the schulze method is a way of voting that is used to fill a single vacant position in an election. it was developed in 1997 by markus schulze. it is also known as schwartz sequential dropping (ssd), cloneproof schwartz sequential dropping (cssd), beatpath method, beatpath winner, path voting, and path winner. it is used by several organizations including wikimedia, debian, gentoo, berrytube, and the kde.