was, but I know he was critical, and I appreciate it in retrospect.
Jameson and I always had cordial conversations, and I think/hope y'all didn't get TOO bent out of shape when you had conversations with him. He was a genuinely nice guy, and didn't seem to like the rancor that many of us seem to tolerate. I'm assuming none of us LIKE the rancor, but there was a point one time when I was getting a little bent out of shape about something with a mutual electoral-reform colleague, and he took the time to have a video chat with me to make sure that things were okay. He was a good guy.
And all of this is to say Jameson was a pretty cool dude, and I'll miss him for sure. I'm assuming many of you will miss him too, and I suspect the world is going to learn to miss him as we discover some of his old writings. Rest in peace, dude!
Rob----
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info
Thanks for sharing that, Toby. Your email inspired me to replace the
too-stubby stub article I had written on electowiki about Jameson Quinn
with a better(-ish) stub. I would love help from all y'all fleshing out
the article:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Jameson_Quinn
Maybe one day we'll have an article good enough to be copied over to
English Wikipedia. If anyone has mainstream media articles about Jameson,
please share them here and/or on electowiki.
Rob
On Tue, May 13, 2025 at 3:22 PM Toby Pereira tdp201b@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
I just saw that there is an online obituary if anyone wants to read it.
https://obituaries.rwcpulse.com/obituaries/memorials/jameson-quinn?o=8976
Toby
On Thursday 3 April 2025 at 12:46:41 BST, Toby Pereira <
tdp201b@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
This is very sad news to hear and it is a great loss. I had quite a bit of
communication with Jameson in the past because of our shared interest of
cardinal proportional methods and I always enjoyed his insightful
contributions. He is also the only person from the "voting method
community" that I have ever met in person.
Toby
On Thursday 3 April 2025 at 07:42:57 BST, Rob Lanphier roblan@gmail.com
wrote:
Hi everyone,
It breaks my heart to have to break the news to many of you, but a
longtime participant of the election-methods list was involved in a
terrible accident. Jameson Quinn died on March 23 while hiking in
Guatemala. His mother posted about it on Bluesky a couple of days ago
https://bsky.app/profile/voter.bsky.social/post/3llp6vre3gk2s
I've been sitting tight on the information (which I learned from my board
involvement with EVC, where he was also a board member). But now that I
know the information is public information, I figured it'd be okay to share
it with y'all.
Jameson was a tireless force in the electoral-reform community, and
accomplished a lot. Like many of us, he liked to tinker around the edges
of election methods, hoping to find big breakthroughs and insights. He
actually had many big insights, coming up with some very interesting
methods, such as PLACE
https://electowiki.org/wiki/PLACE
...as well as 3-2-1 voting:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/3-2-1_voting
He didn't just come up with new methods. He also followed through on
advocacy. He came up with "E Pluribus Hugo" and got the folks who dole out
the Hugo Awards to use it:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/E_Pluribus_Hugo
You'll notice there's a lot of electowiki.org links, rather than
wiki.electorama.com links. That's because Jameson helped light a fire
under my ass, making sure that the folks in /r/EndFPTP had a wiki for
discussions there. When they migrated electowiki over to Miraheze, I made
a point of registering electowiki.org, and worked with them to make
electowiki.org a continuation of wiki.electorama.com (rather than a
fork). I could detail more about that, but I want to keep this email about
Jameson. I don't know exactly what Jameson's role was, but I know he was
critical, and I appreciate it in retrospect.
Jameson and I always had cordial conversations, and I think/hope y'all
didn't get TOO bent out of shape when you had conversations with him. He
was a genuinely nice guy, and didn't seem to like the rancor that many of
us seem to tolerate. I'm assuming none of us LIKE the rancor, but there
was a point one time when I was getting a little bent out of shape about
something with a mutual electoral-reform colleague, and he took the time to
have a video chat with me to make sure that things were okay. He was a
good guy.
And all of this is to say Jameson was a pretty cool dude, and I'll miss
him for sure. I'm assuming many of you will miss him too, and I suspect
the world is going to learn to miss him as we discover some of his old
writings. Rest in peace, dude!
Rob
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info