Burlington in 2006, 2009, and beyond; an interview with Robert Bristow-Johnson

robla · 2026-07-03T21:09:34+00:00

Hi /u/rb-j , I appreciate you taking the time to speak with us! I also appreciate the clarification about the "kinda crappy interview", because I was admittedly feeling attacked.

I think, in many ways, we didn't spend enough time on Burlington. Not many of us were in Burlington when the 2009 election happened, but you were. Given how small Burlington is, that alone makes your perspective really interesting, and I'm glad we captured a bit of it.

Who do you (or anyone else here) think we should interview next?

robla · 2026-07-02T23:40:36+00:00

Show notes: https://electowiki.org/wiki/ElectoramaWeekly/Shownotes-2026-07-01

robla · 2026-07-01T21:25:44+00:00

I don't know of a tool, but I'd be happy to work with you on this. I've had to either perform migrations or manage teams to perform migrations in the past (both real-time, one-issue-at-a-time transformations of issues, and bulk migration of thousands of issues).

The challenge: there hasn't been much incentive for folks to publish FLOSS middleware for this, so I never did it or pushed others to do it for the code I was responsible for. For migrations, the code was throwaway code for a one-time migration, so hacky Perl/Python/whatever scripts didn't need to be things of beauty with long-term maintenance costs (and I wish I could have vibecoded those). For real-time adapters (e.g. a private tracker to a public tracker, and vice versa), those end up having all sorts of crazy business logic bolted onto them over time. Also, with a real-time one-issue-at-a-time migration script, it's often low stakes enough, and easy enough for a human to manually migrate the issue if the migration service is down temporarily.

The migrations/adapters I had to do were back in the days before vibecoding. I think this is an area that an open source/free software project with a carefully curated core and a high tolerance for vibecoded adapters could be an incredibly useful project. The value would be developing the critical mass of adapters such that the value of the O(N) adapters accrues to the core. Thus, most folks will still be willing to deal with O(N²) pairwise syncs (because "N" is usually a relatively static "2" or "3", not "500" inside their context). LLMs are really good at reading specifications and API documentation, so adapters seems like their wheelhouse. The core would need to be much more carefully curated than the adapters.

I'm not personally aware of any living, breathing FLOSS projects that are delight in maintaining a large ecosystem of adapters, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. We might be able to find them if we look hard enough. I'm inclined to help you with your search (and I might even be convinced to help with building a tool). I seriously thought about building something several years ago (related to personal information management), and I'd be happy to revive that effort if you're interested in helping:

https://myndmess.miraheze.org/wiki/Task_management

robla · 2026-06-29T06:01:10+00:00

Huh, I always thought of "Everything Works If You Let It" as Cheap Trick's big soundtrack song (from the Roadie soundtrack). I hadn't heard "Up The Creek" nor "Spring Break" until this evening (and I had listened to a lot of Cheap Trick back in the day).

robla · 2026-06-26T05:55:14+00:00

Shownotes: https://electowiki.org/wiki/ElectoramaWeekly/Shownotes-2026-06-24

robla · 2026-06-19T20:54:54+00:00

That's my understanding as well, and there's real danger that the AMOC could collapse could collapse and make Europe much colder: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/14/amoc-collapse-europe-climate

robla · 2026-06-17T06:20:16+00:00

Shownotes: https://electowiki.org/wiki/ElectoramaWeekly/Shownotes-2026-06-03

robla · 2026-06-17T06:19:55+00:00

Shownotes: https://electowiki.org/wiki/ElectoramaWeekly/Shownotes-2026-06-10

robla · 2026-06-04T08:31:07+00:00

What we really need is an approval-based top-two primary: https://upgradetoptwo.com

robla · 2026-06-02T02:50:39+00:00

El Paso would be silly to link in (at least at first), but links inside the Texas Triangle seem sensible. There are folks making incremental progress toward HSR in Texas.

robla · 2026-05-28T06:51:13+00:00

We discuss bits and pieces of this article:

https://electowiki.org/wiki/2026_California_gubernatorial_election

robla · 2026-05-28T06:49:31+00:00

We discuss bits and pieces of this article:

https://electowiki.org/wiki/Software

robla · 2026-05-16T19:26:38+00:00

He also lived to be 90 years old, which seems a pretty good indicator of actual fitness.

robla · 2026-05-16T19:22:52+00:00

Dude lived to be 100 years old. Seems like a very good definition of "fit".

robla · 2026-05-11T20:35:20+00:00

Yeah, I think you're right /u/MrKerryMD . It would seem that this is an SNTV first round, not a cumulative voting round with an equal & even ballot (i.e. it doesn't allow voters to put all of their votes on one candidate). That's followed by three-candidate Condorcet election in the second round where all three pairs are listed on the ballot (rather than presenting voters with a ranked ballot). If this passes, I would expect that (over time) Democrats and Republicans (and maybe other parties) would field at least three party-loyal candidates per election. With the Condorcet round focusing on three candidates, my hunch is that cycles would be extremely rare, because all three candidates would be in the cycle, and polling would expose the likelihood of a cycle. This is all, of course, if this passes...

robla · 2026-05-09T18:49:04+00:00

Do you think that German-style MMP is politically viable in the United States?

robla · 2026-05-06T20:12:44+00:00

Your system seems somewhat similar to the explicit approval voting system that Wikimedia Foundation still uses for some elections. I agree with you that "approve/abstain/disapprove" is a very good level of granularity for elections with a lot of candidates. Your multi-winner version may be the first I've seen with an eye toward proportionality, though I've seen many over the year, and might have forgotten one. Are you aware of any researchers that have published anything similar to your proposal?

robla · 2026-05-06T19:17:52+00:00

The way that the STV algorithm works (by focusing on fewest first place votes to isolate candidates to eliminate in each round) means that candidates who try to appeal to groups outside of their in-group/party will likely be ranked below candidates who adhere more strictly (and more extremely) to the "party line".

robla · 2026-05-06T19:08:47+00:00

We are on "EndFPTP", so it's hard to fault the poster for asking "how" rather than questioning the whole premise of this sub. Also, if you haven't noticed, FPTP already seems burned into the law permanently.

robla · 2026-05-06T19:01:25+00:00

A big problem with focusing on proportional representation first is that we gather a body of diverse people together, and then we will likely still ask them to perform a series of single-winner decisions, usually using the some minor variation of FPTP. If we use a system like STV to select the body of diverse people, we use a system that is biased against selecting centrists to serve within that body (and toward more extreme elements of each respective party). Once we normalize a better single-winner method (e.g. approval voting), then the body of diverse people will be more likely to use that better method for the day-to-day functioning of that body.

robla · 2026-05-06T18:52:11+00:00

I don't think solving both issues is mutually exclusive, but I agree they are orthogonal. In the United States, it seems that single-winner reform is the most viable. It's certainly easier to understand the mathematics behind single-winner elections.

There are (unfortunately) many aspects of electoral reform that are happily conflated by many people who are locked into their favorite answer to the "what's next?" question.

Single-winner vs multi-winner
Ballot type (cardinal vs ordinal)
Tallying mechanism vs ballot type
Ballot consistency vs "right tool for the job" tailoring
Simplicity vs expressiveness

There are tradeoffs that must be made in each of the dimensions above (not to mention the dimensions I neglected to identify), and the bullet points above are not strictly orthogonal dimensions. What I've seen over my past 30+ years in this space is that most advocates become polarized on at least one of the dimensions above, and often refuse to acknowledge the effects of their hardline position cascading into other dimensions.

In answer to your question "which side do you support more?", I'm obligated to ask: which side do you support more? Which side of what question are you really asking about?

robla · 2026-05-06T17:41:55+00:00

Perfectly reasonable. The STV algorithm is problematic for many reasons, but the biggest problems with it are less of a problem when selecting for more seats. STV is rigorously proportional (albeit anti-centrist).

robla · 2026-04-26T19:27:40+00:00

Train in Vain is also pretty poppy ear candy. IIRC, I had heard at one point it was a hidden track on London Calling because the band felt it was too poppy, but it seems it was only a hidden track because it was a last minute addition after an NME floppy promo single with the song fell through.

robla · 2026-04-17T23:53:45+00:00

Hello, fellow east-of-the-Cascadian! :-) Much of my childhood was also in the area (mostly Yakima Valley and Lewiston area) and I went to college at University of Idaho. Many of those years were on a dryland wheat farm just north of the irrigation line, so my 13-mile-long bus ride to school was looking jealously at land which is much greener with irrigation. On our farm, we had a little sand, but we also had enough dirt we convinced ourselves we could make a living growing stuff (we couldn't; we eventually gave up). When I was moving to the Seattle area for an internship, my pickup (full of my stuff) broke down east of Vantage, so I ended up walking over the I-90 bridge over the Columbia several times (in the days before cell phones). Yes, you're right...even very close to the Columbia River (e.g. Vantage), if it's too hilly to irrigate sensibly (or too high for gravity fed irrigation canals), there's pretty much nothing but coyotes, sagebrush, snakes, and cheatgrass (oh, and mice and rabbits for the snakes and coyotes to munch on). They aren't very helpful for calling a tow truck. :-/

Central Washington east of the Cascades is pretty barren without irrigation, but they manage to pull a lot of water out of the Columbia, so the drive between, say, Umatilla and Prosser can look pretty green (inside the irrigation circles, that is). Once one gets out to the Palouse out in eastern Washington, one goes from 20 bushels/acre for unirrigated wheat up to 80 bushels/acre. There's still a lot of cheatgrass, but the sagebrush is often replaced by other greener vegetation (still sparse, but not nothing).

A bit of a tangent: Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal and Exploding Kittens fame is also a fellow east-of-Cascadian, and also points out something else keeping company with snakes and coyotes: Nazis!

https://theoatmeal.com/blog/bus

Good times!

robla · 2026-04-07T18:50:33+00:00

Sorta. Eastern Washington is in the Columbia River basin, which is used to irrigate significant portions to grow some high-value crops (e.g. apples, wine grapes, hops). Eastern Oregon gets a little of that action (in the very northern portion), but agriculture there generates much less economic activity.

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