[Chris Jerdonek <chris.jerdonek@gmail.com>]
My reply was to Brett and not to you.
So it was! I missed that - I just noticed that the vast bulk of the text I was replying to was a quote of my message here about the poll. I should have checked.
If I had known the poll was going to be binding,
As before, I had - and have - no reason to believe the poll was binding. It did, however, fairly reflect the sentiments expressed in the long thread of which it was a part - except for not recording your opinion, but because you didn't vote.
I could have made an effort to participate in the discussion and try to sway people. As it was, the discussion was started and dominated by people who were against IRV. They are the most motivated to change things, and they're also the ones most motivated to participate in the poll. I couldn't afford to participate in such a discussion otherwise, as I said in the discussion. There are already 98 messages -- many of which are lengthy -- not to mention messages in other threads. It would take a lot of time and emotional energy to engage in such a discussion.
Decisions are often driven by people who do give the time and emotional energy to discussing the issues at length. It's not like there was universal agreement in the thread - there was lots of give & take. IRV "lost" because _nobody_ spoke for it. About 40% of the core developers who have an account on discuss.python.org did vote in the poll, so it's not like it was just a tiny percentage of developers who made their opinion known. And we know some didn't vote because they couldn't care less how the vote is run (e.g., Guido appears to be in that category).
I'd be concerned it there were evidence that there _might_ be widespread support for the PEP as it was originally written - but I just don't see any. Now that Brett announced the change, you're - so far - the only one objecting to the change.
I'm not a fan of Condorcet methods myself (but because of their conceptual complexity - their results are fine), but even I'm not complaining ;-)