Richard, I've been to your website already and have read about your method. My personal philosophy is that for legislatures, condorcet method is inadequate, but for executive offices like President and Governor, that a method that satisfies Condorcet's criterion is best. For issue seats like Secretary of State, BOLI, Treasurer, and any seat in the legislature, I believe the criterion should not be Condorcet's criterion, since the point is not to represent the candidate favored by most of the electorate. The point of a legislature should be proportional representation, and for a single-seat regional system like we have, IRV is my preferred method. In any case, all elections should have preference voting because single-choice, single-round elections are inherently filled with all sorts of negative consequences. Part of my opposition to Measure 65 is that while it doesn't actually ensure the Condorcet criterion is met, they claim that it elects "centrist" candidates. The evidence is to the contrary -- that extreme candidates often find their way to the top two. But even if they wanted to elect "centrists" to the legislature, the problem is that it removes all proportionality we currently have in the legislature. People claim partisanism is inherently bad, but parties are just people coming together expressing a common vision. They want to remove the ability of people to come together to put their candidate forward and instead have an election system where unlimited money limits allow the top two money-getters to end up in the top two, furthering the entrenchment of money in our election system. All that being said, I think there are more issues than single-seat "fairness" (which your method will do) to consider in elections -- there's proportionality of representation, which goes against "fairness" in a regional basis. To balance that, I'd be content with one house voted "fairly" in the sense of many single-seat regional proportional representation. and I'd support a lower house with an at-large proportional representation system such as party-line (method of equal proportions) or STV or Range-PR. That's "fair" by viewpoint/opinion to ensure we have a diversity of opinions creating the dialogue necessary for the regions to vote for. That would be a proper checks-and-balances system, in my mind. Seth Richard Fobes wrote: Seth Woolley ~ I too sent a letter to the editor of Willamette Week expressing disapproval of Measure 65. Your letter, coming from a current candidate, is more compelling, and therefore was the right one for them to publish. I've included a copy of mine below. It includes an example that I think you'll find interesting. I'll introduce myself by saying I live in Portland and I'm the author of "The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox." While writing that book I created a vote-counting method I now call VoteFair popularity ranking. I later learned that it's mathematically equivalent to the Kemeny (or Kemeny-Young) method, which is now correctly recognized as meeting the Condorcet criteria. Later still, I wrote a second book, "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections," in which I explain and promote VoteFair ranking (which also involves VoteFair representation ranking, VoteFair party ranking, and other refinements). I have a website at www.VoteFair.org. The most popular part of that site is the American Idol poll where about 1,000 people rank the contestants each week during the American Idol season. It has been a great way to educate lots of people about how voting -- and especially vote counting -- should be done. The software at that site (which I wrote) calculates VoteFair ranking results (for free). On Wikipedia I've been communicating with other voting-method experts. I also got involved in Ontario's attempt at election reform, and continue to communicate with others in Canada who are working for voting-method reform. In Canada, vote-splitting is more obvious because liberals split their votes between the Liberal party and the New Democratic party and end up unfairly losing riding-specific Parliament seats to the Conservative party. I did a radio interview here in Portland about my voting book, but didn't find much local interest in what I've been promoting. So I'm happy to see that a fellow Portlander is interested in true election reform. Inasmuch as we have a mutual desire to implement ranked-choice ballots (a.k.a. 1-2-3 ballots or order-of-preference ballots), I would be interested in talking with you about a possible future collaboration for true election reform. Of course you must be quite busy right now, so please contact me when you have time. Richard Fobes Author of "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections" 503-246-5067 Mark Zusman, WW Editor ~ Your election recommendations are excellent, with one exception. You support Measure 65, which would create "open primaries." If enacted, it would soon lead to bizarre results. Under that system, if four similar Democratic candidates and two similar Republican candidates ran in a district that has a slight majority of Democratic voters, vote splitting (see Wikipedia) would cause the two Republican candidates to win both of the "top two" spots, leaving no Democratic candidate in the general election. As the author of "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections," I have done the math, and open primaries don't add up. The flaw is the continued use of single-mark ballots, which are downright primitive in this age of computers. The way to fix (in the good sense) our broken election system is to use 1-2-3 ballots (which Wikipedia calls "preferential voting") and use a pairwise-counting method such as VoteFair ranking (explained at VoteFair.org). Using fairer ballots and a fairer counting method in both parties' primaries would finally enable us, the majority of voters, to elect problem-solving leaders instead of special-interest puppets. Richard Fobes - WebHost@VoteFair.org - www.SolutionsCreative.com Author of "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections" and "The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox"