Email addresses mangled to defuse spambots; you must un-mangle.
1: Smith, Warren D. warren.wds (in; gmail /dot- com;631-675-6128; 21 Shore Oaks Drive, Stony Brook , NY, USA 11790; CRV founder. Mathematician.
2: Kok, Jan jan.kok.5y (at- gmail /dot- com;Fort Collins, CO, USA 80528; CRV co-founder. Voting reform activist since 2000. Served as Troubleshooter for a large voting center in 2004 general election. Electrical and software engineer. Libertarian, but I believe that most alternative parties share several common goals that we should work on together, in particular, implementing better voting methods for public elections. Toastmaster. Currently doing public relations and recruiting for CRV in my spare time, but I would welcome help from others.
3: Ossipoff, Mike
4: Salomon, Joel C.
6: Frank, Michael P. Tallahassee, FL, USA 32303; Studied a little about voting theory during grad school. Strong programmer (Int'l ACM contest winner), but not up on all the latest whizzy software technologies. Democrat. Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at a College of Engineering. Background in computer science and electrical engineering. Joining because I feel strongly that the Range Voting movement is a noble cause, and I'd like to see it succeed. I would like to see an eloquent range-voting proponent land an nationally broadcast TV interview (perhaps Jon Stewart on the Daily Show would be sympathetic to the cause).
8: Cranshaw Simon
9: Heinonen Toni Finnish libertarian party, Finnish direct democracy organization (nivalta)
13: Mckenzie jmckenzie_10 -in] hotmail (dot; com;514-768-9054; apple way, mcqueen, ca, USA 90210; i have no skills and just want to see the answer to one puzzle because its really bugging me and im not even an american.
15: Aaron Krowne Fields: computer science, mathematics, economics Research areas: digital libraries, information retrieval, social computing, machine learning Skills: technical management, programming, writing (formal and informal), investing I run a nonprofit and am involved in a number of commercial startup ventures, all centering around computer, web services, networks, and the like. My "day job" is Head of Digital Library Research, at Emory University, Atlanta, GA. It is a research faculty position. I lead the technical development of digital library grant projects. I am a member of no party, but I consider myself unadulteratedly libertarian, philosophically. I am joining because I am very much behind this cause. It is probably the most important issue for this country, but agonizingly, no one knows it. I dont have any changes to suggest yet. At some point you'll probably want to get someone with graphics skills to polish up the site, but I think you know that. In terms of outreach: I think probably the most effective thing there will be to do, as soon as possible, is to get buy-in from established progressive groups, to leverage them to evangelize the cause.
17: Kenck, Tony I am very interested in election methods, believing that our current system is the root of MANY evils.
19: Welland, Matt I am putting together a web site, http://www.kiatoa.com, where I hope to promote things that make for a better world. I was promoting approval voting but now that I understand range voting I will shift to it. Please add more material to your site that explains how range voting works. It took me too much time to figure it out. You can safely assume I will not be the only slow person accessing your site :-)
21: Foster, William K.
22: Meeks, W. Scott wsmeeks (at/ alum (.) mit [dot- edu;
24: Henriques Rodrigo rodrigoaga [at] gmail -dot, com;I would love to help CRV translate the entire site to protuguese. We do need to spread the word around .
25: Altay, Gabriel Im a physics PhD student who would like to do something that has a chance of impacting the world. What Ive read on the rangevoting pages makes a lot of sense to me, so Id like to help out if I can. Im on a campus, and Id like to do something that would get a large population of voters thinking about this issue. This is a GOOD idea
26: holzmeyer kristen dewick1 -at; hotmail [., com;809-2837; 6084 hester hall,
27: Stewart; Charles Bruce, Stewart; Charles Bruce charles ;at) constitutionalgov [dot- us;Sandy, Oregon, USA 97055; I have developed my own range-voting program. It is working and available for use here: http://christiancommonlaw-gov.org/index.php I would like to share my work with others of similar concern. People of sincere concern on these issues need to communicate with each other about optimal strategy for implementing these desperately-needed improvements. I am dedicated to this work. I request concerned people in this forum to contact me so that we may work together towards these ends. Charles ...
28: Lauser, Benjamin I'm a graduate student in the mathematics department at the University of Maryland, College Park. I think gerrymandering and plurality voting are obstacles to a truly representative government. Anything that reduces political gamesmanship and increases true choice for the population is a good idea.
29: Collins, Frank Fort Mill, SC, USA 29715;
30: Shreckhise, Scott
31: Unger, Stephen H.
32: Hiegel, Joseph Greenfield, WI, USA 53220;
33: bernard b carman, bernard b carman bbc /at) infinitygames (., com;asheville, nc, USA 28801; i'm an audio engineer, as well as a Macintosh consultant. i'm also a co-founder of the Libertarian Reform Caucus (LRC). over the past year or so, i've become more interested in learning about the strengths and weaknesses of various voting systems. as far as i can tell it seems RV is the way to go, unless there is no computer being used and only a simple voting round is warranted, in such case, Approval Voting would suffice. i am interested in the possibilities of advocating a test county in NC for RV. thus far, there is apparently an allowance for there to be a test of IRV in certain counties for certain races, and i'm looking into this. i hope to somehow encourage RV to also be considered. on this Range Voting site, i would like to see another example on the fron page like the one we have adopted on our LRC site. it uses the -5 to +5 scale, having 0 be neutral. while i understand the upshot is identical, i feel that using negative & positive numbers, the voter can more clearly understand how his vote affects the outcome. otherwise, using all positive numbers might give the impression that the voter is "giving" points to a candidate, unless they choose zero (0). also, it's nice to use an odd number of points on the scale, in order to create a perfect "neutral". also, i believe the simpler examples should be first. the 0-99 range is extremely excessive using such a fine degree of scale, and might serve to run off newcomers to the simplicity of RV. it seems RV would be a much easier sell to Americans across the board if the organization focused on keeping it as simple as possible. details regarding other versions of RV can be left to those who wish to "dig deeper". if RV was ever really implemented in political elections, it also seems that people would prefer a smaller scale - like a 5 or 7 point scale. most people cannot very accurately decide the difference between a +2 or +3 on the 11 point scale we've adopted in the LRC. if even a 7 point scale was adopted, it's so much easier to determine the range of approval/disapproval when there are only 3 points above and below the neutral (0). among polling several LRC members, the 5 point scale was preferred for simplicity, while i was pushing for a 7 point scale for a compromise. apparently, our webmaster was persuaded by some RV "gurus" to adopt the 10 point (or actually, 11 point) scale i presume for consistancy with this website. regardless, i'm quite happy that there is a group of people advocating RV. i wish there was an easy way to convince the IRV advocates, which seem to have more momentum thus far. it seems relatively easy to convince most folks in general when they understand that they already know about RV from the Olympics, entertainment, the school grading system, movie rating, and rating the opposite sex! 8-)
35: Cooper, Matt Computer specialist, MBA, financial analyst. Done computer work on various campaigns since 79. Also interested in gerrymandering research. Have you pursued alliances with other election groups, such as league of women voters?
37: Paul Gordon, Paul Gordon I've never been political and largely ignored politics for most of my life. We're raised from birth to laud America as this special, wonderful place where morality and benevolence and democracy rules; last summer I was in for a shock when I finally started becoming interested in history and current events and realized how different this nation is from how we are encouraged to think of it. Even before Iraq, the US has engaged in the most frivolous, inexcusable, unconscionable massacres. The disconnect from what people think their government stands for, and the long-standing reality of our foreign policy appears to be a striking and massive failure of democracy. I became to care deeply about politics and asked why this could be. After a few months of research it seemed to me that the US is suffering from three major problems, the first of which may not be obvious but I would argue is the largest and greatest threat - monetary policy, a deeply compromised mass media, and a mostly broken democratic system. Range voting seeks to directly address one of these problems, and could possibly go a long way to solving the other two. I've reached the point in my life where it isn't enough just to work, I want what I do to mean something. I am rather experienced in software architecture (see my LinkedIn profile). I dont know if there is a need for that in the CRV movement, but as Im currently on sabbatical Im free to do as I wish. I wouldnt mind at all taking my life in a new direction that has nothing to do with computers. Do you need another volunteer?
38: Sauceda Salazar Eduardo
42: Lomax, Abd ul-Rahman Hey, you know! I am really just checking to see if I already registered.
43: Devin Ray Freeman I'm a member of the Libertarian Party, and an active member of the Libertarian Reform Caucus. I'm joining to offer my services for promoting Range. I'm a skilled and experienced translator. I've ample experience in Russian and Swahili translation. I'm currently capable though rusty in these. My Korean is currently very good. I'm willing and able to put pro-Range concepts into Korean.
44: Lawrence, John C j.c.lawrence [in] cox ,dot, net;Your website was brought to my attention by someone who was perusing my website - http://www.socialchoiceandbeyond.com - and noticed that I had come up with a similar method of voting to RV. I've since put in a link to RV. My background in common with many of your members is also in computer science. My primary interest is in proving that social choice (contrary to the work of Kenneth Arrow and almost 60 years of literature)is not impossible. This would then open the door, theoretically, to an acceptance of new voting methods and economic models. The current acceptance of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem leads to an acceptance of the status quo and a defeatist attitude toward changing current political and/or economic models. I think that extended choices, both politically and economically, will result in greater freedom and democracy. The computer has a definite role in amalgamating and processing the concomitant increased volume of data. I am conceptually developing a political/economic system I call preferensism based on expressing individual preferences over a range of options which is similar to range voting. I also have a blog - http://willblogforfood.typepad.com - which deals, partiall, with some of these same issues and ideas. I look forward to participating with you to carry these ideas forward!
45: Bramscher, Paul I've got a B.S. in Computer Science, and work as a programmer at the Digital Library Development Lab, in the Science & Engineering Library at the University of Minnesota. In addition to about 10 years in IT and a strong algorithmic background, I've got a B.A. in Anthropology & History with some graduate work. I've got a strong interest in current events, political philosophy, nature writing, and camping/roadtripping. My political inclinations have evolved from the Democratic Party, an interest in Marxism while attending college, then the Green Party. I've now begun to disengage from them and, in fact, wish that we had no such thing as partisanship at all. Just open debate between the merits multiple good policy alternatives -- not manufactured personalities, umbrellas, power cartels, etc. which partisanship seems to entail, curb, scope, etc. One of my chief concerns with the Green Party here in Minnesota is that they've not even really debated the merits of alternatives to the current voting system. IRV just seems to have popped out of nowhere, with no debate possible. They are gaining some momentum here (http://www.betterballotcampaign.org/node/254), but when I emailed a polite inquiry to one of the Green Party activists involved on it (Darrell Gerber), who I've met in-person before, I got no response whatsoever. It's rather odd -- we all agree that the current system is broken, but shouldn't we at least open an honest debate on something new? I tend to see the purpose of voting as a political sampling mechanism (ideally comprehensive/complete). Range is clearly superior mathematically for reasons spelled out well by others. It mainly boils down to the capability of capturing the distance between preferences, rather than collapsing them all into equal weight (IRV's artifice -- an unsound handicap). Under IRV, some distances are magnified, whereas others are minimized (blindly, by the system). I may be more of a math nerd than most people, but I can't see how IRV has eclipsed the (superior) Range Vote in light of these significant problems.
46: Welland Matthew I believe that there are three fundamental requirements for the United States to NOT degenerate into some form of fascism or religious or military state: 1. A strategy resistant voting methodology (of which I believe Range Voting is the most promising). 2. A taxation system that is just and fosters economic development, the only system that meets that criterion to the best of my knowledge is the Henry George single tax (www.henry-george.org). 3. An education system that teaches a wide range of ideas and viewpoints while not necessarily expecting or requiring students to agree. I am building a web site which will (hopefully) illustrate the best known ways to meet those criteria by embodying them in the fabric of the site itself. The ultimate goal is that the site achieves stable self governingship and I can safely release it from my control without it degenerating into a flame-infested mess. The current (broken) incarnation is at www.kiatoa.com but a new version is under development. I will be building range voting into the new site and will point back to rangevoting.org for reference.
48: Kolar Miroslav
51: arumugam vadivel
52: plunkett, michael o. michaeloplunkett [in, hotmail ,dot; com;The right to vote is not mentioned in the constitution. It is derived from the right of association for the redress of grievances. Range voting is the best system I know of to permit voters to demonstrate true support of all parties and candidates, which promotes the right of association. I have long thought any restrictive voting system can and should be challlenged in court for the above reason. JD Florida '66
54: Ken , PA, USA 18901; I am a concerned citizen outraged by the current state of electoral politics. CRV seems to offer a realistic way to quickly and measurably improve the voting system and re-engage Americans. If range voting were ever to be adopted I think millions more Americans would go to the polls and our process would be more responsive to the people as opposed as to corporations and special interests. I also support publicly funded elections and/or blind trusts for contributions to a candidate such that they will never know where campaign contributions come from. I don't have any particular political or organizational skills, but I am willing to help promote this concept in my area.
56: Baumann Eduard Recreational geometric problems
58: Vaughn, William 585-271-7246; 64 Beekman Pl., Researcher in Neurology at Univ. of Rochester Interested in voting theory, apportionment, redistricting issues. Degree in mathematics. Independent voter. The more I learn about RV, the more I like it. Was on the IRV bandwagon several years ago until I found out more about it. At least it has stirred up some action for voting reform. Just have to figure out how to make those people realize they need to switch to something better, such as RV. After IRV, hoever, I switched to Condorcet and then Borda. Still think that Borda is the best preference-ballot system as long as "indifferent" preferences are allowed. I've noticed that most descriptions of Borda don't allow this. I have developed a system I call the "Bell-ballot" system that extends preference voting and uses a Borda-like method for finding the "best" aggregate preference(which can be "partial"). Hoping to use your bulletin board to present my ideas. Also I want to find out some of the puzzle answers :-)
59: Bottman, Nate natebottman (at) gmail -dot, com;(206) 526-5777; 6031 50th Avenue NE, Seattle, WA, USA 98115-7703;
60: Baumann Robert
61: Konecky-Chad I'm a journalist interested in the range voting movement
62: Katina
64: Buck, Will
67: Rogers I'm an attorney who reveres our Constitution, but I do dislike our current system of voting on both a local and federal level and would like to see some effort made towards amending the Constitution to avoid farces such as the 2000 election. Range voting sounds very interesting.
68: Baldwin, Gary
69: Boschert, Tyler
71: Swearingen, Worth I have no special skills, but I do have an immense frustration with the anti-democratic biases of current voting system. Right now, I'm trying to decide whether to vote conscience or lesser of evils in the Democratic primary. In the fall, my vote will mean nothing, but I'll cast it anyway.
72: Zuckerman Evan I'm a Floridian lawyer who is tired of having our state be the laughingstock of the political community and also frustrated with the resistance to fairness and equity in governmental operations.
74: Jaroski, Mark I can do computer programming in a number of languages, notably Perl and PHP, C and C++, and have experience building large websites, in a midsize to large team environment. I've been working a lot with RDF and other semantic web data handling, mining, and processing techniques. I've worked for international organizations, and have gained some insights on the nature of beurocracy, and diplomacy.
75: Neill, Jason I'm actually just joining to get accsess to the puzzles to see if my system can beat the puzzles that range voting can't.
77: Gohlke, Fred fredgohlke /at- verizon /dot] net;732-541-7029; 30 Bernath Street, Carteret, NJ, USA 07008;
79: Rudd, Jack
81: Baumann Eduard Hi Warren, I made a mistake in my last e-mail. In Puzzle #66 T4 is not best (not T5). Kind regards Ed
83: Lederer Sol
84: Dickinson, Robert Sewickley, PA, USA 15143; Interested in better participation by populace in elections and in increasing satisfaction with electoral system by increasing options and increasing election of compromise candidates and decreasing two-party domination. I can offer my skills in programming: both desktop and web systems.
87: Weller, Ian Skills: One year of college-level statistics, web design and programming, Linux (Fedora- and Red Hat-based distros), Python, PHP, MySQL, (X)HTML, CSS.
88: Gatton, Phil I am a politically independent professional six sigma black belt (read: statistics wonk). I have long been frustrated by a voting system that narrows choice and marginalizes important minorities. Every election, it seems, turns into a false dichotomy that masks what people really think. The idea of range voting needs to get more attention on the national stage. It will take a long time for the system to change, so the sooner the idea gets out there, the better.
90: Mendoza, Gabriel
91: Freeman Devin Ray
93: Richardson, Greg Ph.D. economist, old student of Social Choice theory. I find what you're doing here pretty exciting. I'm teaching a course in Game Theory, with a detour into "strategic voting" situations this semester.
97: Hirsch-Shell, Dylan I'm currently a PhD student in neuroscience at UCLA. I earned a BS in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and a BS in Brain & Cognitive Sciences from MIT in 2003. I can write computer programs, read and understand mathematical arguments, and write fairly well. I came across CRV randomly while reading the comments on Digg.com about an article on Cynthia McKinney endorsing IRV. Politically speaking, I recently became a member of the State Central Committee of the Peace and Freedom Party in California in order to help secure their nomination of Ralph Nader for President and Matt Gonzalez for Vice President in 2008. I'm hoping that I might be able to convince the P&F Party to adopt range voting at their next convention (they currently use STV) and possibly leverage the party infrastructure to help initiate a drive to get the CRV's ballot initiative on a future California state ballot. As of yet, I'm not sure how feasible either of these goals are.
99: bothwell, charles I am a strong advocate for discontinuing gerrymandering. How can I help make a difference?
101: Carson, Matt I agree that a change in voting system would result in a massive improvement. I also agree that I don't know how to move forward with it. I'm not totally convinced that advocating range over approval is the best way forward, simply because it'd be harder to teach people range, and approval requires absolutely no change to existing plurality ballots (your demo has 10 buttons per candidate, most ballots I've seen have one...) But I have thought about this a lot, and I have a counting system for approval with multiple candidates that I think would work. (Would let us fix gerrymandering at the same time) And I'd love to figure out a way to make progress getting range or approval adopted.
102: Amatic, crispin i want to join becuase in want to know what are the answers of probably?
103: Amatic, crispin we are just joining
105: Anderson, Lowell Bruce
107: Bresee Alexander I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore.
108: Lawrence, T.J. Forest Grove, OR, USA 97116; Libertarian that doesn't have much time... but really would like to see some reform on this issue.
109: Sheldon, Dale I read "Gaming the Vote" and I'm convinced. Previously, I was a strong Condorcet-method advocate, but Baysian regret and the experimental conclusion that RV is more likley to elect an honest Condorcet winner than any Condorcet method have changed my mind. I've talked the ears off of all my friends already; the next step is convincing others.
110: Sarah Colburn College student interested in studying the relevant material to the Political Science Major
111: boner im a baller
112: B Andra
113: Martinez Frank Software Engineer (and all-around problem Solver) with a M.Sc. in Physics from Lehigh University. I am joining because I believe Range Voting presents a superior electoral system than the current 'First Past the Post' technique used currently in most elections throughout the United States.
115: Baumann Eduard
118: jozsef
119: jozsef
120: Kolacinski, Joseph jkolacinski -at- elmira ;dot] edu;I'm an assistant professor of mathematics at Elmira College in upstate New York. I've been interested in Voting Theory for some time; I gave a talk on alternative results for the 2004 Presidential Election at MATHFEST in 2005. I am currently doing research in this area and like the idea of connecting with other mathematicians with similar interests. I'm not sure if Range Voting is the answer; but I think I agree with you about the questions. I'm impressed by the breath of information you have available on your site. If I could change anything, I would make the tone of the site more professional in places (like where you dismiss a potential set of voters as "stupid").
122: Chung, Yong Woo jabricruds -in] hotmail -./ com;1-604-984-3163; 2401 3970 Carrigan Court, Vancovuer, , Canada v3n 4s5; As of 2009-aug-6. I'm an unemployed person who likes politics, mathematics, and voting systems. I'd like to contribute by helping with discussion and mathematics topics. I like Range voting because it's a top contender for future democratic republics.
124: Neal McBurnett, Neal McBurnett Boulder, CO, USA 80303; I put up the first approval voting site on the web, back in 1995, working with Brams. Guru in election auditing. Wrote ElectionAudits (open source), presented at conferences etc.
126: Sean Walker crazy.gold.shield ;at] gmail /dot- com;It would be nice if the site had a better layout. Also, I'm mostly joining to check the puzzle stuff.
127: Walker, Sean
129: Chrisco Craig Lee
130: Chrisco Craig Lee I am sorry, but I have no special skills for you. I am just a guy who started to attend University after High School, but ran out of money and had to take a job in a restaurant. Here is a little about myself: I am an independent sick of having to choose the lesser of 2 evils. Understandably, that is not that much of a problem any more: With the unholy alliance between the theocrats, election-companies, defense-contractors, and neocons, I just vote Democratic because the Democrats just take brides and steal public money. It is so convenient to just know which party is the lesser of the evils. ¡Thanks Republicans for making my job as a voter so easy! I finished most of my foundational coursework and requirements before I ran out of money and left University. In the restaurant, I worked every position. I current mostly cashier. I live in Petaluma, California. I am a native English-speaker. I taught myself Esperanto: ¿Ĉu vi scipovas paroli la lingvon internacian Esperanto? I speak some Spanish. I believe that the inverted punctuation the Spaniards invented is a great innovation. I use inverted punctuation. I use inverted punctuation in English and Esperantic texts which annoys everyone else. ¿What is your opinion about inverted punctuation? ;-) I join because I want to reform the system. I focused mainly on voter-verifiable papertails before because that is what kept the Republicans in power in the early and mid-2000s. Now that this battle is mostly won, it is time to improve the system in other ways, although it would be nice for a Federal mandate requiring voterverifiable papertrail because many redstaters are still screwed, and is part of why those states are still red. I thought about what could be changed and what cannot. Among things we cannot change, I would like to improve would be: * - Directly elect the President * - Eliminate termlimits but make all terms nonsequential. * - Eliminate age restrictions for offices. * - Elected Senators ever 2 years so that we have 150 Senators with 1 election for 6-year term happening ever 2 years so that each state will have 3 Senators. * - Set cloture in the Senate to 80 Senators. * - Add an House of Proportional Representation of Parties for parties with 1 hundred members. * - Add an House of Proportional Representation for Independents. * - Have elections to the Houses of Proportional Representation of Parties occur annually. * - Increase the size of the Supreme Court to 50 with 1 judge from each state. * - Require that judges for the Supreme Court to receive > 2/3rds of members of each house and of the states too (only the best of the best should be on the Supreme Court). These are all great ideas, but they require changes to the US-Constitution, so we have no hope of changing these. What can we hope to change: * - The voting system using local initiatives (politicians will never change the system which elected them). * - Redisticting. * - Church/State-Separation (If an American wants to live in a theocracy, that american should move to Saudi Arabia, where that former American can stone to death raped women for adultery — rape is sex outside of marriage which according to the Koran is adultery which according to the Koran is a stonable offense, so therefore, according to the Koran, the community should stone her to death. Religion and government do not mix.). * - Campaign-Finance: - Only registered voters — not corporations — can donate money. - Allowable annual contributions to 1kU$D annually per registered voter — no more millionaires buying politicians. Ballotaccesss primaries equal airtime * - Increase the size of the House of Representatives to 1 thousand. I investigated voting systems. None of them were any good. I created my list of requirements: * - The voting system must allow people to voter against bad choices. * - One should can cast fractional votes in addition to just negative -1, 0, and positive +1. Basically, I reinvented range-voting, but with the improvement of negative votes. Long ago, I learned that when I invent something, usually. I wonder how many people reinvent range-voting in the movement versus how many people in the movement stumble upon range-voting and decide that it is a good idea. someone already invented it. After some searching, I discovered range-voting. By the way, I believe that I understand why voting systems other than plurality generally and range-voting specifically have trouble getting traction: As Sir Francis Bacon would explain, it is a problem of “Idols of the Marketplace”. People take “One Man, one vote” too literally. That is why alternative voting systems face such problems when presented to people fed up with republcats and democans. Range-voting despite being the best system has more resistance than other voting systems because it allows less than an whole vote. Many people who understand that range-voting is best resist negative votes for the same reason. I also have an idea for ending Gerrymandering using computers for drawing the district. My idea is very different. It uses genetic algorithms. I have know idea whether it would work because I never tried it: 0 - Start with a plane slicing through the Earth in such a way as to create the smallest ellipse completely bounding the state. 1 - Choose a random point with the accuracy of arcseconds. 2 - Choose a random point 1 arcminute away from the first point rounded to the nearest arcsecond. 3 - Treat the second point as a vertex of a perfect hexagon with the first point being another vertex. 4 - Completely cover the ellipse with hexagons defined by the first 2 vertices. 5 - Label every vertex. 6 - Create a population based on the just created map with each vertex randomly shifted +/- 1 arcsecond latitude and +/- 1 arcsecond in longitude. Now we need a fitness metric: * - Every district over or under the proper number of districts is +1 points. * - The population of the most populous district divided by the least populous district is converted to points. * - Any excess in length of the portion of a district in the state over the smallest hexagon encompassing that area is converted to via how many times extra perimeter the hexagon has. * - Selection favors the lower number of points. * - All hexagons must be convex. The algorithm is simple: 0 - Randomly grab 3 individuals from the population. 1 - Determine the number of points each of these has. 2 - Kill the individual with the highest score or if a tie occurs, kill 1 of the individuals with the highest score randomly. 3 - Create 3 new individuals from the 2 parents by randomly swapping like vertices. 4 - Kill the parents. 5 - Have every vertex in the 3 new individuals randomly shift +/- 1 arcsecong in latitude and +/- 1 arcsenond in longitude. 6 - Throw the 3 new individuals back into the population. 7 - Return to step # 0. Over a few million generations, most vertices and the hexagons they define will drift off of the state; followed by the remaining hexagons changing size, shape, and orientation until they find a local optimum. The local optimum should be very good. Unfortunately, I am not sure since I never tried it. It is just one of my untested ideas. Skype
131: Levin, Ross I'm in high school; I blog at independentpoliticalreport.com, dailykos.com, lavidalocavore.org, docudharma.com, greenchange.org, and other sites; I work on the National Initiative for Democracy campaign; I've volunteered for various third party/independent political campaigns.
132: Youman youmanphotography ;at/ gmail /dot, com;I work as a professional photographer. I have worked for 3 political campaigns, with independent organizations. I also have my B.A. from Indiana State University in TV, Radio & Film and Journalism. I want not only a 3 party system, but 4 or 5! I want a true a Democracy!
133: McDonald, James jamestornaway ,in, hotmail ,dot; com;I hold a degree in Political Science and am working to obtain my MA in History. I am a registered Independent who is tired of seeing democracy get squashed because greedy, career politicians wish to re-draw district lines whenever it suits them and whenever they need to get re-elected. It honestly makes me sick to think about how bad the gerrymandering problem has become. I want to join your organization as a volunteer or whatever you need me to be because I strongly believe in what you guys are doing. Seriously, let me know what I can do to help. -James
134: Bernstein, Alan I am a graduate student in Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas. I have read a small part of your website, and I like what I have seen so far. I certainly believe that many aspects of our federal government could stand significant improvement - but I can't imagine what could be simpler and more effective than making this change to our voting system. I will gladly spread the word endorse your cause.
135: asdfsadfsadf "Type password to get answer:"??? Phone number? Email? For fucks sake - if you want to help the electorate - make your site open. Here are some puzzles for whoever runs this stupid site: 1. How many people have joined this site? 2. How many have been idiotic enough to share their private stuff with you? Sidebar - the layout of this site also sucks ass. The one constant that cannot be disproved is that human race has a level of stupidity that in limitless. Proof: "We need help. You have some useful skill, or know some useful person, or have some useful information, or just want to help us in some way, with voting reform." Betcha haven't gotten much help. Gee, I can't imagine why. The road is indeed paved with good intentions - the one that leads to hell.
136: Shimony, John M. I have no skills of any consequence. But if called upon I would not mind writing a letter or performing some such outreach for such a noble cause.
138: Scheving John I would like to help people become more aware of range voting and get it actually applied in elections on any and all levels. I am joining because I am thoroughly convinced that range voting is much, much better than plurality voting and other systems as well.
140: dfgs dfggsd
141: Townsend. Burke Retired professor of philosophy with an interest in improving voting and representation methods. Reasonably literate in formal and mathematical realms, but without serious skills to offer in these areas.
144: Hamlin, Aaron
147: Koch Warren, Koch Warren I am currently an undergraduate computer scientist at the University of Victoria, and am very interested in pursuing voting systems as a research topic, or possible career. I've done preliminary research, and Range Voting looks to be the most promising. I'm interested in implementing it on a website of my own design, yet to be made - perhaps with some minor changes. I am curious if it would be possible to consolidate votes of varying ranges (e.g. a vote on the {0,1} range, along with a vote in the {0...9} range), as I'd love to be able to let newcomers to the site use a simple "like/don't like" vote, and allow more experienced judges the option of more intricate votes. I would probably weigh the experienced judges' votes more as well, but I'd like to be able to separate weight and accuracy. I'm also interested in leadership elections through content - i.e. content is rated by viewers, creators of that content are rated in-turn by how good their content is and their vote count. Highly-rated users then have higher-rated votes, and the cycle continues. Those highly rated users then gain certain responsibilities for their community. That probably has nothing to do with range voting anymore. Hmmm... At any rate, I think promoting the adoption of range voting, or any system that optimizes Bayesian Regret or similar metrics, is absolutely crucial for society to function and survive. When you need help, I'm here. Keep up this vital work!
148: harry calder hmm...
149: harry calder hmm...
150: Ronaldus van Uden, Ronaldus van Uden 0416660766; Robrechtstraat 19, Heusden, The Netherlands, NB, The Netherlands 5256GN; Ronaldus van Uden (Ronaldus Hermanus Bartholomeus) friend of prof. dr. Henricus Cornelius Maria de Swart: Intuitionistic logic in intuitionistic metamathematics Software Developer, Physicist, as first education. I am a C++ programmer of algorithmic trading software with the Quantlib, Boost, Loki and STL libraries. I have developed a substantial system for the trading of options. I can mix of C++ and Java, but I prefer C++ because it is portable. I like highly efficient and reliable code, which is readable and well understood. My favorite working environment consists of a Kornshell and an Ion2 windows manager. A very active channel is the boost channel on the freenode irc network. Coding questions can be asked there. My gmail account is configured both for email and for jabber chat traffic. http://www.home.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=guestbook&id=273605 Specialties: software architecture, system security, system fault tolerance, data persistency
151: tewari Ishwar
152: Pratt David David_Pratt /in/ hotmail (.; co -.] uk;Grantham, , UK ; I'm 18 and just finishing high school in the UK, and hope to go onto do Philosophy, Politics and Economics at a top UK university. I read William Poundstone's 'Gaming the Vote', which analysed the most common voting systems, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each. It concluded by advocating Range Voting as the optimal voting system, and I agree with this conclusion. There's a movement for voting reform in the UK right now, but most advocates for it only propose a voting system that's more proportional than Plurality (which isn't hard to find); the most popular candidates include AV and STV. I'm confused as to why Range Voting hasn't been getting any press, and the politicians, nor voting reform advocates are pushing for it to be adopted.